Zombies + Food Pyramid = Creativity Booster
Yes, it’s true. Zombies and the our own USDA Food Pyramid hold the key to unlocking your creativity.
I don’t know who had the original idea for a Zombie Food Pyramid, but in my mind it happened something like this. Some guy was helping his kids with their homework assignment. They spent the early part of the evening cutting out pictures of vegetables from old magazines and gluing them onto a construction paper pyramid. After the kids went to bed, he settled into his recliner for a nice relaxing episode of The Walking Dead. Not long into the episode, a hungry zombie ripped into the first idiot who wasn’t paying attention to his surroundings. The dad diverted his gaze, ever so briefly, from the gory meal and his eyes landed on the food pyramid drying on the coffee table. And an idea was born.
I read A LOT of books and articles around the subject of creativity and innovation. This week I pulled out my copy of Seeds of Innovation by Elaine Dundon that I received a few years back when I attended a training while working at Penn State. It is a wonderfully approach to nurturing innovation in your organization.
The Creative Mash-Up
One of the methods recommended in the book to kickstart the innovation process is exploring unrelated items to see where the new combination can take you. Seeds certainly isn’t the first place I’ve seen this idea, but it brought it back to the front of my brain.
That’s why when I opened the kitchen cabinet this morning to grab a coffee cup, my hand hovered over one that I bought my husband for Christmas: the zombie food pyramid. It is such a perfect example of the creative mash-up in action.
Editor’s Note: Okay so this homework story is probably total fiction, but it illustrates how our mind can connect to unrelated things to help us create something new. Great ideas are just waiting in our subconscious. We just need to slow down and consider the connections.
You also may have heard that the food pyramid has been replaced with a new “food plate” so kids nowadays are probably gluing pictures onto paper plates, but it’s my story and I’m sticking to it 🙂
When I used to write poetry, some of the most exciting writing came from finding ways to relate unrelated images.
I imagine it would be a great technique in poetry. My poetry was always stream of consciousness–one thought led to the next. I haven’t written any since college. It cracks me up when I read those poems now. I was so filled with angst 🙂
Love this post! What a great way to illustrate the concept from the book! 🙂
Thank you!!!