I am VERY happy that my interview with Martin Taylor – world famous jazz guitarist from Scotland – is the first video up.

WATCH IT HERE: https://youtu.be/A-1QZXDOSTc

Martin Taylor is one of the great jazz guitarists of our time. For the first half of his life, he thought there was something wrong with him. I went to Scotland to ask him how you end up with a sound that is only yours. His answer is one word: essence. You already have it. The work is believing it and then getting out of its way. When he plays, he says, he isn’t playing the guitar at all. He’s playing something in his head.

I would LOVE to hear your feedback!

Thanks for following The Creativity Explorer and I hope these videos will inspire you to discover your full creative potential.

The post First weekly creativity video. With jazz guitarist Martin Taylor (Episode 290) first appeared on The Creativity Explorer.

Until now, almost everything I learned from them ended up in books and articles. From now on, video is how I will share it.

I took a break from posting videos about creativity during the pandemic but now I am restarting it, and I am doing it properly: every week, one film with a creative person I have met somewhere in the world.

A glassblower in Zurich. A rush basket maker in London. Graffiti artists, a jazz guitarist in Scotland, a miniature artist in Mexico, the founders of a creativity studio in Helsinki and many, many more.

A new film every Wednesday at noon (GMT), starting in two days. Subscribe on YouTube – https://lnkd.in/dyDYNMzp – or follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fredrikharen/

As a subscriber to this newsletter I will of course also send you an email every time that a new video is launched.

How does the saying go… “The best time to get serious about video was 20 years ago – the second-best time is today.” 🙂

What have you postponed for a long time that it is finally time to get done?

Cannot wait to share these interviews with creative people. It has been so much fun creating them.

The post Weekly video on creativity! (Episode 289) first appeared on The Creativity Explorer.

(I am afraid I cannot share anything at the moment, and perhaps I never will – but the feeling of being on a creative high for days is exhilarating).

I have made a living for the last 25 years spreading the message of the power of creativity – and days like this are a good reminder of the total life-changing energy that the creative energy is.

When is the last time you were on a creative high for days?

The post When is the last time you were on a creative high? (Episode 288) first appeared on The Creativity Explorer.

The second photo is the one we took a few minutes later when we embraced some of the themes that we had actually discussed on the podcast. Themes like ‘adding a surprise element to what one does’, ‘the need for feelings and emotions in meetings’ and ‘creativity’.

The podcast is Eventpodden with hosts Johanna Samuelson, Carl Knutas and the other guest was Arvid Axland. The episode is not out yet but look at this as a teaser for it. We also talked about our biggest bloopers and what I learnt about event organizing in North Korea.

Great conversations and fun topics to talk about.

How are you adding a surprise to what you do today?

The post Add a surprise (Episode 287) first appeared on The Creativity Explorer.

‘Staying fresh is difficult.’

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These were the words that Manikandan Narasimhan started our conversation with. Manikandan is a global technology and transformation executive with more than two decades of leadership experience in the financial services and technology sectors. He is currently associated with Franklin Templeton India, where he leads large-scale global technology and digital transformation initiatives. We met in Chennai, India to speak about how to handle change.

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One of his responsibilities is to help the employees of Franklin Templeton at the Corporate Centre in India become more innovative. With his decades long experience in developing innovation, I asked him for a concrete thing they had done to help keep an organisation flexible and nimble.

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He told me about a project called ‘Fresh Eyes’ where the innovation team would get employee details who had recently joined and worked for between 6 to 12 months in their new role.

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Long enough to understand how things work, but short enough to still have ideas about things that really could improve.

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By surveys and interviews they query these employees about processes, procedures and habits that they think should be changed, improved or exchanged for something better.

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But Manikandan also told me that it works both ways.

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By interviewing them about what they thought was not working, they could also identify things that the new employees had not yet understood about the way their new organisation works.

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‘Fresh Eyes’ was both about getting new perspectives on the workplace – but also about getting the new hires to look at their new job with fresh eyes.

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Every organisation and every person will at some point get stuck and plateau in their ability to grow and develop. Manikandan calls this “mental cocooning”

Now cocooning can be a good thing – if it means you focus on self-development in order to transform to something better.

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But it can also be a bad thing, if you close yourself up from the rest of the world.

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When you – your organisation or yourself – feel stuck, ask yourself: “Am I getting ready to transform, or am I just stuck?”

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The answer will define what you need to do next.

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If you are stuck you might need a fresh pair of eyes to help you see things from a new perspective.

The post The Creativity Suite. Episode 167: Fresh Eyes and the need to transform. first appeared on The Creativity Explorer.

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Today I spoke at a ‘soil company’ (Hasselfors Garden) – they literally make soil. And I spoke for their partners on the factory floor.
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Why was it a perfect fit?
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I started the session by telling the audience of the etymology of the word ‘creativity’.
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The core of the word is ker meaning ‘to grow’!

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And what is soil, if not the material that makes things grow?
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I ended my speech with the question: ‘What grows inside of you?’ as in, ‘What ideas are planted inside of you that you can bring to life?’

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That is also my question to you today.
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Ps. After a 6.5 week speaking tour across 8 countries, it was also refreshing to speak at a soil factory just a couple of hours drive away from home. After all, it’s important to not lose connection to one’s roots as one branches out into the world.

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The post Creativity and Soil. (Episode 286) first appeared on The Creativity Explorer.

From now on, I am going to call it ‘In person Travel’.

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As I explore The World of Creativity (8 countries in just the last month, 75 in total) it has become too clear to me that my journey is – at its core – about meeting people.

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About meeting creative people all over the world to learn from them.

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Today I did an interview in Coimbatore – India, and was surprised by them gifting me a birthday cake (they had somehow found out that today is my birthday!) 🙂
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Meetings like these, where I learn from creatives all over the world is what it means to be The Creativity Explorer. The human connections that these meetings create feed my curiosity and makes me feel alive.

Best birthday present I could ever ask for.

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Why do YOU travel?
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On another note, here’s a little bit about a game I like to play – I call it the ‘CHECK-IN CHICKEN’.

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I got a high score as I checked in at Oberoi Hotels & Resorts in Delhi last week.

Let me explain:

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I love traveling, but I hate how long it takes to check-in at some hotels, so I turned it into a game.
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When I arrive at the check-in desk, I start a timer and then I count how many ‘clicks’ on the mouse the person who checks me in needs to check me in.
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I am horrified by the amount of clicks some hotels need for the simple process of checking in a guest.
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(After all, they already know my name, when I am coming, which room I will get etc and yet some booking systems ask the poor person to do endless clicks.)
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Some of the worst performers this year are:

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Hyatt Seoul 94 clicks! (4:25 minutes)
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Or Hyatt Chennai, a few days ago who needed 54 clicks – and 6:06 minutes – just to find out that my room was not ready for check-in yet.

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And then we have the ‘winners’:

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Radisson Red in Oslo: less than ten clicks and 0:50 minutes.

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And

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Thon Hotel in Brussels: 11 clicks.

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But last week, I had the best experience since I began playing this game, at Oberoi Hotels & Resorts Delhi: 28 seconds!

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After less than half a minute we were on the way to my room (where the rest of the check-in happened with things like scanning the passport (required in India).
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The total check-in process was less than two minutes but because I was in my room so quickly, it felt so much shorter.

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My first reflection is: How can hotels, like Hyatt, have check-in processes that require close to 100 (!) clicks on a mouse?!

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My second reflection: What other boring part of my life could I turn into a game? 😉
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What is your record at ‘Check-in Chicken’? What is your worst experience?

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Would love to know your thoughts, please post a comment on LinkedIn where it got over 100,000+ views! Clearly, this one struck a nerve. Thank you for reading, sharing, and adding to the conversation: https://lnkd.in/p/gQ8G_EjW 

The post Travel Tales. (Episode 285) first appeared on The Creativity Explorer.

Five years ago, Kiruba Shankar posted that he would like for someone for his birthday to gift saplings to his farm that he had just started to develop.

I said I would love to gift a whole bunch of saplings.
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It ended with me gifting him enough saplings to do a little forest, and Kiruba gracefully decided to name that “The Haren Forest”.

Yesterday I visited his wonderful farm (Viksana Farmstay) for the first time and saw a full-grown forest with bamboo, mango trees, banana plants and so many other diverse plants.
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I have spent two days here and it’s been a wonderful experience, picking mangoes from the tree, lying under a canopy of bamboo, being in nature, feeding the animals.
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What Kiruba has created here is nothing short of a paradise and I’m so happy to have seen what he has built and to see The Haren Forest with my own eyes.
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A simple idea of gifting a few saplings turned into a full-grown forest, full of fruits, birds and other animals.
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What seedling of an idea is nesting within you, that with a little help from your friends can blossom into a beautiful reality?
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Thank you, Kiruba for an unforgettable few days.

The post When ideas bear fruit. (Episode 284) first appeared on The Creativity Explorer.

In the last few months, I have been invited to speak around the world, including: Belgium, South Korea, Sweden, Singapore, Norway, the UK, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, India and Australia.

And the next couple of months will take me to: Finland, Switzerland, Croatia, Serbia, the UK, India, Vietnam, Romania, Singapore, Argentina, Norway, and Sweden.

2026 is looking like a great year for exploring the world of creativity.

Shifting medium from books to video

After 30 years of primarily identifying as “an author” when it comes to content creation, I have decided that my latest book “The World of Creativity” was also my last book.

I have now started to dive into the world of video and will soon start sharing more creativity content though the medium of video instead.

Keep a look out as I will soon start sharing them with you.

It is my hope that video will better communicate the essence of what it means to be The Creativity Explorer.

Interviewing creatives around the world.

The last few months have been some of the most inspiring times for me, as I have met with so many creative people around the world. Just in Nepal I interviewed everything from a heart surgeon, a painter, a photographer, a female mountain climber, a film maker, an entrepreneur, a tourist guide, a hotelier, and many more.

I also got to interview the founders of Kazi Studios, a board game developer in Kathmandu.

From them I learned about the technique of “playing the problem” – i.e, to look at any problem as a game that you need to solve.

I have already started to think of my problems as “games” – it’s a much more fun way of approaching life’s problems 🙂

What problem do you need to play?

Never stop exploring and always aim to take your creativity to the next level.

And live a creative life.

Fredrik Haren – The Creativity Explorer 

Ps. If you hear of anyone looking for a speaker on creativity, innovation and/or change, please do let them know about me. Word of mouth is how I tend to get almost all my speaking business so thank you in advance. 🙂

The post Never stop exploring! (Episode 283) first appeared on The Creativity Explorer.

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That was one of the messages I delivered to the Global Innovation Network on a virtual talk recently.
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That is one of the many powerful effects of curiosity. It kills the ego and when the ego is dead, then true creativity and influence can thrive.

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So feed your curiosity and your creativity will blossom.

The post Stay Curious. Stay Creative. (Episode 282) first appeared on The Creativity Explorer.