Ep#46: The Power of Dumb Thinking - The Dumbify Framework with David Carson

In this episode, Dr Dani and Designer Peter delve into the concept of 'Dumbify' with guest David Carson. Discover how embracing 'dumb' ideas can lead to breakthrough innovations. Learn about David's journey building successful companies, and how a simple dinner conversation sparked the idea of 'Dumbify.' In this episode, you will: 

• Understand the importance of spending more time with 'dumb' ideas
• Learn practical ways to integrate 'dumb' thinking into your problem-solving process
• Discover how challenging traditional methods can lead to unexpected success

David Carson is an entrepreneur and marketing innovator whose groundbreaking companies and products have impacted millions worldwide. Renowned for his expertise in creative thinking, Carson has collaborated with global giants like American Express, Nike, Coca-Cola, and IKEA, as well as cutting-edge advertising agencies including Mother and Ogilvy. His unconventional approach has not only shaped iconic brands but also challenged traditional notions of problem-solving in business and beyond. Connect with David on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidcarson2/ and subscribe to his Dumbify newsletter at https://www.david-carson.com/

Transcript

Dr Dani: Hey Peter. 

Designer Peter: Hi Dani. How are you? 

Dr Dani: I am good. How are you? 

Designer Peter: I'm very well, thank you. Very well today. 

Dr Dani: We have a guest with us today. 

Designer Peter: We have a guest. Maybe people can hear the excitement in our voices a bit different. , we love our guest episodes and I'm looking forward to this one, especially 

Dr Dani: we do, not that I don't enjoy talking , just be you, Peter, but it's nice to have some guests come along.

Yeah. So today we have a guest with us and we'll have him introduce himself. David, did you wanna take a few minutes to introduce yourself to the audience? 

David Carson: Sure. Yeah, why not? Nice to see you guys. I love the fact that, I am in New York and you are in Auckland, and, we're having this conversation from not only thousands of miles away, but many hours, away as well.

You guys are actually from the future. Right now. We are. And I find that pretty exciting. Thanks for coming on here. I know our initial conversations were around talking about this sort of dumb thinking. Idea and framework that that [00:01:00] essentially occupies most of my waking hours.

But my, my background just super quickly, my background started off in in music and in design. It started primarily as digital design, building digital products. But that quickly morphed into me owning these companies that I created. And so suddenly I was in this space that was very uncomfortable where I now owned a company and I had to figure out what to do with it and where to go with it, right?

And it, it became a a series of mistakes my career. So it, it was primarily with marketing and creating products. I've done everything from have, clients like Nike, American Express to creating my own content for my own channels that at one point in time had 30 million people a month that came to it, and generated a nice media business out of it.

But Dumbify is this thing that came out of this this, as I said I had a company that sort of, came up outta nowhere and I really didn't know what I was doing. And I got to this point where I realized that the company that, that I had founded had gone to a place that I [00:02:00] was very unexpected, pleasantly unexpected to me.

But I got into a place where it really needed to grow and it needed to morph and it needed to do things that I was really not capable of doing. And I was having dinner with a friend of mine we're in very similar situations, another friend of mine, ADE, who had started another company. And we were both just almost like super depressed that night because we were like, man when we started it was just so much fun and Right.

We're able to grow and right. And here we were in this weird mezzanine level and we weren't quite sure what to do. We thought we were acting smarter. We were, trying to get more clever and really rubbing up against, the defects of being too smart for your own good or, trying to be too clever.

And then Adi said something that just made me laugh and he said, David, you will never meet an idiot who isn't having a good time. And that just made me laugh 'cause it felt really true. But there was something deeper in it for me because that night I'm a nerd at heart.

So that night I'm like, it wouldn't let me go. It's kinda like a little earworm, right? That, that something about [00:03:00] that was very true and I didn't know why or if it could be insightful for me. So I made this this quant chart for myself. This sort of quad chart of dumb to smart, right?

Essentially was the, where the, were the XY axis. And and I ended up filling up sort of these buckets with archetypes makes sense to me what this thing might be. So if you look in like the dumb and dumb category, right? Like that square that encompasses that I put in a character like Forrest Gump.

Who is this character who , knows they're dumb, right? Not very bright, obviously manages to do some pretty interesting things in his life, obviously as a fictional character. Slides to the right when he had a cha, when he had a box that is somebody who's actually dumb but thinks they're smart.

So that to me was that was easy one, that was Homer Simpson's. That's what a perfect sort of character for that. But then as you got into the smart right part of the chart and you had this character that is who's actually really smart but uses dumb as a weapon, I.

And when I was a kid, there was a show, there was a character called Colombo, I don't know if you're familiar with his character at all. But he was always [00:04:00] like he just, he would always play the fool, right? He'd walk into any room he'd be this sort of bumbling idiot and usually the villain, right?

The criminal would essentially, he'd get them to monologue right. About their crime. And and he'd catch the the criminal that way. It's a great character. But then finally in, in the other part of the chart was who is smart? Knows they're smart, is exponentially smart. And to me, I, that, that became Spock.

So I put Spock in, in there, and then as I'm looking at this thing, so I've got Fors Gump, Homer Simpson, Colombo, and Spock. And it just dawns on me like instantly, it's oh my God. Like the only thing I should learn from this that's insightful to me is I. Don't be the miserable bastard in the upper right.

Spock. That guy is never happy. Like just never happy. It's okay, great. Don't be that guy. Try and be every, everybody else. And so to me that sort of started this notion of there's something interesting in the idea of dumb thinking. And that's what put me in the position of growing this company to begin with.

But somehow I had lost sight of that beginner's [00:05:00] mind, right? Kind of flavor. And I thought there was probably a lot more, there were probably a lot more practices that I could develop for myself. Ways to think about that could be beneficial for me. Some of it became me trying to collect as many stories as possible for where dumb ideas have actually worked, right?

Have solved really large problems, and others had been, how can I cherry pick all these things that I think are in this dumb thinking territory, that might be a useful framework or methodology or at least a state of mind, to try and get yourself into.

So to me, Dumify just became this way to practice unconventional, counterintuitive thinking but in a very like it's on purpose, right? Essentially. And so that's why I initially started it and then just started writing down, the ideas that, that I had that had worked for me and started to share those with people around me.

I initially gave this talk at the Art Directors Club in New York gosh, about a decade now ago. And to my surprise, it actually really resonated. And I thought, they were gonna take that. It's a dumb idea. It's a dumb thing they just said. But so that just set me on the path to keep [00:06:00] developing it.

And so here we are chatting. 

Designer Peter: Amazing, great story. And shows the power of a two by two. We talk about two by twos occasionally, don't we? Dot, we, Dani, so Forest, Homer, Spock. And then and then Colombo. I do remember a Colombo. It might have been the reruns in British television. 

David Carson: You were in reruns by the time I was a kid as well.

They're quite old, those episodes, but 

Designer Peter: such a great character in his raincoat, very unassuming, under the radar and would wrap it all up. Love it. 

Dr Dani: I'm feeling a little behind. I'm Googling who Colombo was. Oh, okay. 

Designer Peter: Oh, I see. Okay. Yeah, we you're a bit younger. 

David Carson: Yeah, exactly. I need to find a much better example of that that fits that archetype. That's not, 

Designer Peter: that there's a little, there's a little task for our our listeners and your your subscribers and us a little seed to plant in our brains.

Ha. Have you found have you Googled colombo there, Dani? Are you now up to speed on us or back in time with us? 

Dr Dani: Yeah, I'm with you and I've bookmark some [00:07:00] YouTube so I can actually go watch it later. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. 

David Carson: Fantastic. 

Designer Peter: And I think I'm, using some those fictional characters as archetypes, I think is I don't, I think it's smart. We don't take that as an offensive comment there right now. I'm offended. That's smart. Don't do that again. No that's smart thinking to everyone. Most people can associate with those fictional characters. It's not polar, they're not polarizing in any way. I love it.

You've gone about pulling these stories together over the last 10 years and yeah, what's Dumbify now then David, tell us to bring us up to, right up to the present day. Up to speed. 

David Carson: Yeah. So where it's at now, this was after a conversation with my daughter.

Who is a teenager and what she said. She said, it's weird the way that you think, first of all, because I'm a weird dad and I will fully cop to that. But she says, she said what's interesting to me about, about the way that you think about things is that, I'm young and I'm a female, and [00:08:00] so I feel like whenever I walk into a room and offer a suggestion or an idea, I'm immediately.

Put in that dumb category. She says, but what's interesting is that, I actually get more confidence by knowing . That there have been a lot of people that have been seen as being dumb throughout history and that's sometimes just the path that you take 

to get ideas out. I find that to be I think I get confidence from that and I thought, oh, that's sweetie. That's amazing. I, I love, who doesn't love hearing that? Yeah. But it, it dawned on me that I should probably, not just let this be, a talk I would give from time to various people, but maybe I should start organizing in a way that might be helpful and useful. So I started a newsletter called Dumbify and and I also have written a book that comes out in the summer. And the book is a much more, it's obviously it's just a much, it's a very in-depth version of of Dumbify and the methods and the practices and the stories and and the newsletter.

It's really, it's on a weekly basis. What's a really what's a little nugget right. Of, of dumb, if you will, and the dumb averse that you could [00:09:00] learn. It's a very practical, guide to to getting smarter by, by actually getting dumber and thinking dumber.

And so that's been my biggest occupation Yeah. Has been in, in in writing, which I really enjoy. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. And I when you reached out to us and we started emailing I immediately subscribed to to Dumbify and I really enjoy your weekly musings. And there's some there's some amazing kind of brain sparkers and maybe we'll come onto to this later, but I love the way that you finish off your newsletter with a, try this at home.

Take action on that call to action. I don't mind admitting that sometimes it's really difficult and maybe that shows that how conditioned we are to. Trying to be smart or not seeing things that are, or just taking things for granted. And and maybe this is usually in our conversations, David, as we talk about the, what it is and you've defined Dumbify and the story of it beautifully for us.

And then we, Dani you might correct me, but we move on to how we actually might might use some of this. Is that the order, Dani? Or do we talk about why it's important? You can [00:10:00] keep us on track. We usually 

Dr Dani: talk about why it's important first..

I've 

Designer Peter: jumped the gun. There's a little teaser for later. David. Why is, you've met I actually, I have a daughter myself. She's seven. I think you've just highlighted something that is incredibly important about Dumbify is that, , it broadens the perspective, of acceptable ideas.

And if it's giving one person confidence to express their ideas, then it must therefore be giving thousands of people. But w why else have you found that this concept of dumbify over the decade and Yeah, and the framework and the choice to be deliberate and unconventional, you're thinking what, why else have you found that to be important?

What difference have you seen it starting to make with you and beyond? 

David Carson: I think the biggest difference that I've seen in myself is that it opened the aperture to just the possibilities in general. So before I was really looking at ideas that I felt were smart. And it was funny 'cause when I was chatting with others friends of mine who were like investors venture capitalists, they are, they're oddly enough, venture capitalists tend to be at least the good ones, tend to have a [00:11:00] dumb thinking 

sort of head already. And they will very quickly tell you that, the ideas that come to them that are dumb and the ideas that come to them that are smart are very much at parody as to which will actually succeed. So they're actually sort of precondition to look for that really dumb idea that they don't quite understand.

Huh? I liken it to if you've ever if you're like a sports person, you've gotten injured, but you're gonna go to a massage therapist that's just gonna find that knot and really get that out. There's that point at which it becomes uncomfortable 'cause they find that spot and you're like, oh God don't do that.

But the only way through, it's just so you have to lean into that discomfort, if you'll, yeah. And you set it up, before when chatting about, the challenges that I give at the end of trying to actually do some of these things yourself.

They're more challenging than you would think because we're just so preconditioned. We have such a bias against dumb. We don't want to look foolish, we don't want to sound foolish. And yet when we do, we open up the possibilities of solution sets, right? That, that are available to us.

So I think it's [00:12:00] important on a few different levels. One is to understand that, that there's a whole territory that you might be missing out on. That's one. And then the other is if you take the time right to actually, to apply yourself in it, you're gonna find it's incredibly uncomfortable, 

because it's bizarre how much we are precondition by that. Your parents want you to be smart. Your teachers want you. Every, everything in your life has been, I. Be smart. There's nothing in your world that really rewards dumb, right? And so trying to get you in that mindset, but to just to stay there longer.

That I think is the first thing is like how can you just train your mind to stay there longer, because then you'll actually find these, solution sets, are actually there. You don't dismiss them out of hand. So if it's a business or a company think about a company that is very much like a best practices kind of company.

Like those types of companies struggle to stand out, as an idea. And so so you know, you could take a company like that and say, okay, this is what you've done. You've really created this best practice company, but so has everybody else, so how do you actually stand out?

And so taking them in this [00:13:00] territory, it's gonna make them feel uncomfortable, but at least they're going to open the aperture a ton, where they might be able to find some value for themselves to differentiate outside of that, if you are like like just trying to solve a problem, sometimes you've, we've all had this where you're trying to solve it.

You're just you're just, whacking your head up against the wall 'cause you know it's not working. And yet there's so much invested time that you've had in one direction. It never dawns on you to go the other direction. And so that's a big one. And if you do that, how can you feel comfortable in doing that?

And then what are some things to try , that actually might be useful for you? I. And then the other is just for individuals. If you are, a creator of any kind, you're constantly self-censoring yourself, and so how can you at least keep your mind open enough for yourself ?

To play in this territory, longer than you tend to. It is like those we've all seen those really dumb ideas that have become really amazing and I'm sure we'll have this conversation. We'll come up with a dumb idea. Most people just kinda leave it there.

It's oh, that was funny. That was fun. But there were other people who, they'll have agency and they'll [00:14:00] go, wait a minute, I'm gonna take that a step further, and I'm gonna let's prototype that. Let's take that from thought to thing and get that out in the world.

Yeah. And, see what happens. And that's what I'm driving at, is it's okay. To get there and to do that. And it might be helpful. Nice. So many 

Dr Dani: good nuggets in there that we wanna unpack. One, I wanna go back to the point that you made, David around we're so conditioned to be smart.

That's also something that came up in my research, except in my research people were talking about it in the what conditioned to have the right answer. And from the time we're in school and we get called up to the front of the classroom, you did not want to be the person that had the wrong answer.

So from that moment, we're conditioned that being right makes us good people on us. Like we think being wrong makes us bad people. And this is what came up in the research and what I am finding is that now. In the context of our world at the moment, [00:15:00] we are dealing with some big, complicated challenges, and right answers don't exist anymore.

There's good enough answers or there's solutions that make things better, but there's not this one ultimate answer that we're all seeking, but we still tend to think that way. 

David Carson: Yeah. And we tend to think in silver bullets rather than in process as well. So if I have one idea, it might not solve everything, but it at least make something better for the next step to, to then. So it's I always see that, almost everyone wants to have an answer, rather than that they wanna have an outcome. They're more interested in, in feeling right than they are in outcomes. And I feel like our, every discourse that we have now, around the world seems to be pointing us in that direction.

And so trying to get out of that. It was funny, Dani what you just mentioned, by the way, with it. Remind me of I, with my kids when they were little. The school went to a [00:16:00] museum. They went to the Wadsworth Museum, which was out in Hartford, Connecticut. And they have a wonderful, like Sol Lewit and and Andy Warhol.

They have a really great contemporary collection out there. And Alexander Calder with, remember the mobiles and stuff. But there's one kid that, that my daughter was just great friends with, but he was the oddball in the group, right? He was the outsider of this whole, whole class.

And I loved him to death because as we're walking through with the docents, she would, we would go underneath this Alexander Calder mobile and she was explaining. She was like, this thing is going to spin around and it's gonna move and it will never be in the same place twice. And Ned was just one of those kids.

He was very smart, at a very young age. He's statistically that's not accurate. He was about to talk about what he meant by that, and and the teacher's oh Ned don't, they're just. My favorite was we went to the impressionist room and here's this beautiful impressionist painting.

There are these people from from in Venice. And they're on the boats and they're in fancy, 

Attire. And the [00:17:00] docent says I want you to take these pencils and these note cards, and I want you to pretend like you're people on this boat.

And you're writing back to people at home telling them about your experience. And so everybody did exactly what you would think to do. Oh, it's so lovely here in Venice, right? And I love the water and Right. Blah, blah. And then Ned, his thing was like, help, I'm trapped in a painting at the Wadsworth Museum.

He's I instantly fell in love with that kid. I was like, kid, man, he's gonna have truly interesting original ideas. And again, he was seen as the troublemaker in, in that. So again, like there was some really interest. Like I just get so curious around people like that, just in general.

Yeah. And I felt bad for him that he was never really gonna get from school. The type of curiosity that, that he probably would need to develop that. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. That's so great. Stories. A perfect example of yeah. The unintentional kind of consequences of the, of schools and the schooling system and yeah.

I love it. [00:18:00] Stuck in the painting. 

Dr Dani: Schools where creativity goes to die. 

David Carson: Yeah, totally. I remember, did you guys ever experience Montessori? I did Montessori when I was really young. 

Designer Peter: We did. Yeah. I 

David Carson: love that man. That there's something, I feel like I never really hear about that much anymore.

It was almost like an experiment. I went to school in the seventies and eighties when I was little and it was still very an echo of the hippie generation. I'd have a teacher who would sing Puff the Magic dragon, in, in sort of our Montessori kind of vibe. And but I always found that to be pretty interesting 'cause you could what, whatever you were curious in was where you went, right? And you applied your learning . In in that way.  

Dr Dani: I'm a Montessori child. And quick side story, it's actually what changed my life in a lot of ways. I'm left-handed and I really struggled with writing as a child. And, they were doing all these tests because they were worried I had some sort of brain malfunction.

Designer Peter: Yeah. And 

Dr Dani: one of my Montessori teachers said what if we just let her write on blank pieces of paper? And so to this day, I write on, [00:19:00] I buy my notebooks in blank sheets of paper because when I write on blank sheets of paper, my, I can just write. Whereas when I'm forced to write on lines, and I think that is the Montessori experience, that they cater to the child and figure out how do we help this child thrive?

Rather than, how do we fit this child into a box? 

David Carson: Totally. My mother, by the way, is the same. She actually is ambidextrous, and when she was a child, they thought the same thing, but it turned out that she was actually left-handed back then. They actually would beat that out of you. She actually got wrapped on the hands, right?

Yeah. For writing left-handed. But if she has a great if you ask her to do this, my kids love asking grandma to write a sentence in both hands at the same time. She actually does. It's really fun. And then she'll try and write two different things at the same time, which she can, but not incredibly well.

But it's still fun, fun to watch.

Designer Peter: That is cool. I'd love to see that. That's a that's a great trick. Your Montessori actually we talked to her being in Geo [00:20:00] Montessori is alive and kicking probably around the world, but definitely in New Zealand. And nice. My, my daughter doesn't go to Montessori school, but we looked into Montessori and set the house up when she was a little toddler.

And one of the, I think one of the basic tenets, which maybe kind. A little bit of dumbify, but essentially in normal school systems. And I've got a copy of the Robinson Manifesto on my wall where, Ken Robinson years ago talked about this very subject and that they're set up for a kind of industrial age when, it needed, schools needed to produce human beings that were, ready to go and do work in the workforce.

And it was like a, pushing information into people's brains versus, I think one of the principles of Montessori is you arrange information in the form of, words, pictures, objects, et cetera, lessons and they're available for the humans, even if they're tiny to draw and pull things rather than be pushed information, they're pulling information in the way that they like and prefer, and their [00:21:00] brains are already starting to tune into.

And maybe that's an example of, maybe not, David, you can tell me about, a flipping round, essentially a ies. It's like taking something that's mainstream or normal and unaccepted and just sometimes just doing the complete opposite and seeing what happens and, yeah.

Yeah. Montessori has obviously done that. It's a great benefit as we can see from Dani. 

David Carson: Yeah, I love that. I love that that you had that experience. I wished I would've kept on with it. Our school system did it as a test for a number of years and then turned it off for some reason.

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

David Carson: But it's the opposite thing is pretty funny because there were two things that I've just always done that, that become a, this is part of the mental model for me is an opposites there. There's sort of two, two different things that I do, but one is do you remember the show Seinfeld?

Yep. So there's an episode where George can, hold on. Wait a minute, David. Yes I 

Designer Peter: do. Oh no, 

David Carson: you do. Are you the biggest Seinfeld person ever? 

Dr Dani: I loved Seinfeld. Granted, I watched it on Rerun, but it, I think it's one of the [00:22:00] best shows. So for me, friends and Seinfeld are like. And Big Bang Theory are up there.

David Carson: Yeah. That and I'd have to have a a Rick and Morty is now on there for me as as well, which I always find fascinating. That's part of my, there's just there are life lessons in nihilism from from Rick and Morty that I find fascinating. But the there's this episode in Seinfeld where George Costanza decides that he is gonna do the exact opposite.

Just for one day. Anything that's would be his instinct. He's gonna do exactly right the opposite, and he ends up having just like the best day of his life, in doing that. He just realized that all of his instincts, essentially right, were wrong. And and so I called this for myself, I called it the George Costanza, method.

And it was really just a way to say, okay, when I'm really knocking my head up against the wall, clearly like the direction I'm going in is not right, and yet which direction should I go? The immediate direction I could go is the opposite, right? And so I would think about what that is that developed into, there was another guy that, that, [00:23:00] that just gave me a morsel that I just loved, he said.

He was asking, he's if large is the opposite of small, then what's the opposite of medium? And I thought that was hilarious for obvious reasons. 'cause just gets you thinking, right? Yeah. So where the George Costanza is Essentia one direction I could go would be to go opposite, right?

Another direction that I could go is I could actually go, what I would call like this middle thinking realm, which is really if I were to take two opposing ideas, like a Venn diagram, right? So if I took, A and B and I smashed them together, most people look at the middle as like a weird, like a compromise, maybe like a dumbing down of those two things.

But often what you find when you smash them together is the thing that's in the middle is a new thing, right? There's something brand new, right? That comes out of it. And so that's also another direction, right? That you could go. So it's if I'm going this way and if I go this way right?

And if I were to smash them together, you know what comes out right? As, as a result. So those are other just like little tricks of things. I actually started training some little [00:24:00] AI agents just to see if they would synthesize stuff as well. That's been pretty fascinating. My favorite was I asked it to, I just did a little, just prompt so that it would, what the instruction set was.

I said, take two opposing ideas, make them up. Like what are two opposites? And put 'em together. My favorite was, it took cooperation and competition and it smashed 'em together. And it synthesized this word and it came up with coopetition. And I thought that's a wonderful word. What a great word.

Coopetition. It's oh what's that? And then it rationalized that coopetition is a couple of different things. One, it could be like when Crocs and Balenciaga decide to merge and Right. And make that shoe right. That, that crazy high heel croc shoe. Yeah. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

David Carson: Or it could be as simple as, logistics, 

you're an airport and you're competing airlines, but you are. The hub, that, that you have is in support , of each other and all the logistics right around it. Or like a Japanese keiretsu, where you're able to have businesses that have . Shared resources. So I thought that was fascinating.

So even as just like a simple tool to [00:25:00] synthesize, new ideas. That was that was a good one. Yeah. But the opposite one I always think is great because that'll sometimes lead you to, I call it the make it worse. Method where it's if you're trying to make something right, you just like, how do I make it, how do I make it the worst thing that possibly, yeah.

 For like design thinking, I know that's part of a, the thing. So it's like you can sometimes find the imperfections or the flaws or the things that you actually need to fix, in that. Yeah. And then what I find the way I think about where dumb thinking applies with that type of method is if you let it, you'll actually create brand new things right from it.

So you're not necessarily trying to find the flaws or the hidden things that you need to fix, it's really that you've created something new. As an example, have you guys ever heard the story of how the potato chip was invented? 'cause this always trips me out. It's, it was a chef and had he had a customer hated his french fries, everything about him.

And so every time he'd come in, the chef would be like, today's the day I'm gonna make [00:26:00] my french fries better. And this guy's gonna love my french fries. And every time stuck a big zero. Nope. Hate your french fries. So this went on for a while. And so until he finally got so frustrated, he's damnit I am, I'm done with trying to make these french fries better.

I'm gonna make the worst french fry imaginable. So he cuts 'em really thin. He burns them he salts the hell out of them, and all of a sudden everybody loves them, right? Because they're not a french fries. He's just invented the potato chip. And I thought that was so funny. So if you try and make the worst case of something sometimes if you again, just take the time to marinate in it, just keep going with it.

Sometimes you find like some new output from that. 

Dr Dani: You're touching on this idea of play in problem solving. One of the reasons we're not better problem solvers is that we tend to think about problem solving as serious work. And it's gotta be spreadsheets and calculations and to some degree, if you're building a building, by all means use some calculations.[00:27:00] 

But for most of our work, totally like we, we don't have that fun element. And because we don't have that fun element, our creativity just is dying and until and, but when you introduce just that little bit of fun, it gets the brain sparks going and that's where the potato chip idea comes in. 

I use this method a lot in my work, particularly when teams are stuck and they're not getting anywhere. Saying, let's figure out how to make this even worse. If we're gonna be, if we're gonna be bad at something, let's go all out and be super bad at it and see what happens.

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: And 

Designer Peter: yeah, 

Dr Dani: that just gets the spot going. And as excitement, there's play. So , how can we introduce more play into to our work? 

David Carson: Yeah. It's play is one of those really interesting things. 'cause it always sounds like it, it should be so easy and let's do, and usually they, people just won't do it. To your point, when people are trying to solve [00:28:00] problems, we tend to think that the problem solution is probably more complex. And so we really start diving into complexity and we really start to get away, right from from play. But the instant that somebody in that group like just starts just tries to wake up the group to go the other way.

Sometimes they can be successful, but it really depends on if the culture, is set up where, they actually are there to receive it. Essentially. And I think it's one thing as an individual, like how can you get yourself into that state of play?

I think we all have different resources and ways potentially to do that for ourselves. But when you're in a social setting, in a group or at work, there are just so many different, factors involved there. And so for me, for play, it's not just like, how do I get that individual's mindset to go there, but how do you get the culture of the place to understand that play is actually the requirement to do the best possible work That you po that that you can. And that to dismiss that as a part of the process means you're [00:29:00] likely to get a more mediocre, a mundane project.

Right, potentially. So if I can work with you there to let you know that, that this is a, like a very important part of the process. And then try and figure out, okay, who are the people? , when you're in a group, you guys know this, like there's always the loud person, 

and it's always getting all the attention. There's usually the introverts who won't, they've got great ideas, but, but they're not gonna say anything. The group dynamic starts to take over, essentially. Or maybe there's a boss who thinks they're being hip and cool. Kinda what's his name Brent from the office, the English version, right?

Where you're just like, oh God, this guy. And but you're trying to get them to essentially un understand. And one thing that I've been happy to see culturally over the last 10 years, if not more. Now, I think startup culture has which can be terrible, don't get me wrong but there, there's like this, fail culture that, has started to emerge, which is, it's okay, not only is it okay to fail but they can actually reward failure.

The quicker you can get to it the better. And it's been reframed as knowledge, right? As [00:30:00] information. Rather than failure. And if you can get companies who don't quite understand that mentality, getting them there is pretty important.

And then once they get there, play just becomes much easier. Because then there's like a, there's like an accountability in the group that we know that this is like part of the gig, right? And not only is it the fun part of the gig, but this is the one where we can really let it go.

Yeah. And and once that culture is set up, play is no longer a problem. 

Designer Peter: So much that resonates with my experience and my, I guess my beliefs. Absolutely. 

David Carson: I'm sure you guys have worked with many companies where it's my God, like you, you just gotta find a way to get the culture to just accept this so that they can get what they need out of it. Yeah. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. And I think a couple things going back to what you were saying there, David, one of them is, sometimes it, it does only take one person just to be a little bit different and to be the playful one.

 Always reminds me of a little bit like the court jester, the hundred percent, and in medieval times, that was their job, to be that person to basically [00:31:00] deliver a serious message in a playful humorous way. So yeah that archetipal always comes to mind.

David Carson: I'm actually, my, the newsletter that comes out tomorrow is actually about the fool actually. That's Oh, really? Yeah. We're channeling each other right now. That's amazing. Oh, 

Designer Peter: And now the next thought that's associated, that I remembered is the Joker in the in the deck of cards, there's actually.

Kind of the story behind the joker in the deck of cards goes way farther back than medieval times where we had the, the actual court gesture. This kind of deep and interesting meaning behind the joker and mysticism. It would be a better story if I could remember what it was, but there's, you can also, 

David Carson: that also comes out in tarot cards, right?

So there's, oh yeah, there's the tarot card fool. This was pointed out to me by someone I was having a conversation with. It's oh man, you're right. And what's interesting about when you get the fool tarot card, it doesn't mean that you are dumb or you're the fool, or you're an idiot. It means like infinite possibilities, right?

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

David Carson: And it's oh man, that's just, that's so good. All throughout at least Western culture there's like this, this avatar that's about infinite possibilities. And that resonated with me [00:32:00] mostly because if you're only looking in smart territory and not mining any dumb territory, 

the possibilities have now been . Almost cut in half. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. And so 

David Carson: the fool is really there to point you in that direction. Yeah. And I think ours is always funny because I think we actually see the gestures, like somebody whose head gets cut off during a Yeah. Some kind of uprising or, yeah. Or something that's just the Hollywood version of that. But I think it, it goes back to, to, to being an esoteric character. For like real kind of, outcomes. 

Designer Peter: Yeah, definitely. And must have been, the good ones, maybe the good ones were able to. And, survive because, again, they could avoid conflict with humor, I suppose is where I'm trying to get to there. 

David Carson: Yeah, totally. Like we see that with the John Stewarts of the world or even, 

Designer Peter: yeah.

David Carson: I don't know if, are you guys, there was an old play that was starting to do a movie called Rosen Krants and Gild Stern are Dead. I dunno if you've ever seen or heard that one. And essentially taking like the two funny characters in inside of the Shakespeare play right. In Hamlet.

And and rather than showing you the Shakespeare play, it's just these two characters when they're not on stage essentially. And and they're having like [00:33:00] these really like super existential conversations and they're solving all sorts of problems, but they're just two idiots, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Essentially not realizing that they're solving . This problem's kinda like waiting for Gadot, kind of style. Super, super interesting. But those, that's the last time I think I've actually seen like the jester, played in like a positive light. But John Stewart's probably one of the best of those I could think of.

Designer Peter: Yeah. Very recently. So good at that. Yeah. I love it. I've heard of Rose Krantz and so have I got them next? Rose Kran 

David Carson: and Gilden Stern are dead. Gil is the name of, they made it to a movie and it's really great. It's Tom Hols, is that his name? And, oh God, why am I misplacing the guy who played Sid Vicious, the guy who played was also in, in was it Slow Horses? The It's oh, it's, yeah. Oh, Gary Oldman. Thank you. Yeah. It's Gary Oldman. Yeah. Oh, 

Designer Peter: okay. There's two reasons to go and watch. I've often, I've heard about it, I never realized what it was about, but that sounds that's near the top of my movie list now.

And then the other thing I was gonna go back to yeah, was just this idea that's the and kind of connection with both of you on. It's [00:34:00] an interesting situation where, you're working with a group and kind of understandably, that they're struggling to step out of their kind of day-to-day thinking and working and come up with new ideas to solve a problem that they often don't even see because they're so close to it.

But, and as soon as you ask them to ways to make so something worse, then all of a sudden the ideas, start to flow. They start out the simple, the simple kind of turnaround for those is, okay, now all of those ideas just turn 'em into positives and there's a new ideas. It's all always fascinating and never fails to amaze me how powerful that technique is.

And I think it just shows, yeah, the power of dumbify that we are just trained to not see things. And also there's something in . The ability to negative brainstorm that we are not just not seeing things, but we're seeing what we're able to, we're quite negative in our thinking or society trains us to look at things in a negative way.

And I think that's why those negative [00:35:00] ideas come to people so easily. 

David Carson: Yeah. It's like a filter set. It's like whenever you've opened up a new app and they've got new filters that you've never seen, you're like, Ooh, that's wonderful. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. So 

David Carson: it's kinda like, how can you get people to interchange some filters that might not be working for them and try some new ones, right?

Yeah. Yeah. See what works. I know for me, like design thinking was always a pretty interesting framework. I always liked. How that works. I think where Dumbify actually became a more of a, like an extension of some of the aspects of design thinking where w what would frustrate me sometimes about design thinking.

Was it w it always worked really well for me when I was looking to optimize, when I was really looking to make something better. It's so good at that. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

David Carson: But when it came time to generating like net new ideas. So a company's Hey, we have this one thing, but we need to reframe this one thing in order to open up new markets.

What's the thing? What's the market? All that stuff. And and design thinking didn't really, it tries 'cause it has aspects of it, but it, you just don't, you don't spend [00:36:00] enough time in the area. To ruminate in dumb enough, right? To get breakthrough ideas.

When they're needed. So it was an offshoot in that. It's kinda great, once we get to this reverse brainstorming right. Kind of place, what are other things that we could do? How could we spend more time here? And then see what comes out of that. 

Dr Dani: When I was reading about your work, what came to mind was this is an area that in my practice, I also struggle with because it feels like when we get to ideation, that's the part that every organization just wants it done and quick and over with.

And I feel like the whole concept of dumbify is like ideation. That if you hone into the ideation part of design thinking and then you like jack it up with some steroids, that to me was the image I got of it's like ideation on steroids and it's such a needed thing because we don't, this whole idea of slowing down to explore ideas, it's not something that comes naturally to organizations because everything is about quick fast delivery, get it done, what are [00:37:00] we gonna get done this quarter?

What are we gonna get the, and again, having deadlines and timelines are important. 

David Carson: Super real. Yeah. 

Dr Dani: Also slowing down to make sure that we're working on the right things that we've identified something meaningful to do that's gonna solve a problem. We don't take enough time upfront. So like my mantra that I think everybody's had with me saying is you've gotta go slow to go fast.

And what your work is doing is highlighting and giving away of how do we slow down and so that we can go fast later.

David Carson: Yeah. I think, I think there are two aspects to that are right on. One is, by taking the time to go into this area a little bit longer, one thing that will happen is that culturally over time, because you're so used to it, like your muscle memory gets better, 

you're just more fit right in that area. So every time you come back to it, it's just better, it's easier to flex, you can run faster, you can push more weight so that, that part's, you just gotta work at it like everything else, right? To get great at it. The other thing that, that I always [00:38:00] found fascinating though, was that when you keep doing the same thing over and over again, that's not working 

you just end up wasting so much more time. Because you, you really haven't, you just gotta, it's stop, take a beat, right? Let's go. Let's, sometimes you just gotta take it back to the studs and build it again. Other ways. You just gotta look for what are techniques that I could do that can bring this back, I will actually end up saving time.

Because we actually have found a breakthrough rather than just constantly. I might have come up with ideas that we can test really quickly, but they might be really terrible because they're the same idea over and over again.

Designer Peter: You're talking our language, David. We've all Alan, I know it. Yeah. Oh yeah. And the saving time thing. I was gonna ask David, about the, this idea of staying longer and, what have you discovered yourself and what kind of lessons can you teach us about staying individually and maybe as groups in this space for longer?

What does it take? How do we yeah. How do [00:39:00] we do that? 

David Carson: I think one is to recognize when there's discomfort in it. So that's usually the first sign. 'cause you'll automatically want to do it. And then the first thing that will happen is you'll say, oh, that's the dumbest idea.

I don't see how this would possibly be helpful. This is just taking me so far away from my solution. There's gonna be all of that. So the first step is to block that out, right? To the extent that you can, and that's why I say just spend more time in it, right? And don't dismiss it right away.

I. Sometimes it takes people like, great the first time let's just get all the ideas down. Let's have no judgment about them. Design thinking does this really well, let's get them all out, right? But rather than the next step is great. Now let's like filter them right away. It's don't filter them right away, right?

Filter them tomorrow. 

It's let yourself marinate , in those dumb ideas because they'll, they will have had a, they will have had time to have that, they'll more feel change. They'll become more robust by the time you get to it.

So that's, I would highly recommend that. And then the other is the peer group thing that we were talking about before, right? That [00:40:00] one is pretty damn important to get there. So it's not that you just individually right. Get will we'll notice the discomfort, but you need to have a leader, 

that, that kind of makes that okay and to recognize in everybody. So imagine coming out with a really dumb idea and you'll filter yourself right away. Oh, that's a stupid thing I can write and you'll have that, right? But you need to have that leader and say, Nope, you know what?

That, that is not, and then if that leader can, impromptu in ways to spin off on that. So like the famous Yes. And right. It's kinda oh, I hear what you're saying and what, if you also did this right? And it just starts to get, and then the idea starts to develop 

rather than dies right there. 

Dr Dani: One of the things we fail to remember, we've all seen this light bulb moment and it's created this impression that ideas come out of our heads fully formed and perfect and ready to go. And ideas in that. That way they're very delicate and they need some nurturing and some pampering and some development.

They're almost like little babies. You don't just pop 'em out and Yeah. There you go. [00:41:00] That'll work. Now. There's a lot that you do to nurture them Sometimes. 

David Carson: Sometimes you think your baby's really ugly as well and you're like, oh, I just had a really ugly baby. And you don't recognize that, wait, this is a beautiful child.

 This is gonna grow up to be amazing. I think a lot of people just have a hard time evaluating dumb ideas as well. And that's tricky. I think that's really tricky. I think. Yeah. One of the ways to get over that quickly is to put agency behind it quickly. So so once you've decided that, cool, we like all these dumb ideas and if you can task yourself with, let's really try the dumb ones right, too. 

Let's take half the one that the groups are like, oh, we like these ideas. And then the ones that get filtered out as being too dumb. Let's bring those in. But let's get to the prototyping phase really quickly. Let's get some duct tape, some paper, some card, whatever it's gonna take right?

David Carson: To like prototype. Just get it out there. Go from thought to thing very quickly and then let people write, react to it. And then you start to see very quickly what's working and what's not. You get some real feedback right there. There's a real feedback [00:42:00] system on it, rather than just you freaking out of it being a good or bad idea.

Yeah.  

Designer Peter: From thought to thing. That's a new phrase. I'm gonna store that away. Thank you, David. 

David Carson: Oh, that's fine. We, we always use that one all the time. I think that's just one that we'd always use those in strategy sessions for, 'cause you're, most of my business has been, building brands and trying to find new markets or building companies, and it's how do you get from thought to thing very quickly, ?

Yeah. So that you can see if it's wrong, or not. And then how can you go back to the drawing board, essentially. Yeah. But you're absolutely right. People have a hard time just even getting to that stage and they feel like, oh, it's a great idea, therefore it will win.

It's gonna be, it's gonna be amazing, right? 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

David Carson: And then they, they decide that it's not, and they're like, oh, I'm not doing those dumb ideas again. And there's like that force feed, feedback loop. Yeah. But I feel like I feel like there's real insight in the people that I.

Just this is what they do naturally. I think of like a recent company would be, are you familiar with a water company? What's it's death water? What's their their brand? It's like a, they've they've turned water into what [00:43:00] looks like, a gothic beer meets energy drink, right?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. And it started off as a joke, right? It started off as wouldn't it be funny? Yeah. We could reframe water. It's like this, everybody's thinking mountain air and crispy, right? Lakes and blue and Right. And they're just like, no death water. And and it was just such a funny idea.

But, rather than it stopping them, they're like let's design a can. Let's like put that stuff together and let's let's get it out there. And that's literally a billion dollar company now. Wow. That's, that is a massive market and wow. I think there's something to be learned in, in, in those people that just aren't afraid to take the thing that sounds silly in conversation and try and, try. Try and bring it to life. I think there's a lot of insight into how they do that. I think 

Dr Dani: the other insight there is sometimes we think that the cool idea needs to be a new idea. What's older than water? To be able to take that totally. Like 

David Carson: reframing is so good. Yeah. I think design thinking was always good for reframing.

I love that concept what's something that already works really well, and then [00:44:00] how can you completely reframe it right as something else? There's a group in, in, in the, in New York, in, in the city, in Brooklyn. There's a company called Mischief, M-S-C-H-F, and Gabe is they're just a, they're a group of people that think of themselves as an art collective more than anything.

But every month they will do a product drop essentially. And it will be anything from shoes to software to, it's really crazy the stuff that they make as an example, one of the things that they did was taxes. Like they took something really boring, TurboTax. It's like, how could we reframe people doing their taxes rather than it feeling oh God, I hate doing my taxes, and it just feeling so terrible.

I said, what if we actually turned it into a really weird game where you're flirting with these anime characters, right? And the whole point of this game is that by the time you're done, it will have done your taxes for you. That is really silly. It has a very useful output, right? Doing your taxes.

I think it's like tax heaven, 3000 I think is what it's called. And but [00:45:00] tho they, they're just they're so good at just being able to take something and go, this exists in the universe. How can I reframe it and turn it into something else.

They took holy water from somewhere religious and they inserted it into shoes and made Jesus shoes. And then they did a collaborate. You walk, 

Designer Peter: you're literally walking on water. 

David Carson: You're walking on water. Yeah, exactly. And like the fashion community and the drop community was like, oh this was like, there's a story behind this shoe.

And then they quickly followed it with this one where they took blood and they actually put it, and that became like Satan's shoe. And they did that collab with Lil Nas X and everybody was like, what? People were freaking out and became this big PR story. It's very funny. But I love the way that, that they think about, what they're doing and why they're doing it.

And it's always reframing stuff. Yeah. Cool. 

Dr Dani: So here's a question for you. There are these traditional industries that have been around forever and innovation in those companies. And they all say they want to be innovative, but it just doesn't seem to. So do you think that there is [00:46:00] any hope of those types of organizations becoming like I do. 

David Carson: I do.

I think banking is interesting because I worked a lot with American Express and I actually was the executive creative director of that brand for Ogilvy and they're very much a bank, right? A banking kind of company. And we're, what I think is interesting, the way I would think about banking is where do you actually have the opportunities to to innovate?

Because it's often about money, right? And people are obviously you want your, you want people to be very serious about your money. You don't wanna lose it, right? You don't wanna do goofy things that will all of a sudden make that, not money, that would be a terrible thing to do. But like where can innovation actually come from first, right?

So that you can do it. So the way that, that American Express would think about it would always be would tend tended to be shown through its marketing. Not necessarily through its advertising, but through its marketing, so they would actually try and [00:47:00] create movements and ideas around things that were innovative.

So like in the United States around Thanksgiving. They created this thing called a small business Saturday and it was in reaction to the great financial crisis. And so all of these small businesses all around the country were really hurting. And so they thought, it would be interesting if we could try and pull together a movement with all of our small business customers, right?

That take Amex and we will provide essentially like this lift, right? To get everybody to go and shop small business rather than the big box retailers for Black Friday. Why not, right? Go to these small businesses. And that was an interesting innovation because they were able to take that, the idea of.

Their problem was how do we get people to use the card on more everyday, right? Everyday things, right? It's small business is an interesting market opportunity. There's a real need state strategically for why you would wanna do that, but how could you turn that into a platform that's quite unique, that feels innovative, that it's not just a one-off, but it's a new product category, 

[00:48:00] essentially for us. So I think they, they were able to find, that, that marketing is a way to, to do that. But then also when banking, I think you've got other people outside of banking who are obviously innovating as well, which I think is interesting. So Bitcoin is one of those really weird projects where you realized, you are your own bank, 

essentially like that. Talk about upending. Banking altogether. And then looking at, what a bank actually does and why it actually does it the way that it does it. And the rails that are actually made technically right for that to become a thing. So sometimes from the outside you see some of those things pop up.

So to see somebody like Larry Fink right from BlackRock say that, Hey, you know everything right now. That works as a security can certainly be tokenized. And there's a way for us to actually build something that is quite new and quite innovative. And what you're able to do with that is just such a step change from what you could do with that right?

In the past, so at least was able to, its credit's able to look outside of itself, right? To find new solutions. I find banking personally [00:49:00] incredibly fascinating and super interesting 'cause it's such a weird category, but it matters to everybody, right? So like it's the one thing everybody has to use money, right?

For the most part. So like. Where can you find innovation and where can you find things that could be improved? What a great, what a really great sort of area, right? To play in. 

Dr Dani: I too find banking fascinating, which is why I spent more than half my career in that industry. And I think what you're touching on is when we talk about things like innovation and creativity and play, we look at institutions like banking and go, that doesn't belong there.

But what you are touching on is it's not a, or it's an and because you look at, okay, like a bank, you've got regulations, you've got, there are those things that you have to comply with. There are those things that just have to happen a certain way, that needs a lot of guardrails and where innovation shouldn't be happening.

But around that, yeah. There are opportunities [00:50:00] to innovate and saying is that you have to find the areas where we can have that play and creative thinking while being mindful not to Yeah. Lose people's money. 

David Carson: Yeah, exactly. I often wonder too, I wonder if there's somebody inside of a bank that there's a technique I call in design thinking.

There's this technique where you're trying to find, you're trying to put on constraints, right? So you can work within the constraints to find creativity. There's another way to think about that, which is to actually do the opposite and release the constraint essentially. So so what's if you were to solve a problem, 

the first thing you might ask yourself is what's the one thing that's stopping me? From doing what I want to do. And so one of it might be, oh, there's this thing and if that just went away, my problem would be solved. So in some instances you're like, great, okay, let's work about, maybe you can't get rid of the constraint, but maybe you can loosen the constraint right?

In in some way. But with compliance issues and things that are right, instituted in law, like those are very challenging. But that's gonna be a very slow process. But the people who could also [00:51:00] be innovative, I think inside of, banking groups or organizations that operate like that is how do you look at the constraints that you do have?

And where are the places where you feel like you could actually weaken those constraints so that you can actually make that product better. Weakens a weird word 'cause that's automatic, feels. Scary right? In in a way. But it's really looking at innovation in a different way, 

that you feel like you're in the box. There's like this fundamental way that things are just always done, but when you ask yourself the question of, wait, why is it done that way? And like, how baked in? Is it really? And can I actually weaken that in some way?

Or can I actually get can I, is there a different way to think about that? Where that's just not so 

Designer Peter: Yeah. And banking that 

David Carson: takes somebody who knows that system incredibly well, obviously to do that. Yeah. 

Designer Peter: And maybe the, I was gonna say that banking to me is a paradox, but there's two, almost two paradoxes that that first one is that person who knows that system so intimately and technically is, perhaps less inclined to be able to step out of it and look at it from a different perspective and [00:52:00] start to think more dumbly or to dumbify thinking about it. That'd be like a take your five-year-old to workday. And you know what dumb question 

David Carson: are they gonna ask? There you 

Designer Peter: go. Maybe is that a dumbify technique, David?

David Carson: It should be. Maybe we just made up a new one. We'll we'll put that in the, in, 

Designer Peter: yeah. We'll put it in. My, my 7-year-old, I go to a weekly yoga class for men. And it's amazing. Unfortunately our teacher was un unable to take the session last night 'cause he was unwell and I was telling my daughter this and she said why doesn't someone else take it?

He's the teacher, but someone who's, like you, who's there every week and knows how to do it, why do you take it? I was like, it's a good question. Other than, that's a great 

David Carson: question. That's so good. 

Designer Peter: What's the, is I don't really have a good answer for that, other than I'm not a yoga teacher, but then I've done it for, 50 or a hundred times, so I should know it, I'm sure I could replicate.

So yeah, it was a good example coming back to, to, to banking. The paradox I think of banking as, and I worked at the same time as Dani, so it's only a small period of my career as [00:53:00] being in banking. But it was fascinating how much the word risk came up and it became just one of these kind of almost cultural memes.

It came out people's mouths before they'd even thought about it. It was just like an automatic kind of response to not being able to do something. There were pockets of of creativity, but what's really interesting about banking and without getting too deep and philosophical. Money is based on, is not is the least one of the least tangible things there is.

That's just, it is just this idea. It's a promise of somebody paying money or it's a promise from one person to another is nothing more than an idea. And yet we've built these layers and layers of structure and process and everything, and making things well, less and less tangible now. But for a period there we had gold bullion and paper money and coins.

Now we're having just electrons et cetera. But, this, the, this, it's an interesting, and maybe this is a dumb technique to David, to what is money? Money's just a. Money is nothing more than a promise words between one person and another ultimately. [00:54:00] So how might that help us to rethink the problem we're trying to solve here?

David Carson: Yeah, totally. I think somewhere, whoever, Satoshi Nakamoto is or was right was looking at that same question, and I think most people have a real misperception of what money actually is.  

And it's so abstracted away from from us that it you really can't even think about what it would mean to live life without it.

Yeah. And so even if you go and you try and figure out, what you're asking some really dumb questions, but we're just so conditioned to feel like the thing that is always was 

Yeah. Reality is that just isn't yeah. And so if you can find a different mechanism.

I think Bitcoin is an interesting one because it's literally a math problem, in search of ways to build what is money, in a way that cannot be tampered with by the outside world. It doesn't require a governor, it doesn't require a person to come in and tamper with it. It really is its own thing.

And it's a recording [00:55:00] device, essentially. It's just, there's it's like a weird computer, that's output . Creates, a tradable thing. 

And that's super fascinating. I feel like there's so many different, 

think about a company like a Goldman Sachs, I guarantee. Inside of that company, there are a million really creative people in there trying to figure out ways to package securities and things and write brand new ways, that, that, that might work in that system. Just derivatives on derivatives.

On derivatives. And that, that might be too much of a clever approach. We know that, to me, clever is always the enemy. And so sometimes I see, solutions like that of just being, they're just too clever and when they're obfuscated in those ways, they can really blow up.

But there is something very creative, I think in that spirit of trying to think through, if you can understand, get through, its abstraction if you can get it to be more tangible, for yourself, it's like having multiple clay, right? You're just like, oh cool, I'm gonna build this thing instead, or maybe I'll abandon it all together 'cause I want new materials for it. 

That deep [00:56:00] understanding is sometimes needed. But to your point about the expert, sometimes you just need that five-year-old that asks the really dumb question, right? Yeah. Because you're just too close of it. So it's never one thing, it's both things, right?

David Carson: There's like the engine of the yin and the yang. You need both in order to have a flywheel to work. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. 

David Carson: I love it. 

Dr Dani: Absolutely. 

Designer Peter: I love it. So 

Dr Dani: let's see, where are we? So we've talked about what we've talked about, why, we've talked about how.

So I think we've covered our and David, this has been such a fantastic, like I feel like I could spend all day chatting with you. 

David Carson: I know we could talk about this forever. Yeah. Oh yeah. Getting the sense we're very like-minded. So there's a, this is a fun conversation. I really enjoyed this. Yeah, absolutely.

We covered a lot of ground we could probably go for a ton of other things. But I wonder if I think we've gone through a bunch of examples. We've gone through a bunch of different methodologies.

One thing I was pretty curious about from you guys, 'cause you guys are design thinking experts.  

To, to me, I. [00:57:00] I always, I kind of balance this thing in my head where, there's overlap with design thinking, but then there were places where it definitely right, goes in a different way than design thinking.

And so I'm always, in this mind of okay, I. Design thinking has already covered this material quite well. So what, in contrast exactly. Where would you apply this and where would that be useful? Where I found it to be the most useful, like I said before, was in that area of idea generation of being able to spend more time there and not to, not to move on so quickly. From that, that to me is the best sort of, compliment the way that it works in there. But, I'm, there might be other areas or that might be completely wrong, but I'd love to hear your perspective on, how you think about it as, as a model that, applies to anything that you guys are doing and how you might utilize it.

And if it comes, it doesn't have come up now, but I'm just super curious if you feel like there's something that I might be missing as well 

Dr Dani: When you were talking about this, my mind was going to, 'cause I've got a session coming up, like I [00:58:00] wonder where my mind went to is, so when we do ideation, we go through a process of selecting ideas and then there's those ideas that just aren't favorable.

And one of the things that are playing in my mind is that usually then what I have the team do is prototype the popular ideas. And what if we turned that and we had them pick at least one idea that wasn't popular and prototype that. So I wonder if it's, there's also an element that's down the, I'd love to hear how 

Designer Peter: that turns out.

Dr Dani: Yeah. In that space. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: So that's where my mind wanted to. 

Designer Peter: Similarly, when an. Yeah, I can picture myself in many workshops and imploring, encouraging people to not filter themselves and to, be content with dumb ideas because those are often the breakthrough ones.

And eventually when we do get to, a large list [00:59:00] or, big set of potential solutions, or at least ideas to begin with, then often the next stage is to, I call it concept development. So get people to take, let's say just take three random ideas and join them together and see what those are.

Maybe see what is the dumbest idea you can come up with out of all the AEs in front of you? Take as many as you want. Combine them together into something that it just is the most ridiculous thing you've ever seen.

Or maybe more. Again, when I get people to choose which ideas to go forwards, to start building prototypes again, a technique I use is, so what's the most likely to succeed? What's like the easiest, most obvious idea? Choose one of those. Choose another one that you think is gonna be most, and this is borrowed from the Stanford D School.

Choose something that's gonna you, for sure is gonna delight. The person who's gonna use it might not be the easiest to build or implement, but it's gonna delight them. And then the third one is, choose something that's gonna be the most breakthrough. But maybe an alternative to breakthrough is actually choose the dumbest or choose the least likely to succeed.

Choose one that you think is just not gonna [01:00:00] work at all. And then see what happens. And, because I really love your. In David and your premise that actually the longer we stay in this space, the more likely we're gonna get something from it. We'll get an outcome from it, 

David Carson: I thought there were two really interesting ideas in there. One was that lateral thinking kind of device, right? Where you're essentially like connecting it'd be really interesting to, to be able to take the dumb ideas that are out there and try and find those connections and see when pulled together, if there's a solution there.

And then the other might be, if you are, if you spend more time in the ideas that you initially thought were just too dumb to actually work, ask yourself, are, is it delusional? And if it's not delusional, and by that there's just no possible way that you could actually do it.

It's one thing to say that, I believe I could fly and I think I can do that by jumping off my house. It's another to say, I think I could fly because I have, built myself some wings and look like two totally different things, right? Forcing yourself to really apply a dumb idea to see where your mind will take it.

Yeah. Is also an interesting way to [01:01:00] to go. Yeah. It just it forces you to think in ways that you might be uncomfortable with, but you'll also have solutions that are just, yeah. Potentially new 

Designer Peter: One, one more thing I'll add. It's kind, in the idea generation space, but often, like we talked a bit earlier, getting people to come up with ideas full stop is challenging sometimes because, they're not in that mode of thinking in their day to day usually.

But priming can help. So again, jumping off your roof without any wings, not a good idea. Jumping off your roof with a set of wings could be a good idea. But to come up with the idea of the wings in the first place. How about. You read the story or are told the story of someone who's done it before you.

So I think what you've, and I thank you for this, David, you started to create and bring together all these stories that create a rich, set of possibilities for people. They can see them already. So if you're less inclined to imagine the future, you can look to the past and go someone's done this already.

And for people like Dani and I who are helping people step into that ideation frame of mind, then a few stories upfront to give an example of here's a dumb idea that actually [01:02:00] seemed that it was going nowhere and was really unpopular, but it's turned into a billion dollar business, for example.

Yeah, our, to our banking colleagues who are, more linear in thinking. Then there's the evidence that this will be a good idea to spend some time. 

David Carson: Yeah. I think there's something interesting in, in, in the comfort that you get from knowing that others have done it. Yeah. Or at least having some sort of priming story helps. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

David Carson: I know for me, what I've used in the past sometimes that helps is, you're essentially creating like the, like a failure, your journal. I'll do that for myself. And instead of and I'm always amazed when you go back and look and I was like, oh, that was a really dumb idea.

And you'll laugh, and then other times you're like, huh. The time has changed. The context has changed. That's maybe not so dumb anymore. There's the, it, the, it starts to have value, right? Temporally in, in a different way. But then, there's also a way to reward that.

So in a session, you're obviously gonna reward like the dumbest ideas, right? Essentially. 'cause it's kinda there's like a prize, right? For these things were just so silly, but we loved that you went there just being able to reward people for failing. Just so [01:03:00] spectacularly, it was also a nice way to get people to, to give it their all.

And don't feel, don't feel silly. Don't feel anxious about that. 

Dr Dani: Love that. I love that. The other place that I feel like this is, this would be really useful is so in design thinking, we do what's called discovery work or empathy work, where we're exploring and talking to people to understand what the problem is, identify needs, wants, and pain points.

I also, I al, I wonder if there's an opportunity to use the concept of dumbify. What is the dumbest question I can ask in this, and that's trying to tap into that five-year-old's curiosity because that one of the things that I notice happening is when we're thinking about doing the empathy work.

Everybody's trying to come across as smart and ask the smart questions. So if we flip that and go, let's ask the stupid questions. So that's another area that I think the concept of Dumbify could fit into. 

David Carson: I love it. That's exactly the right place to put that in is that empathy research section.

[01:04:00] There is a story that I think maybe operates well for that to prime, which is there, there was a study that was done in Japan, it was in a university, which I can never pronounce very well. They were looking at specifically alertness after sleep. Essentially. And so the leader of this experiment was great enough to recognize that, the experiments that they were gonna do was, it was obviously gonna be a very scientific experiment, 

but the types of things that they could actually put into this experiment, it opens up to the group what should we be, what should we be testing, . And one of of the students said we should test ice cream. And everybody's kinda laughs, right? And it's silly oh, so when you wake up in the morning, you're gonna have ice cream for breakfast, right?

 And that actually ended up being one of the very positive things that came out of the study that they were doing. So they found that. Not only did it actually get you alert for obvious reasons, sugar come on, but apparently it put you in this brain state that also made you very calm, but very alert.

At the same time they're like, ah, there's something who would've known. And that [01:05:00] actually became the most interesting thing about that study, but it's because they asked for, what would be like some really silly things to, to test here. Yeah. Clever. 

Dr Dani: I love that story.

Yeah. 

Designer Peter: I, me too. I love the idea of, we maybe this is a good place just to to start to wrap up. 'cause Richard Feynman the famous, or I think famous American scientist one of his one of his methods was attributed to him is the five-year-old method where you to understand something yourself, try and teach it to a five-year-old.

And if you can't, you don't understand it well enough because you haven't simplified everything. Yep. Whereas what we are saying is actually, ask the question that the five-year old would ask. Be the five-year old. Yeah, the five yearold. Don't be the professor, be the five-year-old. That's right. 

David Carson: There's another version of that I like, which is ex explain it as if you're explaining to an alien, right?

Somebody. Okay. Who really has no context at all. Because that really becomes a little more challenging. Or to look at it as if you're the alien. So like you're trying to take context completely. Away from, 'cause then you [01:06:00] start asking really interesting why. You're just way more curious 'cause you have zero context.

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

David Carson: I love it. I love it. 

Dr Dani: The other one someone told me, and I'll just throw this in the bucket, explain it like you would try to explain to your grandma how to use an iPhone.

David Carson: That's awesome. I love that. I love that so much. It's have, having experienced that deeply, I I totally get that. We had a funny thing that I don't know if we're gonna do it or not, but it was it was essentially having kids, teaching older people, lots of things, right? 

Designer Peter: Oh yeah.

David Carson: And the way that it initially took off was around gaming and it was like, if you're gonna create a university, but it was gonna be a university not for young people, but for old people, what might they want to learn? That might be interesting. And so one, one thought was around gaming.

So the instant that like, somebody who's retired tries to get into Call of Duty is gonna be a terrible experience. They're gonna get clipped right away. When you have somebody that knows how to play that [01:07:00] game it becomes a much more enjoyable experience.

So it's if you actually had like a buddy program or like a, this is Professor Chad, who's a 15-year-old. And his sister Zena that, that, that play Roblox and they're gonna teach this 72-year-old couple. How to play. I thought, man that's a class I would love.

I would love to see that. So many different ways to flip that. Yeah. 

 I love the idea of just having a university where the professors are teenagers.

David Carson: Yeah. Yeah. And they have the opportunity to teach things that they know, like just teaching language I think would be very funny as well. To have a Duolingo, but for oh, 15-year-old based kids, would be,

yeah. 

Dr Dani: And maybe you could have 'cause every generation has lingo. So like you could have one for millennials and one for Gen Z and I guess eventually all the way 

David Carson: back to Shakespeare, right? You could go back to old English and then take it all the way up, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's the whole exhibit's a university.

Dr Dani: We've come up with some really dumb [01:08:00] ideas. Exactly. 

David Carson: Just come up with some fun ideas, man. Okay. So I'm telling you all gotta get dumber. That's it. 

Dr Dani: I love it. 

Designer Peter: We need to get prototyping. That's what we need to do. 

David Carson: That's right. That's the next step. Let's do it. 

Dr Dani: So David, thank you so much for spending time with us today, and if you listen to podcasts, you know that Peter and I always wrap up with what we're taking away from today.

So as our guest, you get to go first. So what's one thing you're taking away? Oh, I get to go 

David Carson: With what I've learned today? 

Dr Dani: Yes. 

David Carson: I'm taking away that there's some sort of confirmation in that fool idea because I feel like the mention of that has now happened to me twice in a couple of weeks, and that feels like there's something very confirming in that.

Yeah. The second thing that I've learned though, as well is that I need to put more agency behind the idea of either visiting or moving to New Zealand. Yeah. Because every time I have a conversation with somebody [01:09:00] from New Zealand, it's always just amazing. So that's a big takeaway from me.

Designer Peter: We look forward to seeing you here soon, David. I'm coming. Look forward to that. Joking. Maybe you need to come over and do a book launch over here and we'll do a live episode. 

David Carson: Yeah, that's right. We can build a Dumbify university there. We can do the, 

Designer Peter: oh yeah. Yeah, with Dify I was gonna say Dify conference or convention, but what's the, what would the opposite, there is unconvention, but, Oh, that's funny.

David Carson: Yeah. The Dumbify UN convention. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. That's the

Dr Dani: Peter, what are you taking away? What's my 

Designer Peter: takeaway? I know. Yeah, you can, yeah, you're can ask me what my takeaway so much is really difficult to really difficult to pull out. One thing, I might choose a couple and, sometimes little phrases really catch my mind, I think from thought to thing.

And I guess that sits alongside or within this idea of staying in the space longer. So I'm gonna take that as a call to action from you, David, as the, in my practice [01:10:00] designing activities and spaces, environments, questions, thoughts that help people stay here for longer and keep those dumb ideas.

Not up, I guess up until now. I've generally treated the dumb ideas as just their starting points for great ideas. But actually as you've helped me see, there's value in keeping those dumb ideas themselves alive for a lot longer because they, in themselves have value and may turn into the, part of the solution or the solution itself.

So that's why I'm taking away. Love that. Nice. 

Dr Dani: Love it. 

Designer Peter: Love that. 

Dr Dani: So for me, this conversation has been very challenging for the intellectual part of my brain. 'cause I am an academic, I'm a researcher. I'm super nerdy. Yet that curious part of my brain is up there clapping. So what I'm taking away from this conversation are two questions.

One. So I journal daily. So one of the questions I want to add to my [01:11:00] journaling practice is what's the dumbest thing I've done today as a challenge to myself to, to incorporate that's dumbness into my day to day. And then the other thing is, as I'm going through my work, asking myself, how can I be dumber in this situation?

, yeah. What's 

David Carson: the dumbest way that I could think about this solution? What's the dumbest way I could think about? I'd be so into learning from you, how that went for you.

And like the challenges or successes that that you get from that I'd love to follow up. Yeah. What, that sounds like an 

Designer Peter: invitation for another episode later down the line. So your book is coming out in the Northern Hemisphere Summer David, is that 

David Carson: right?

Yeah. In August it looks like. So that should be good. Cool. But as soon as I've got galleys ready, I'll I'll send 'em to you. Awesome. Yeah look for that. And I guess, obviously, head, head to the newsletter and we can have fun there as well.

Feel free to reach out. Yes. Cool. 

Dr Dani: So where can people find out more about your book? Is it through your newsletter? [01:12:00] 

David Carson: Yeah. If you go to david-carson.com that has everything on there from the newsletter to book. There's also like the 12 sort of like frameworks that I use for myself.

I just outline them there, like a, they're more like mental models more than anything. So just explain them a little bit more in detail. They're outside of the newsletter, but they're helpful tools. They're there as well. 

Dr Dani: Nice. So we'll put your the link to your website in our show notes so that our listeners can come find you.

Thanks everyone. I think that does it for us today. Thanks David, so much for being here. 

Designer Peter: Thank you. Thank you, 

Dr Dani: Peter. Always a great chat. Thanks David.  

Designer Peter: Thanks Dani. 

Dr Dani: Thank you. See you. 

Designer Peter: Everyone. 

Dr Dani: See time.