Did you ever “scamper”, dear reader? If not, and just in case you do not understand (or do not know), what to “scamper” means: Please continue to read!
A fine group of participants from Hansenberg boarding school from economy competition teams took part in a creativity training staged by the Accadis Hochschule, Bad Homburg. First Peter Kexel – Student advisory service and lecturer at Accadis - gave a short introduction to the Accadis Hochschule. Together with student Anna Climesco he presented the many study opportunities and stipends of the school, and motivated the young participants to apply.
Daniel Payne, Workshop instructor and lecturer at Accadis, started right away into creative thinking. In English (of course!) he presented in approx. 60 min. most of the creative techniques used nowadays to stimulate new product ideas and innovative business models.
After a first short introduction to the topic of creativity Payne asked the participants to look at where creativity comes from, and what the barriers to creativity often are. Payne knew how to fascinate his audience and with a few of his “British humour”-style jokes he won the audience to participate with great enthusiasm.
After a few preliminary exercises in creativity he asked in the next step, how to stay or develop creativity, and how to put it to its best use in business, or everyday life? Payne explained for example, why left handers are potentially more creative, networking, holistic thinking, whereas right handers are probably more analytic, rational, sequential, and –unfortunately– potentially less creative.
In a short excursion into creative practice, using the “False Faces” creativity tool, Mr. Payne now really set the participants “on fire”. They were introduced to the tool “False Faces” and discovered, always accompanied with Mr. Payne`s infecting funny humour, how it works, with surprising results for the young Hansenberg business competitors.
And now, dear reader, finally the solution to: What does “to scamper” mean? It´s easy.
It is an acronym for a successful “creative method”: substitute, combine, add, modify, put sth. else in, eliminate, rearrange. When you “scamper”, you always think “upside down”, you “invent things new”, in questioning almost all assumptions, commonly “killing” or slowing down your creativity.
The feedback and results session was extremely positive, and all agreed, we should again invite professionals from Accadis Hochschule to motivate, inspire, thrill and enthuse us to new ideas and subjects. And even if it was only to enhance our power to be creative. And maybe “scamper” every now and then, just to exercise our creative potentials.
