Innovate Your Business … and Your Life
11 Tips from Architect Frank Gehry

You can't be all business all the time. It's just not good for business.

Striking a balance may be a natural part of life for creative types, such as designers, writers, architects and advertisers. They must take time to explore, research, relax and play. If they don't, they simply don't create new ideas anymore. But what about the rest of us? Business owners, CEOs, COOs, presidents and finance whizzes? What does play have to do with it?

Frank Gehry, one of the world's most renowned architects, says he runs his business with intuition and the end purpose in mind. Your style may be similar. But do you also use play as a problem-solving device?

"Get executives into a room," Gehry told interviewer Sydney Pollack and a small group of executives at the 2007 Milken Institute Global Conference, "and play [with an idea or problem] and see where it goes." His long-time psychoanalyst Milton Wexler put it into his head that problem solving was what he was actually doing when he was cutting paper and taping it together or playing with blocks with coworkers.

"[My approach] may seem impractical or not budget conscious," Gehry explained. "But it's not true. Every building has produced a return." In fact, he said that his Guggenheim Museum at Bilbao, perhaps one of the most talked about pieces of architecture of our time, brings in $40 million a year by "just being there."

If you're always focused on the numbers, you may be missing opportunities and ideas all around you -- in your personal life, during networking events or during the workday. Try the following techniques from Frank Gehry to innovate your business … and possibly your life.

1. Work from the inside out. Consider your parameters and explore ways to build on that.
   
   
2. Consider the surroundings of the project or idea or service. How does it fit in? How does it stand out?
   
   
3. Be culturally respectful. Don't talk down to anyone.
   
   
4. Do the things you love to do, and do them often, and you may find inspiration in an unlikely place, such as a full white sail against a blue sky or the movement of a koi fish.
   
   
5. Build lots of prototypes, even if you have a service.
   
   
6. Go to an art museum. It will "make you realize that the creative process has been going on for centuries," Gehry says. And you never know, it could spark a novel thought -- if not right away, then later, when you least expect it.
   
   
7. People oppose "different." If they hold candlelight vigils against you, if they send you death threats, hang on to your vision. A champion helps.
   
   
8. Don't be different just to be different.
   
   
9. When you get stuck, ignore it.
   
   
10. When you're done, step away. It hardly ever turns out exactly the way you planned, and getting anxious over all the little bits and pieces doesn't help.
    
    
11. Realize that no critic is more critical than you.
    

But best of all, know that playtime can eventually improve those numbers you've been intently focused on. And that's as good of an excuse as any.