Category: Featured

10
Nov

Color Coded Creativity: The “Six Kid Technique”

Imagination is what keeps marketing and brand work relevant and meaningful. Dreaming up new ideas, processes and applications isn’t merely a good skill, it’s increasingly a metric for your success. Can you see the world differently enough to write a story, design a product or execute a strategy? And if you are lucky enough to work for a company that invests in you – asking you to solve problems and innovate – then you’ll want to reacquaint yourself with the the “Six Kid Technique.” It’s our adaptation of the classic Six Hat Technique used by Edward de Bono. It’s simple and easy to use. Pull out the six color-coded kids during your next meeting. Use and apply all kids when working on a challenge.

The Six Kid Technique Spectrum

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Red

Use emotions to look at the situation. What do your feelings or impulses tell you about it?

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White

Use facts, logic and objectivity to assess what’s in front of you. Make a list of all the facts.

TheKid_yellow02

Yellow

Put on a smiley face and look at the bright side. With a positive view, make a list of what works and what can be accomplished.

TheKid_black01

Black

Tap into your dark side. Make a list of what doesn’t work and which elements of the solution just can’t work.

TheKid_green02

Green

Think laterally and then some. Imagine the situation in the most alternative and unconventional ways, then work backward.

08
Mar
23
May

Unleashed: Where are you going?

 Are You Unleashed?

 The strategy and work session could always use more color.  Unleashed is the Oishii way of thinking about thinking. For us, Unleashed in a work session means using the mind productively, creating something tangible and useful. Unleashed means an open mind free from the clutter of judgements, cynicism and anger. Unleashed allows the shapes the unformed intuition and impulse into words. Go wild. Get unleashed…Where are you going?

 

For more #kidinspired and The Kid Unleashed: series at Tumblr

22
May

Oishii at Google i/0

Al-Insan Lashley (Digital/Interactive Producer) and the KID were both present and accounted for at Google i/o Extended’s Keynote address and for a variety of presentation sessions.  Google i/o offered deep technical content and a lot of geeky fun…

The day could have easily been an empty or celebratory party on the part of tech industry giant Google… but the announcements were riveting and valuable.

Some of the up-and-coming releases and educational presentations made at Google i/o included:

  • •Exciting animation developments that occur right in the browser (no no app or video required) [via a demonstration of The Hobbits: Trollshaw Forest]
  • •Really engaging multi-device gaming experiences, including tablets and iOS, see below.
  • •Increasingly shared experiences between Google websites and apps on a variety of machines – desktop computers, mobile phones and tablets.
  • •Powerful new features that can be accessed on the web, not just through Google’s browser, but on a variety of modern browsers.

 

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Oishii Digital and Interactive producer, Al-Insan Lashley, at the recent Google i/O event in Los Angeles.

Al-Insan Lashley (Digital/Interactive Producer) and the KID were both present and accounted for at Google i/o Extended’s Keynote address, as well as in a wide variety of presentation sessions.  It offered deep technical content and a lot of geeky fun…

 

 

 

01
May

Bring Everyone Coffee…

Looking to make the next teamwork session more productive? Try making everyone coffee and bring to the meeting

Psychologist Sonya Lyubomirsky, sonjalyubomirsky.com, has studied happiness and has discovered the many  downstream benefits of cultivating a smile and generous emotions for your  work mates.  For creatives, where “producing” content is critical, feelings play a role in the process of idea generation.  Postive feelings about ones self and others fosters empathy which in turn allows the mind to flourish and generate ideas. So, pick up the coffee and let the ideas flow…

 

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17
Apr

The Kid In The Wild Series

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The Oishii Kid was a labor of love. After a team conversation about our favorite DIY toys, Ish designed, produced and found distribution for the Kid, complete with iconic hair, belly and attitude. The toy was an inspiration project and a way to talk about creativity, idea generation and imagination. The Oishii kid is now out in the world and in the wild! Fans are now using social media, #kidinspired, to capture the kid’s travels and how he’s making their day a bit more inspired and interesting.

01
Mar

Think Like A Tourist

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Ish preps for a strategy session by thinking of Peru

Tourism as Thinking Tool

 Do you know how to think creatively? What does that even mean? A lot of authors blogs and webinars generate lots of money and buzz around this very simple but misunderstood intention—how to think creatively.  Thinking creatively is deceptively simple in that it involves more than using your brain for a task or outcome. It is a physical process working in tandem with carefully practiced thinking skills.  We at Oishii Creative encourage everyone—clients, and within our internal culture, to think creatively everyday and this is what we mean:

  • Tourism as Thought Process: What do you do when you go to a new city? Most people explore through maps and with feet on the ground. That is, we use a map and walk around getting a lay of the land. We invariably make a few wrong turns; we go back and find where we want to go.  Using the same “outsider” mindset to understand a problem we want to solve, an article to write, boards to create or whatever (insert task here) goes along way toward pushing the mind closer toward opening the space for thoughts, ideas and action. Try the following exercise before work: Walk around the out-of-doors of your work -space. Bring nothing with you but a paper and pen.
  • Step #1 Walk briefly and notice where your mind wanders: Let loose without censoring yourself: think about the multiple upcoming deadlines, the annoying meeting you want to miss or the best options for lunch. Let your mind loose for five minutes.
  • Step #2 Now find something that grabs your attention—a tree, a person, a building—sit or stand near the object and give it your full attention. Think only about that object—this can be hard, but do your best.
  • Step #3 Begin writing notes about the object. Write as if this object were completely new to you. Like you are a tourist and you are seeing the object for the first time. Jot down its physical characteristics, its size, shape, scale color etc.  No detail is too inconsequential or too small; write everything you notice.

Look at your notes. Did you draw a picture or diagram? Did you record lots of detail or only a few? The goal of the exercise is to generate as many details as possible.

If you took only a few notes or drew with minimal detail on your first excursion, no worries. Practice your tourist skills again tomorrow before work. Practice will train your brain to think actively and generate lots of details about whatever it is your observe, the goal being to bring a fresh and perceptive mind to the day.

We call this the Oishii Tourism as Thought Process, because it takes the best of academic, neuroscience and ethnographic research and synthesizes into a tool kit for approaching problems.  And creativity, or learning to “think” creatively is a problem we love to solve.

 

18
Dec

Make Your Story

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MAKE THE STORY

Our previous blog discussed what we believe to be one of the most overlooked but nevertheless important distinctions between Storytelling and Storymaking for the early stages of the branding process. Today, we’ll continue that conversation as it relates to positioning for start-ups and entrepreneurs.

When thinking about your story and your vision, Oishii typically advises clients to think beyond the ‘what is’— the details of your business plan — and, instead, think about the ‘why’— the core values at the center of your company. The ‘why’ is your essence, the collection of passions and inspirations that animate your mission statement. On a far more practical level, your core values are the bold promise and longevity of your brand, and offer meaningful reason for others to engage with it. You can’t do this any other way.
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19
Oct

Are You A Storyteller or Storymaker?

We love stories. We believe stories are powerful ways of communicating with the world. But have you ever really told your story? Do you incorporate your story into your company, mission and brand?  At Oishii, we make a distinction between those who tell and those who make stories. Knowing your history, values, passions, narrative and even characters, is the first and important step toward becoming a story maker; someone who takes their story and shapes it into a unique standard for the world. This is a story others want to hear, share and aspire to.

You’ve got to dare to tell…
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11
Oct

Do You Know Your Story?

You have ideas, technology and investors… but do you know your story?

 

Oishii’s own consumer behavior specialist Sterling Hawkins was recently profiled by NewsWire on his work through Maverick Angels, an entity that takes an entrepreneurial approach to angel investing. Last year, the company invested in no fewer than 11 startup businesses, of which the largest group worked in software or the Internet.
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