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Sometimes I’m thankful that the laptop takes so long to boot - it gives me that precious moment to pause & introspect … sometimes to figure out how today I could do things differently before delving into the day’s chores.

And that morning was no different, till the time I came across an interesting article on ‘Blue Ocean Strategy Perspective’, that proposed ‘strategy canvas’ as a powerful tool to learn from ‘successful innovations’. The article went on to present a very interesting case study on the blockbuster Bond movie ‘Skyfall’ - about how it is different from most of the other Bond movies and how its success factors can be analyzed using a 4-Actions Framework in the ‘strategy canvas’.

The 4-Actions Framework is basically a set of 4 questions that make you look at innovations more critically & sometimes help you to learn from it.

I decided to apply it to my creative process as I figured, my ‘product’ (paintings) would also have to reach & entertain an ‘audience’. But before I go into that, I think I should explain a bit about this Framework.

The 4-Actions Framework also known as ERRC is an acronym for Eliminate, Reduce, Raise and Create. Taking any product or solution that has been successful, it asks 4 questions, whose answers should help us to form a set of principles that can be applied many times, to create more such solutions. Here, the definition of ‘success’, as I later figured out, purely depends on the user, who wants to apply this tool.

So let us assume that I’m an amateur watercolorist, who enjoys painting in an impressionistic style. Of late I have been able to win citations in a few shows & have been asked to write an article in one of the national magazines who will also publish a few of my paintings. Since this is calling for addressing a much larger audience, I’m taking this to be a ‘success’ & would like to now apply the 4-Actions Framework, to analyze what caused this.

I looked at those paintings which earned citations & probably also cut some ice with the publishers, & decided to ask myself the following questions:

- What factors of my other paintings can be Eliminated? - (I noticed that I’m using too many motifs in the same composition - which all too often fought to become the ’focal point’, thus creating a tension & less of cohesiveness. So my lesson No 1 is this should be eliminated. Interestingly, the ‘successful’ paintings all had a very strong focal point).

- What factors of other paintings can be Reduced? - (Again, observing like an outsider, I figured I’m putting too many details in the background … whereas ‘lost edges’, unfinished and suggestive details have mostly caught the eyes of people … So ‘reduction in details’ should be my lesson No 2)

- What factors of other paintings can be Raised or Elevated? - (All of the ‘successful paintings’ had human figures - dynamic and animated … much more compared to the other ‘unsuccessful’ paintings … So the most important lesson for me is my apparent ‘ability to draw human figures’ - This could be a plus point for me and as an essential skill, I must nurture this & put to use more often than not).

- What factors of other paintings can be Created or Added? - (Last but certainly not the least, I observed what a good ‘title/name’ could do to a painting - It creates an identity for the artwork and binds the complete thought process of the artist in one single thread - most likely it helps to channelize the thought process of the viewer. There’s communication - a kind of agreement between the viewer and the viewed painting. So while it doesn’t matter how a ‘Rose’ is called, for a painting it may be helpful to name it appropriately... There’s so much in a name! To my list, this is something to be ‘created/added’).

Having arrived at these conclusions, I felt a sense of closure, of seeing the unseen & making some sense of the process of evaluation. Phew!

The next step would be to apply it in practice … it may fail, but that means it’s time to use a different strategy!

So what’s your strategy today?