At the 5th Annual Mainebiz Momentum Convention on October 9, over 1,200 attendees convened at the Civic Center to explore ways to transform their businesses. The event featured 22 speakers, 115 exhibitors, and more than 15 Maine-based food and beverage vendors providing samples to attendees. During the keynote presentation by Stephen Voltz and Fritz Grobe of EepyBird, the Maine-based experimentation company best known as the Coke-and-Mentos guys whose viral videos have been seen over 100 million times, a practical lesson in creativity was imparted upon a captivated audience.
The duo suggests that everyone is intrinsically creative, and challenged businesses to follow the same distinctive process that took EepyBird from one bottle of Coke in a backyard to over 100 bottles powering David Letterman down a Manhattan block. “We don’t believe in genius; we believe in hard work,” said Voltz to a crowd of 600 business people. “There’s a method to our madness.”
The EepyBird technique to harnessing creativity is centered around the process of One, 10, 100 – to produce something truly innovative, begin with a single experiment and test outcomes no less than 100 times. Three basic principles guide this practice: be relentless, go extreme, and think inside the box. Starting with experiment one, continue to explore as many variables as possible. “In order to be innovative, you have to try new things,” said Grobe. “Expect failure.” Following experiment ten, introduce scale and make ideas as big as they can be. “It’s a lot of work, but it might be worth it,” said Voltz. “It could be something incredible.”
Finally, in order to get to experiment 100 and become “the world’s leading expert,” apply rules to work within; restrictions form a framework that harnesses creativity. “There are no geniuses,” concluded Grobe. “There are only people who get down to business step by step.”
Speaking of getting down to business step by step, our friend Kirk from Maine Savings took home the prize at our Annual Momentum Convention Putting Competition!
And of course the Broadreach team was representing in full force. Thank you to all who stopped by our booth to say hello, to Mainebiz for putting on a great event, and we hope to see you all again at MoCo 2015!
