The Houdini Solution: Put Creativity And Innovation To Work by Thinking Inside The Box

Tom Monahan is the preeminent creative training coach in the country. Here's what he had to say about The Houdini Solution: "The world is a box. There are limits. Ernie points out, in story after story, illustration after illustration, some very big ideas that emerged not in spite of the box, but because of it. I won't steal the thunder here. Read the book. The only major flaw most readers might find between these pages is that it takes away all your excuses for not having great ideas. The Houdini Solution is a major midcourse correction in the study of creative thinking."

Like it or not, most of us are stuck with the circumstances in which we find ourselves. And those circumstances have parameters; undeniable limitations which we either can't change or could change but don't wish to.

Contrary to what you might believe, this is not a bad thing. Limitations are like the banks of a river. Without them, the river becomes instead a formless mass without direction, just sort of spreading out everywhere but going nowhere.

The psychologist, Rollo May, puts it this way: "Creativity requires limits, for the creative act arises out of the struggle of human beings and against that which limits them."

For millions of people hungry to lead more creative, more innovative lives, the real question therefore isn't, "How can I become more creative?" It's "How can I become more creative within the confines of my life?"

The good news is that,contrary to everything you've heard, you really can lead a more creative life despite all of it.

I don't care what you've been taught. I don't care what you've been conditioned to believe. You can think more creatively right now. Without waiting for some fictional muse that doesn't exist and never did.

By the time you have finished The Houdini Solution, if you have learned one thing, it will be this:

The biggest secret of truly productive creative people is that they embrace obstacles, they don't run from them. In their mind, every setback is an opportunity, every limitation is a chance. Where others see a wall, they see a doorway.

The Houdini Solution will show you that the true path to creativity lies not outside, but inside, the box; that it is only when we are confronted with boundaries that we are able to unleash the full force of our creative potential.

John Moore is a former retail marketing manager for Starbucks and is the author of "Tribal Knowledge: Business Wisdom Brewed from the Grounds of Starbucks Corporate Culture". He's got a terrific post up this week on The Houdini Solution over at his blog, Brand Autopsy.

Jack White is a guitarist and songwriter and the leader of the Grammy Award-winning rock band, White Stripes.

As rock musicians go, Jack is something of a contrarian. Born in 1975, White is a throwback to a simpler, purer form of rock and roll, and in that sense he shares more with the likes of Neil Young, Pearl Jam and Frank Zappa than he does with his contemporaries.

The Houdini Solution is about accepting the box and working inside it. Jack White takes this one step further. Instead of working around creative obstacles, Jack invents them.

So severe are these self-imposed restrictions, they border on the monastic. No computers. No digital recording technology. No bass guitars. No studio equipment invented after 1968. No clothes that aren't red, white or black.

It's a kind of forced creative captivity that nurtures innovation and strives for a form of music that's far more rooted in talent than it is in technology.

On August 5, 1926, after being examined by a team of physicians with hundreds of reporters looking on, the Harry Houdini climbed into a galvanized iron coffin which was promptly sealed and lowered into the swimming pool of the Hotel Shelton in New York City.

No one there that day expected Houdini to survive more than three minutes. Biologically, three minutes was considered the outer limit of the average human being's lung capacity. That was the conventional wisdom. And like most conventional wisdom, most people tended to accept it as fact.

But Houdini saw it differently.

Yes, the scant volume of air in the coffin was an obstacle. So was his age and his lack of conditioning. But maybe those obstacles weren't as daunting as they seemed.

Unquestionably, there was only so much air to breathe and at some point his physical limits would indeed become a factor. There was nothing he could do to manufacture more air or make himself younger. All this was true.

But even if he couldn't change the limitations, what if he could change his attitude toward those limitations?

It was no different than a game of poker, Houdini reasoned. He had been dealt a hand and that hand was a defined amount of air, a 52-year-old body and a woeful lack of conditioning. What if he could do a better job at playing that hand? Might that be the key?

Apparently, it was.

After 1 hour and 28 minutes and much to the amazement of the world, Harry Houdini emerged from the bottom of the Hotel Shelton pool, not only alive but, with the exception of looking a bit pale, feeling relatively well.

The skeptics, of course, insisted it was a trick. But a rigorous examination of the coffin was unable to detect even the slightest amount of evidence that Houdini had somehow managed to pipe in an external supply of air. As he would later write, "Anyone could have done it."

But is that true?

Could anyone have done it? Could anyone have had the ability to stare into the mouth of panic and see a possibility? Could anyone have had the discipline to lie perfectly still in a sealed, iron coffin at the bottom of a swimming pool, taking breaths so shallow they were barely perceptible? Could anyone have, instead of looking at the walls of that coffin and seeing a death trap, seen an opportunity?

It's not like Darren Aronofsky was some Hollywood hack. The director of Requiem For A Dream already had a pretty devoted following in Hollywood circles.

His new film, The Fountain, an allegory about the promise of eternal life, promised to reinvent the science fiction genre.

But then the shitake hit the fan. The film's star, Brad Pitt, decided to bail. Cate Blanchett went soon thereafter. Aronofsky's backers pulled out, studio executives questioned his sanity, and the script went through a radical reincarnation.

A lot of directors would have shrivelled. Not Aronofsky. Instead he went into Houdini Thinker mode.

Among a lot of things, he decided to forego all computer effects. The cost of a single f/x sequence from ILM can reach several million dollars, but Parks shot all the footage Aronofsky needed for just $140,000. Not that everyone involved with the picture was convinced.

As Steve Silberman writes in his article, The Outsider, for Wired magazine: "The studio bean counters remained skeptical that the director could deliver a supernova without supersizing the bottom line."

It wasn't the first time that Aronofsky had been challenged to turn practical limitations into subversive opportunities. "The whole approach of my team is to take old-school techniques and street technology and figure out how to do something fresh and original with them," Aronofsky said.

Houdini couldn't have said it better himself.

I'm not what you'd call a wine snob. Far from it. I frankly wouldn't know a 1996 Rothschild from a 1976 Ripple. Still, I've got to admit, there's something inherently, well, wrong with the idea of buying wine in a box.

And yet, self-described foodie aka chowhound, Bob Shiffrar, tells me there are advantages. Like longer shelf life and less oxygenation. So in principle, a box of wine would seem to be a better idea than a bottle of wine. Still, wine people are disgusted by the very thought of a cardboard container.

So let's define the walls of the box: 1) A clientele preconditioned to believe that wine comes in glass bottles, 2) A physical reality that says wine lasts longer and oxygenates less in cardboard.

Daniel Johnnes',Daniel Boulud's and the vintner Dominique Lafon of Domaine des Comtes Lafon's solution for Dtour, a 2004 chardonnay from Mâcon-Villages?

A round box.

Fear is one of the biggest obstacles to accepting your limitations and thinkin creatively in spite of them.

In The Houdini Solution, I talk about Dr. Kenneth Kamler and his first experience as an expedition doctor.

It was in Peru. Dr. Kamler and the other team members were on their way to the base of a mountain called Taqurahu when a truck filled with Indian villagers went off the road, plunging down into a ravine.

The Andes mountains isn't exactly New York City. There were no ambulances. No world-class emergency rooms mere blocks away. No emergency rooms, period.

And yet, moments later, Dr. Kamler had moved beyond his initial fear and was down in the ravine, moving from victim to victim, setting broken arms, starting intravenous lines, treating concussions.

"Gradually, it became clear that although I was high up in the Andes, I was facing injuries not unlike those I would find in any hospital's emergency room."

Did Dr. Kamler feel fear? Of course, he did. But unlike many of us, he had the ability to move from feeling the fear to confronting it to accepting it.

It's okay to be afraid of your limitations. It's not okay to let them stop you from thinking creatively.

In his memoir, "The Life And Times Of The Thunderbolt Kid", author Bill Bryson tells a great story about his father, a sportswriter for the Des Moines Register.

October 13, 1960. Bill Mazeroski hits a home run in the ninth inning to win the World Series for the Pittsburgh Pirates against the New York Yankees. With the clock ticking down, every sportswriter in the stadium is furiously pecking out their story, their deadlines rapidly approaching.

Here's the opening paragraph of the story that ran in The New York Times:

"The Pirates today brought Pittsburgh its first World Series baseball championship in thirty-five years when Bill Mazeroski slammed a ninth-inning home run over the left field wall of historic Forbes Field."

Here's what people in Iowa read:

"The most hallowed piece of property in Pittsburgh baseball history left Forbes Field late Thursday afternoon under a dirty gray sports jacket and with a police escort. That, of course, was home plate, where Bill Mazeroski completed his electrifying home run while umpire Bill Jackowski, broad back braced and arms spread, held off the mob long enough for Bill to make it legal.

"Pittsburgh's steel mills couldn't have made more noise than the crowd in this ancient park did when Mazeroski smashed Yankee Ralph Terry's second pitch of the ninth inning. By the time the ball sailed over the ivy-covered brick wall, the rush from the stands had begun and these sudden madmen threatened to keep Maz from touching the plate with the run that beat the lordly Yankees, 10-9, for the title."

Two sportswriters. Two stories. Same deadline. Ticking clock a barrier to creativity? You tell me.

The 48 Hour Film Project's mission is to advance filmmaking and promote filmmakers. Through its festival/competition, the Project encourages filmmakers and would-be filmmakers to get out there and make movies. The tight deadline of 48 hours puts the focus squarely on the filmmakers-emphasizing creativity and teamwork skills. While the time limit places an unusual restriction on the filmmakers, it is also liberating by putting an emphasis on "doing" instead of "talking."

An awful lot of people would argue that, on balance, something has gone wrong with moviemaking. Steven Soderbergh, the incredibly gifted director or sex, lies and videotape, thinks he knows what that something is and it basically comes down to this: More is less.

Moviemakers today have so much to work with. Sophisticated lighting. High tech sound systems. Special lenses. The list goes on and on. And yet, for all the choices directors have today, can anyone honestly say the films have gotten any better? I don't think many of us could.

In his new film, "The Good German", Soderbergh reimagines what it would have been like to make a movie with the limitations that directors loved with every day in late 1940's Hollywood. That means no zoom lenses, only fixed focal lenses. No high tech lighting. No wireless microphones.

Steven Soderbergh is one of the most innovative directors of his generation. He isn't afraid to put limits himself. You shouldn't be either.

Mandy Dalton is a clown. She's trained with Ringling Brothers Clown College, the Moscow Art Theater School and Cirque du Soleil. Her career could have gone off in a hundred directions. But instead, Mandy's chosen to limit herself to family entertainment. You'd think that would have put a serious crimp in her talent. Not so. According to Mandy, it's channeled her creative energies in ways that might never have happened otherwise. More on Mandy here: http://www.squidoo.com/mandydalton