The Squash Lecture: Imagination, Puzzles, Asset Creation, Creative Careers, and Inspiration

University of East Anglia
Norwich Business School
Employability, Creativity and
Personal Development
NBS-5015Y Semester 2
Self-Making Studio
Lectures 3-4
31 January, 2020
Dr. Fahri Karakas
F.Karakas@uea.ac.uk

2
 Review of Last Class
 Be Antifragile
 Exercise: University of the Future
 Puzzles: This week in review
 Puzzles & Improv Adventures
 Workshop: Heroes of Entertainment & Imagination
 Exercise: Six Adventures and Six Challenges
 Workshop: Creating Assets
 Exercise: You are a Super-hero
 Key Takeaways

3
 The Eagle and the Dragon: China – US Technological and Economic Competition
 Science Fiction: Manufacturing Curiosity & Wonder
◦ Movies: The Congress and The Wandering Earth
◦ Elon Musk as a Live Science Fiction Character (Cybertruck Launch)
 New Technologies
◦ Quantum Supremacy - Google
◦ Voice Assistants: Google Assistant
◦ Augmented Reality, Digital Twins, and MirrorWorld
◦ Digital Models/CGI Characters/Virtual Influencers (The Cases of Lil Maquela, The World’s
First AI News Presenter, Samsung Neon)
◦ Brain as a Supercomputer & Computing like a Brain
◦ New Frontiers: Space Competition and Space Mining
◦ Flying Cars: Drones/Airtaxis
 Jobs of the Future: Where will you be?
 Futurist Cities: Shenzhen (China’s Silicon Valley)
 Time Travel 2025 Exercise
 Wonderland: The world of entertainment and imagination
◦ Streaming Wars: Disney, Netflix, Apple
◦ BTS Case Study: Wonders of K-Pop

4
 Spend time for learning new things and following your curiosity and interests
– make this an indispensable habit for yourself.
 The secret key formula:
 (FOLLOW YOUR HEART + CURIOSITY + LEARNING) X (PLAY/ADVENTURE +
IMAGINATION + CREATION)
 You need to go out of the box and swim up against currents of mediocrity.
 You need to scare yourself and challenge yourself each day. Every day is an
adventure.
 What does your heart desire? Go for it.
 Define your own definition of success (what others think is irrelevant).
 You can have a secret creative side/ entrepreneurial career alongside your day
job. Actually, you need to have it. This will be your secret hero identity.

5
 Entertainment is serious business. If you want to understand the future, look
at the world of entertainment.
 What if you think and act like a science fiction character in your life (go freak,
go geek, go for it)?
 Provide yourself more opportunities for:
◦ Imagination and creativity
◦ Curiosity, play, fun, and entertainment
◦ Problem solving and idea creation
◦ Reflection, note-taking, diary-keeping
◦ Asset Creation activities
 Science fiction books and movies expand your mind into the future and into
new possibilities.
 Life is too short for mediocrity. Go for crazy.
 Learning about the future is weird and fun.
 Give more chance and support to geeks & misfits (like Elon Musk) – we need
more of them.

HERE IS A PUZZLE:
Global Markets crashed this week.
What was the reason?
CORONAVIRUS

CORONAVIRUS – Global Markets Crash

University of the Future
Learning Adventure

Exercise:
How would you design the
university of the future?
How would you disrupt higher
education?
In the next 2 minutes:
Create min. 5 ideas - capture
them on a white page.

My vision
University of the
Future
I try to design and
improve this module
based on this model.
What do you think
university of the future
should look like?
How can we move
towards there?

My vision:
Universities as
Places of
Imagination

HERE IS A PUZZLE:
“Everything negative - pressure, challenges -
is all an opportunity for me to rise.”
This quote belongs to a legend that we lost
last week. Who?
Kobe Bryant

HERE IS A PUZZLE:
Who swept all the top Awards at 2020
Grammys?
Billie Eilish

HERE IS A PUZZLE:
We lost a world class management professor
from Harvard Business School this week. He is
known for his work on disruptive innovation.
Hint: Some of his quotes are below.
“The only metrics that will truly matter to my
life are the individuals whom I have been able
to help, one by one, to become better people.”
“It's easier to hold your principles 100 percent
of the time than it is to hold them 98 percent of
the time.”
“Decide what you stand for. And then stand for
it all the time.”
Clayton M. Christensen

Six Adventures
Six Challenges
Learning
Adventure

Why did I bring this squash to the class?
Any guesses?

HEROES OF
ENTERTAINMENT &
IMAGINATION
WORKSHOP

HERE IS A PUZZLE:
UEA’s Sainsbury Centre was shown as a
headquarter in one of the most successful
science fiction films of 2019.
Which movie was this?
Avengers: Endgame
(Marvel, 2019)

HERE IS A PUZZLE:
Which company is the Netflix of e-
learning? (Think: Edutainment)
Hint: This company provides proof that
celebrities & professional athletes can also
be amazing teachers.
MasterClass
https://www.masterclass.com/

HERE IS A PUZZLE:
Who is the film score composer and record
producer for films of The Lion King,
Pirates of the Caribbean, Interstellar,
Gladiator, Inception, & The Dark Knight?
Hans Zimmer

HERE IS A PUZZLE:
Who is this celebrity astronaut?
Hint: He is Canadian
Chris Hadfield

Chris Hadfield – Space Exploration

LESSON
Failures of
Imagination

HERE IS A PUZZLE:
Who is the game designer who designed
SimCity and The Sims?
Hint: He is the founder of Maxis
Will Wright

HERE IS A PUZZLE:
Which computer game hosted a live concert
experience for gamers?
Hint: This game transformed video-game
storytelling by climaxing in apocalyptic
fashion – sucking gamers into a black hole.
Fortnite

HERE IS A PUZZLE:
Who is ‘the little guy’ of basketball?
Hint: He has 6'3" height, 185 pounds. He
rose to the top of NBA not through his
power and strength, but through his crazy
ball-handling skills.
Stephen Curry

Learning Adventure:
Living Exponentially &
Avoiding Mediocrity

Living
Exponentially:
A Poster Guide
Exercise
In 120 seconds, please
go over the poster and
think of 5 practical
action points on how to
implement these
suggestions in your
daily life.

Avoiding Mediocrity:
A Poster Guide
Exercise
In 100 seconds, please
go over the poster and
think of 5 practical
action points on how to
implement these
suggestions in your
daily life.

DISCUSS IN CLUSTERS
Exercise
In the next 2 minutes, please share your top 2-3 key
actions with one another.
Try to get inspiration and learn from each other.

HERE IS A PUZZLE:
Who is the inventor of Spanx?
Hint: She used $5,000 savings to develop
the idea. She became the youngest self-
made female billionaire at the age of 41.
Sara Blakely

Sara Blakely on Entrepreneurship

HERE IS THE LESSON:
Super-successful people are constantly trying to learn,
experiment, and try out new things.
They vow to constantly grow, and they fill every spare moment
with self-education.
They don’t do this because it’s “the right thing to do”; they do it
because it’s their passion.
• Challenge yourself to new heights
• If you are not making enough
mistakes you are not trying hard
enough.
• Make lots of mistakes.

HERE IS A PUZZLE:
Who is the producer, showrunner, and
writer of Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal?
Hint: She is one of the strongest female TV
producers in the world. Her net worth is
$140m. She signed a $100m contract with
Netflix.
Shonda Rhimes

Shonda Rhimes – Writing for TV

HERE IS A PUZZLE:
Who is the famous architect known for his
use of bold, postmodern shapes and
unusual fabrications in his buildings?
Frank Gehry

Frank Gehry on Design and Architecture

HERE IS A PUZZLE:
She is a Belgian fashion designer known
for her iconic wrap dresses. She created
her own fashion brand. Her fashion brand
(DVF) is available in 70 countries.
Diane Von Furstenberg

Diane Von Furstenberg on Fashion Brand

I have a secret that involves this squash. Hush Hush!
What could this secret be????
I want you to write a story surrounding this secret!
(3 minutes)

Learning Adventure:
Create your own Masterclass

Create your own
MASTERCLASS
Exercise
1. In 120 seconds, think of
3-4 alternative
masterclasses you can
teach in the future.
What would you like to teach
(someday)?
How would you teach it?
How would you make it
interesting?

HERE IS A PUZZLE:
He was a lawyer. He started staying up late
between 22.00-02.00 every night and
started writing mystery novels. He
finished writing a book every 6 months. He
is one of the best selling mystery novelists
now and published more than 40 books.
David Baldacci

David Baldacci on Mystery & Thrillers

HERE IS THE LESSON:
Super-successful people take a long term view, develop smart
systems of creative work, and they carve out time to create
assets that will make everything enjoyable and profitable.
The strugglers, on the other hand, live from project to project, gig
to gig. They are always too busy or too skint to do the work they
really want to do. It is exhausting and demoralising. They are
depleted.
• Creating your own assets is a marathon
game.
• You need to create your own game:
Navigate blue oceans, carve out your
own niche, create your own category,
and master& own that category.
• Compound yourself (your skills,
knowledge, networks, and assets) over
the long term.

Focus on Creative Assets, not Career Ladder
• If you are a creator, you can create your own assets. Out of thin air. (Plus imagination and
hard work.)
• Some of these assets generate money directly – like a book, an artwork, a software app,
or an album that can be sold.
• Others create non-financial rewards, and/or generate money indirectly – like a YouTube
channel, a podcast, a networking event or a blog.
• If you look at your hosting fees and the time you devote to it, your podcast may look like
a net loss on your accounts. But looking back over the past few years, you realise how
many clients and projects, not to mention how much fun and friendship, have come to
you because of the podcast.
• Your avant-garde novel may not sell a million copies, but it may win you the respect of the
discerning audience you are writing for, and connections, opportunities and money may
flow from that.
• So forget the career ladder. Instead, create the kind of assets that will bring you more
creativity, connections, and emotional and financial buoyancy in the years ahead.

Creative Assets
• A creative asset is something you create yourself that (a) is worthwhile and satisfying in
itself, and (b) will make life easier, more rewarding, more profitable and/or more fun in
future.
• Most creative assets are intangible; the obvious exceptions are physical artworks and
artisanal works.
Types of creative asset:
• Creative work – your signature asset; your portfolio of the work you are most proud of.
• Social assets – your network; your audience
• Reputation assets – your brand; association with prestigious brands (publishers,
galleries, record labels etc); prizes and awards
• Online assets – a website; a blog; a podcast; a mailing list; a social media profile
• Intellectual property assets – the trademark associated with your brand; the copyright
in your works
• Systemic assets – a productivity system; a business model that generates value for your
customers and your business.
• Business assets – your product range; your company

Keep Doing (Creating)
• We’re all entitled to a day off, but for those of us who desire the best of ourselves,
we’re not entitled to making up the rules. Or rule. In fact, here’s the simple rule of life
that’s been proven time and again:
• The people who operate most efficiently, most effectively and with greatest consistency
win.
• Consistency and repetition are the sharpest tools in the toolkit of winners. Keep doing.
Keep creating and producing. This is what “The Rolling Stones model.” The Rolling
Stones became one of the most famous music groups of all time by making a lot of hit
songs.
• But you know what else The Rolling Stones did? They produced a lot of mediocre and
just so-so songs. A lot. But what do people remember? They remember the hits, the
best stuff. And you have to admire their overall body of work because they kept
churning out the best work they could. They never stopped. They’re still going!
• Keep producing and churning out the best work you can. That may not be viewed as the
best work by others. But it’s a heck of a lot better than doing nothing.

Treat this semester as a semester of ASSET CREATION
In your individual project this semester, your main task will be
creating assets for your future.
SEVEN I PROJECT (Kickstarter type project)
ENTREPRENEURIAL BUSINESS PROPOSAL (Shark Tank type
project)
• Think about the assets you want to
create for your future
• Do not think like a student. Do not
treat this as assignment.
• Do this for your own future.
• Do something real – create something
real and fresh.

My Promise to You: I will also create alongside you
I will also work very hard to kick-start my second book project.
My goal is to start writing/drawing/creating my second book (after
Self-Making Studio).
• I will be accountable to you.
• Please ask me to report to you during
each lecture:
• What did you do for your book, Fahri?
• Please keep me accountable – be
harsh and question me.

Don’t Bother Waiting For Inspiration.
It’s Not Coming.
• You need grit, struggle and urgency.
• The cold reality is that sometimes, it’s a real struggle to get your best work into the
world.
• That’s why so many of us admire great creators, artists and thinkers but so few of
us will ever become one.
• If you wait to be inspired to do your best work, you’ll be waiting a long time.
Possibly forever.
• Waiting for inspiration is an amateur move. It’s not coming today. It may never. It’s
not coming to you. But you can seek it out.
• The solution: start the work now.
• Do it on the sunny days and the rainy days. Stop giving yourself a “pass” to leave
your gifts on the table unopened. Stop allowing yourself the excuse not to create.
• Push through the uncomfortable stage
• Struggle actually leads to more inspiration
• You don’t get inspired, then do great work. You do great work, then get
inspired.

HERE IS A PUZZLE:
He quit his job and decided to travel the
world. Every day, he created 1-minute
travel/inspiration videos on Facebook. He
did this for 1000 days non-stop. Who is he?
Hint: His videos end with
“That’s one minute, see you soon"
Nas Daily (Nuseir Yassin)

Nas Daily: 1000 Days of Video Creation!

HERE IS THE LESSON:
Seek out small victories. Small victories build new receptors
in the areas of the brain responsible for reward and
motivation. This increase in receptors enhances confidence
and eagerness to tackle challenges. When you achieve a
series of small victories, the boost in your confidence can last
for months.
Small and consistent actions/habits every day is key.
• Be consistent and disciplined – create
every day – do not break the chain.
• If you establish smart habits every
day, you will achieve a lot in the long
run.
• Compound yourself (your skills,
knowledge, networks, and assets) over
the long term.

As a class, we need to find min. 50 ideas/ways of
increasing the value of this squash.
WORK IN TEAMS/CLUSTERS (3 or 4)

Each team/cluster (3-4 people):
Think of at least 10 different ways to increase the
value of this squash.
An example idea: A celebrity can sign it.

Other possible uses
Examples:
- Trade it with other things (banter/exchange and increase its value)
- Cook and sell it (or cook & invite people, form a community)
- Song/poetry/rap/painting/performance arts/theatre/musical
- Paint/Slice it/Transform it into something else??
- Sculpture
- Turn it into artwork (remember the banana at ArtBasel)
- Make it a brand
- Fundraising
- Create a story around it
- Fashion item in a fashion show
- Use social media (remember the Egg of Instagram in 2019)
- Storytelling
- Give it meaning

77
“If life gives you a squash, squash
squash it. Or don’t. Whatever.”
Whatever.”
◦ Dr. Fahri Karakas

HERE IS A PUZZLE:
He was a software engineer. He wanted to
make his own science fiction movie. He
spent only $7000 and made one of the most
original time travel movies of all time.
Hint: This movie, “Primer”, won the Grand
Jury Prize and the Alfred P. Sloan Award at
the Sundance Film Festival. He is known for
his complicated and nonlinear narratives.
Shane Carruth

HERE IS A PUZZLE:
He had a depressed life and he created the
comic strip called ‘Life in Hell’. He started
creating a cartoon series in 1989. That
cartoon series entered its 31st season now.
Hint: His cartoon series franchise now is
worth $750 million dollars.
Matt Groening – The Simpsons

Matt Groening – My Wasted Life

HERE IS A PUZZLE:
He worked in various roles at big
businesses. He experienced the effects of
downsizing in 1990s in the US. He decided
to mock organizations through his cartoons.
Hint: His satirical and sarcastic cartoons
portray the social and psychological
landscape of white-collar workers in
modern business corporations. He created
$75 million dollar worth empire.
Scott Adams - Dilbert

Dilbert Creator Scott Adams Interview

HERE IS A PUZZLE:
He is one of the best animators in the world.
He makes fascinating animation movies
depicting humanity's relationship with
nature and technology, the wholesomeness
of natural and traditional patterns of living,
the importance of art and craftsmanship,
and the difficulty of maintaining a pacifist
ethic in a violent world.
Hint: He is passionate about flying.
Hayao Miyazaki

The Immersive Realism of Studio Ghibli

Exercises in Asset Creation
You are a Super-Hero
Learning
Adventure

Exercise:
You are a
Super-Hero

Example:
SUPER-FAHRI
• Goofy/idiot
• Clumsy
• Stuck a bean
in own ear at
14 yrs. old
• Uses a trike
• Leaves office
at 23.59
• Burned his
wife’s office
last weekend
(by mistake)
Drawn by one of my students at University of Cambridge -
Courtesy of Han Chen

Exercise:
You are a
Super-Hero
2 min.

HERE IS A PUZZLE:
He was a homeless man, but he is now a
millionaire. He made it happen through
entrepreneurship and edutainment. He
makes raw inspirational songs for
entrepreneurs.
Hint: His songs include: Shopify Rap, Bitcoin
Rap, Life of an Entrepreneur, Self-Made
Chris Record

Entrepreneurs Got Choices (Rap)

HERE IS A PUZZLE:
What are the highest grossing media
franchises of all time?
Hint: Two of them include: Star Wars &
Harry Potter. What are some others?
Pokemon, Hello Kitty, Winnie the Pooh, Mickey
Mouse, Disney Princesses, Mario, Marvel Universe,
Batman, Spiderman, Barbie, Toy Story, James Bond,
Lord of the Rings

HERE IS A PUZZLE:
Which one is the most valuable sports team
in the world?
Hint: It is American, of course
Dallas Cowboys

VOLUNTEERS NEEDED
Who wants to take this squash until our next class?
You will try to add value, experiment, and share your
story with us in the next class.

Penn and Teller on ‘The Art of Magic’

106
 It is not easy to scare yourself and set yourself new
challenges and adventures. But if you do it, you will be
rewarded. You will be happier.
 What kind of a super-hero are you? How will you help
other people?
 The world needs interesting, unique, weird people –
like you!
 You can get inspiration from 100 different people and 100
different fields.
 And then imagine you are a farmer and you are growing
100 creative projects: Let 100 flowers bloom!

107
 You need to live exponentially and avoid mediocrity.
 Life is short and you are the hero. Make a difference.
 Being part of something large feels good. We are a
community of learners & experimenters.
 Create your own category and be the owner of that
category.
 Develop your personal brand. Build it on your authentic
self. Turn your weaknesses into strengths by being open.

108
 Do not take yourself seriously. Take your work seriously.
 You cannot learn and grow if you try to be clever all the
time. It is much better to be naïve, hungry, foolish,
playful, and curious.
 Do not be trapped by your ego – this will make you
mediocre.
 Use your semester project as an opportunity to create
your own intellectual and creative assets.
 Your most crucial task is: Create your own creative
assets. Start now!

109
 Remember the Squash.
 What did you learn from the Squash?
 You need a bit more chaos, randomness, dance, singing,
independent learning, writing, and creating in your life.
 Improvisation is magic – it improves your life instantly.
 Surprises, adventures, puzzles, exciting ventures, new
projects, artistic pursuits are good for your health.

110
 Your diary is your best friend.
 Your diary is a seed catalogue of all your ideas. Write, draw,
reflect, capture your ideas every day.
 We live in an imagination economy. Ideas are the new
currency. Your attention (i.e. your time) is the most
precious thing in the world.
 Life is not only about the next goal to be captured. There
is more to life than that. We are not machines. We need
adventures. Sometimes, you need to relax, breathe, loosen
up – just be.
 What if you had quadruple lives – wouldn’t this enrich you
as a person?

111
“Curiosity does not kill the cat.
cat. The cat thrives through
through curiosity.”
◦ Dr. Fahri Karakas

The Squash Lecture: Imagination, Puzzles, Asset Creation, Creative Careers, and Inspiration

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