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TAPE # and
time code
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Audio
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B24
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Dr. G. C. Rapaille
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01:01:38:13
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[Can you give us an
idea, who you are, and what your background is?]
Yes, my name is Dr. Gilbere Clotaire Rapaille, at CPSI,
because it was a little to complicated to say all that, they said can we
call you Gil. So here I am Gil, and its fine, so Gil.
My background is mainly in creativity, and
psychiatry, I work with autistic children for many years in Europe, I was
trying to cure these children who don’t really learn how to speak the
way we do. And in doing that I developed a whole theory about the way we
imprint things in our minds that I call archetype, cultural archetype. How
we can combine cultural archetype and creativity. So that is what I do.
[Interesting]
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[How would you
define creativity]
The best way to define for me is to be crazy. Now I
usually say if you want to be crazy there is one basic rule, you have to
be discreet. Otherwise you get arrested and they put you in jail or mental
health hospital. So of course there are some limits on craziness, but to
people that have been really really creative at a certain time, where
people that have brought a global revolution of how you look at things, I
mean Copernicus, Galileo, suddenly the whole world, you look at the world
differently. And I think that this is for me, I think I am creative when I
create a situation like that when people start looking at something in a
completely different direction. It changes completely your relationship
with the world, with this object. And that is what I like about
creativity. Is I would say, I wrote a book about it, and I called that
book, Wisdom of Madness. Wisdom of madness that is what creativity
is for me, which means that you crazy, not crazy in a negative term, and
my training is in psychiatry, and I can tell you I do not want to be crazy
in the negative term, but crazy in a positive way, which means that you
challenge the norms. You challenge the way people, function, react, think,
feel and you open up, you make break through, you open up suddenly a new
part of the universe that was there but was not available to anybody. And
that is what I really like about it, the pioneer attitude of creativity if
you want.
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01:03:06:15
01:04:13:22
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[How did
you get involved in this creativity business?]
Well, I came 30 years ago as a little French visitor,
coming from another planet, arrive here with my 3 piece suit, and I was
trying to learn about creativity and uh, the first thing I found was a
mess. And not only is it part of the process to start with a mess but this
is a mess. And I would say some purpose from somewhere, because from the
mess comes some crazy ideas. There is a quote from Nietzsche: “From
chaos, can come some beautiful diamonds” So I discovered that these
people where good at creating chaos in many ways, and, and, I love it! I
might, people were absolutely fantastic, I got a lot of new ideas, a lot
of great people, and I was a student for the first year, they thought I
had a some good ideas, so they say, “Will you come and teach next
year” and I say “Wow, Sure, this is incredible challenge”. So I came
back, and I have been here 30 years, every year
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01:04:13:29
01:06:35:14
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[Tell me a
little bit about what you are doing in the business world?]
Well because of my training in psychiatry, and the
work I have done on children, I was trying to understand how these
children imprint a word for the first time. So, the first time you learn
about coffee, the first time you learn about cheese, about car, about
quality, about – each time there is a word. And when I worked with them,
I made a series of little discoveries of the way the brain functions. For
example, one of the things that I discovered at the time was that there is
no imprinting without emotion. Emotion is the energy that creates the
production of neural transmitters in the brain, and create what I call mental
highways. We have mental highways to deal with everything. Now this is
interesting because if we want to be creative and we can not go away from
the mental highway then we are not creative. But on the other hand, if you
want to create a new product, a new service, something that is completely
inexistent in this mental highways, then there is no market for it, then
you can be very creative, but people cannot buy it, cannot respond to it,
cannot relate to it. So, my work at the time was to try and find out how
these mental highways are imprinted in peoples mind.
And I published several articles about that, and one
of my students invited his father to come to come to my lecture, I was
lecturing at the University in Geneva at the time, and the father was
working for Nestle, and he said “Doctor, this is interesting, I am not
sure I understand everything you told me about neurons and stuff, but we
are trying to sell coffee in Japan. And we are not really successful,
could you help us understand the way Japanese imprint the word coffee in
their minds, what is the mental highway, what is the mental tool that they
use to relate to this product, because maybe we don’t, we are not
connecting right”. And they made me an offer that I could not refuse, so
I went there, study that. Find out what is the code, I call that the
Cultural Code, of what is coffee in Japan. And since then they have been
very successful, and it was kind of a snowball effect, then people come to
me; L’Oreal, car companies, and then I opened an office in Switzerland,
then in France, in New York, and I have now 50 other fortune 100
[Busy person]
Yes, very busy, I love my work, it’s so
fascinating.
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01:06:37:00
01:07:56:15
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[Give
me a sense of why you think business people; business managers have a sort
of negative view of creativity?]
You see, the word creativity, if you go back to my
definition, which is madness or craziness, I mean there is no room for
madness or craziness in the business world. Everything is to organized and
very strict and these people are responsible, very short-term
responsibility, they have deadlines they have to meet, they are
bottom-line, I mean, So, when they see people, “lets take the time to be
crazy”, it does not really fit.
I think the whole image of creativity is too much
associated with child, children, and this is the Creative Education
Foundation, you see, this is already a handicap, we have here. Business
world are more interested in innovation, in results, in making, putting
things in practice.
And sometime the people who make a lot of money are
the “Me too” people. They don’t have an idea, they just took someone
else’s idea, but they organize it better. And so the creativity should
be used not just to create the breakthrough, or the madness, but sometime
to resolve little problems, that’s why problem solving is more
interesting. In the business world, because we have problems in the
business world all the time, and to find a way to find solution, that is
very interesting.
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[How do you
use CPS in your business?]
What we do with it on a systematic basis, for example
I have done it several times with, P&G, and with one of my good
friends, Jim Donovan who I met here by the way, at CPSI, have teaming up
with me several times, so what we try to do is take a product, we take a
brand, and we try to break up the code, what is the code of this product
in peoples mind, at an unconscious level, what do they feel about Bounty,
what do they feel about… Always, what do they feel, what is that
structure,
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01:08:32:04
01:09:02:04
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[So you get.. deeper than you might in a focus
group?]
Absolutely. We break a code that nobody else had
before, you know. And then, once we get that, we understand that, we say,
OK, with that, what can we do? Now that we have this mental highway, this
code that people use, let’s be creative and use all, let’s discover
all the things we can do with that. Can we go into new products, new
packaging, new communications, new commercials, ah, tons of commercials
come from this work.
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01:09:01:09
01:13:41:03
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[So it
sounds like you, with your methodology, is a very terrific way of fact
finding]
Absolutely. Absolutely. This is a fact finding at a
deeper level – you see, what I discovered in terms of fact finding is,
what is the mental highway that people use without being aware of it. This
is why it is very difficult to have an interview, to ask people, tell me
what you are not aware of. I mean the traditional way to do fact-finding,
which is through questionnaire, interview, it doesn’t work. People are
not aware of that, you see, but when you find what it is,
Let me give you an
example; Cheese, that is very practical business
example. French company trying to sell cheese in America, alright? And the
way they were creative in France, was according to the French mental
highways. Without being aware of it. Which means that you had a beautiful
commercial, where you had a sexy French woman, arriving, opening a
camembert, and then caressing the camembert, poking the camembert,
smelling the camembert, umm, having almost a love affair with the
camembert. Americans say, “What is she doing, I mean these people are, I
mean this is so crazy”, And then she will poke, and you can see other
people have it done it before, so you can see other people fingerprint, An
American would say, “This is disgusting, these people are..” It
didn’t work at all, the sales went down, didn’t work. They tried to be
very creative, they say, lets get another woman, lets get another person
lets take a different approach. But it still never worked, Why? Because
they were not respecting the American code, the American mental highway of
cheese.
Now, doing my work, I take people back to when was
the first time in your life, as a child, that you create the mental
connection, that you create the mental highway, that you call cheese. And
taking these people back, I discovered the code of cheese in France, and
the code of cheese in America. And they are not the same.
In France the code is; The cheese is alive. It’s
like an animal. Once you know the code everything that people do starts
making sense. People don’t do any thing by chance random, or accident;
they just do things according to the code. Now once you know the code,
cheese is alive – Why do they poke? Because you can buy young cheese,
mature cheese, or old cheese. The culture tells you – you should buy
mature cheese if you want to eat it today, or young cheese if you want to
eat it next week. So lets suppose my mother, I was born in France, she
wants to buy some cheese, and she wants to buy some cheese for next week.
What is she going to do? She is going to poke because if the cheese is
like this (he pokes the arm of the chair) is it to young, if it is like my
hand it is good for today, if it is like this, (he motions, his finger
going through the cheese) forget it, it is to old. Right?
The smell its another indication of the age of the
cheese, and so the smell, and the skin, the skin, its like an animal. Then
we buy some cheese and we go home, we never put the cheese in the
refrigerator, Why? Because we don’t put our cat in the refrigerator.
It’s very simple. The cheese is alive, it has to breath. And so,
everything people do, start making sense.
Now, in America, and I am a new American, I am very
proud of being American, this is my country, so I don’t want anyone to
think I am criticizing America, But, if you are American, and you eat some
cheese, your cheese, and I know the code, the cheese is dead. The cheese
is completely dead, it is legally dead, and scientifically dead. There is
no choice right? Pasteurized. Now if you look at the way Americans buy
cheese, around the world, I mean, around fifty states, were ever you go,
its all the same, I know Americans like to tell me, we are different –
from west coast to east coast, well they do exactly same. Why? Because
they apply, without being aware of it, this unconscious code of what is
cheese, and cheese is dead. So wherever you go, nobody will smell, nobody
will touch, you do not want to smell corpse. They are all wrapped up in
plastic like they were in body bags, then they buy the cheese and they go
home. Where do they put the cheese? In the morgue. When do they eat the
cheese, it does not matter, it’s dead anyway. You can eat it anytime you
want. So, then we had to be creative, start using the creativity process,
using the code, we cannot go against the code. You can be as creative as
you want, but if you go against the code it will never work. But if you
understand the code, we have been very creative in designing a new
packaging, a new plastic stuff, explaining where to put the cheese in the
frig, when to take it out, when to open it to eat it. I mean the whole
process is so consistent.
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01:13:40:01
01:15:16:28
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[So the relation we can draw, between what you do,
and the CPS process is, you are taking the understanding of the problem to
another level.]
Right, one thing
I want to mention to you, might be very interesting, I am working always
with different cultures. The way Americans are creative is very different
to the way the Japanese are creative. Is very different to the way Germans
are creative. Very different to the way the French are creative, Alright.
And I designed a training program, understanding the archetype of
creativity, how you are creative in different cultures. We had a program
that worked very well, for several clients like that. Where people will
get together, and we will have a group. You remember in the creative
process you are supposed to have people with different background,
[Yes]
It’s richer
[Yes]
Rather then to have five medical doctors, you have
one medical doctor, one designer, one – people with different
backgrounds. Well, people arriving in this kind of group; bring their
whole culture, their own mental highways. So, we will start saying, OK,
this is the problem to solve. Let’s try to find out, - you are Japanese,
OK, you just don’t say anything for a while. All, of us, How do you
think a Japanese will solve this problem? And you are the Japanese guy,
you are the expert, you will tell us at the end if we are right or wrong.
So, we all try to do it in a Japanese way, How will the Japanese do that?
And then we will try to apply the creative process, but Japanese way. Then
we check, what do you think? “Wow, this is interesting because yes we do
that”, OK, then we switch, Now German. Lets all try to be German, and do
the German way. And you the German guy, you don’t say anything.
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01:15:17:15
01:16:54:02
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[So you’re forcing the various cultures to try
to look at it with a fresh eye]
Absolutely. To acknowledge, first of all, that the
other cultures are different – to accept that each culture is rich in
many ways, in its own way it can bring some approach that nobody else
thought about before. You know, one of the limits that I see sometime in
America and sometimes at CPSI, they have an American way to do it, and
they do it the American way, and they stop, that’s it. For example, the
first time I came here, just to tell you as a little story. They tell me
brainstorming, differ judgment, you can be crazy. So I was crazy. I was
not crazy the way Americans think I should have been crazy.
[How were you
crazy?]
Well, because I was doing to many things that was,
for example, I would challenge, I mean, I was not politically correct, in
many ways, OK.
[I see]
So they call me and say, “What are you doing
here”, I say, “I am crazy”. “You can’t do that”, “I thought
it was differ judgment? I could do anything I want”, “Yes, but, you
cannot do that, you cannot do that, you cannot speak about this, you
cannot…Ahhhhhhhh, Then I learned the culture, if you do not learn the
culture, you get killed. But things that are not OK in America are OK in
other cultures, and sometimes its vice versa, so we have to learn these
different dimensions, its very important for the American audience to
understand that the American way, is not the universal way. There are
different ways, and this is rich, this is good. And we can learn from
these different approaches, different way of being creative.
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01:16:54:17
01:17:58:11
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[If
you were going to talk to an average American, CEO, President, perhaps of
a small company, perhaps of a large company, and they were just beginning
to consider this applied creativity kind of an approach, what would you
advise them to do?]
I would say, The key issue for me is, a lot of
CEO’s don’t want their people to be creative, and they told me that
very openly, “I don’t want these people to start challenging the
rules, challenging the process, challenging, and you know, being creative
and doing things I cannot forecast, anticipate, and so on”. So, the
first reaction is negative, but then, the second reaction is, “Ah, the
competitors came out with a new product”, or “This commercial is
fantastic”, “How can we get that?” you see, so I think the old
notion, and suddenly they realize that there is no way we can survive in a
changing world, a world that is becoming more and more global, without
being more creative. The problems we are going to have are new problems.
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[Take #2]
Right, Business leaders need, because of the
situation, to understand how to use creativity, business are concerned by
the fact that there are negative aspects, but they need at the same time
the positive aspects, and they need to combine the two, you see. And I
think business leaders are right when they say “I don’t want a
mess”, there are situations where you can’t have a mess. But, on the
other hand they need the new product, the need the creativity, they need a
new direction there. And if they can combine that, for example, there is
more and more understanding for business leaders that they need people
that they will not usually recruit, in their environment. Who is the best
guy to have a new idea, about a new product, maybe it’s not the guy that
has been working on the old product for 20 years. But some guy that has
absolutely no idea. You know the classic thing; “We did not tell them it
was impossible so they did it”. I mean they have a bunch of people in
business who know all what is impossible. So they never do anything, this
is terrible. Breakthroughs are coming from people that dare, people that
are crazy enough to challenge the rules. And CEO’s what is crucial for
them is to understand the right combination between the two, they cannot
have too many of these creative people, but they need some. And they have
to be able to find ways to keep to keep them alive in this environment.
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01:19:35:29
01:20:58:28
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[You
are an expert on culture, how would a CEO have a culture that supports
creativity?]
How a CEO will have a culture that supports
creativity, I think a CEO should be able to say at a certain time in that
environment, “We want to enhance creativity” and for me symbolic
dimension, are very important. I think that for example, to have a place
where you can be crazy is very important. You cannot be crazy everywhere
all of the time, but there is a room, a brainstorming room, a crazy room,
a creative room or whatever. To have time that is allowed for that, lets
say a weekend where we can be crazy and be creative, to create a situation
where people can get some fresh air, open their mind, be crazy, throw a
lot of ideas. Now, the culture that a CEO, has to create, is that this is
OK to do that, but not just brainstorming for the sake of it, something
has to come out of that, follow-up is very very important. And they have
to make it very clear, “OK, guys we are going to be crazy all
together”, but this is what we are going to do, with these ideas. The
best culture for a CEO, for me, in my experience, is when something come
out of that, comes out of that, that they can touch, that they can see,
they can see the numbers, we did that, it works, we got that much, let’s
do it again
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01:20:58:28
01:22:00:01
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[A prototype or..]
A prototype, but sometimes a product. Sometimes a
campaign that doesn’t work, they change it, and the campaign starts
working. New packaging, a new something, they have to see, see that it
works. Touching it, touch, touching it, you know, something tangible.
Absolutely, this is very important, and if the culture has a way to go
into, and far into the madness, and at the same time to apply, to
implement that right away, then, then that’s what creativity really is
all about for me, I mean, what have you done recently, what is the success
story you have there.
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01:22:37:10
01:23:47:06
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(Success
Stories)
Jeep, Chrysler, new products, they wanted to create
new products, creativity about how can we transform, change. The work we
have done first was to discover what was the archetype of Jeep. What is it
that you cannot change. Then within this box, you be very creative and –
for example - at the beginning they start being creative in the wrong
direction. They had square headlights. The archetype say you cannot have
square headlights when you have a Jeep. A real Jeep have round headlights.
So, they had to be creative in going back to reinforcing the archetype.
There are a lot of other things we can do with Jeep – we can modify the
suspension, making it bigger, nicer, fine. But we cannot change some of
the basic structure of the archetype. So, creativity applied there, was
applied with a guidance, and that’s what business people like, They do
not like creativity to go in all direction, then they had more problems
then they had before. What they want is that this is a creativity that
will go in sync with what people want, and that was a success story.
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[Gil,
how do you formulate a problem statement]
This is a crucial question - How to formulate a
problem is so important. Most of the time people that I work with in major
corporation, not only to they not have a solution, they have the wrong
problem. So to learn how to discover, what is the real problem is
completely part of the process that I use. I don’t – We need a
starting point. So we take their problem the way they explain it, but then
we have to challenge it. To go back into what is the real problem, then we
do that in an archetypal way. It’s very interesting, it’s very
interesting process. To understand that in every cultural there is a
repetition of pattern in problems. American for example, the problem is
always they cannot plan. The Japanese they say “Oh yes the American
plan, maybe the next weekend but all they can do” Long term planning is
very difficult, so problems are always, I mean, we like to make mistakes
in America. Why? Because we learn from our mistakes. So then the mistakes
are telling us, we do not have the right problem. The French are
absolutely the opposite, they want to define everything in detail before
they start moving, and usually they are so pleased with the problem
definition, they don’t do anything after that. They don’t need to do
anything after that; they have done everything there. So, understanding
that, already the way we define a problem is an archetype in a cultural
way, and that is what we have to understand.
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01:25:38:16
01:27:04:02
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[I don’t
know how to prompt it, but the end of the story]
On coffee
[Yes]
The
coffee story in Japan was for me very interesting, because I was looking
for the first imprint of coffee in children’s minds, people minds, and
the politics of the time, and its kind of obvious it was a mistake was to
was to try to get Japanese to switch, from tea to coffee. And my discovery
at the time was; First, you are not going to make them switch, you can not
fight against the archetype of tea, especially in Japan, it is so strong.
Second, because they almost didn’t have any imprint of coffee. We had a
long term plan to start creating an imprint of coffee, and we started with
children, of course children don’t drink coffee, but we create some ice
cream, and things with the taste of coffee. We start to get them used to
the taste, and wanting, and asking for taste of coffee. Then we went to
some desert, then we got into Café’ole, and it took several years, I
mean it took like the time to raise a kid almost to create the market. And
that is an incredible challenge, because you have to be Swiss or Japanese
or both to accept such a long-term goal. I don’t think an American, that
does fit the American archetype we like quick fix, and find solution, but
that was a big success over there.
[brief – pause – tape rolling - ]
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01:27:12:05
01:28:10:15
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[Gil,
how do we focus the creative process in the business world toward
results?]
We can focus the creative process in the business
world in one very simple way. Which is to have a deadline, a mission
statement, and the mission is a mission, it’s not, - no numbers, no
bureaucrats, no big deal. Lets put the man on the moon before the end of
the decade. That is a mission statement.
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