What's Up, Peripheral Thinkers™!

This month, we apply a peripheral perspective to the term 'creating.' It's not just a term, it's the name for one of Peripheral Thinking's™ super-skills.

This goes beyond finger paints. Beyond super-sillious stories. Beyond art, poetry, and music.

The 'Creating' skill is 90% cognitive.

Yep! You get to use your brain just as it is, but differently.

Are you curious?

Are you interested?

Are you ready for a new way to overcome obstacles, achieve big goals, and succeed where others can't?

Right on!

Let's do this!!!

'CREATING'

The Power to Invent New Ways of Thinking, Doing, and Delivering Value

Most people think I found the Titanic by looking for it. I didn’t. — Dr. Robert Ballard

If you've been following along this year, you know we've been slowly unlocking the Visualizing Skill Group—a trio of Peripheral Thinking™ skills that shape how innovators see what's possible.

In February, we explored the playground of possibility with the "Playing" skill.

In May, we harnessed structured momentum through the "Building" skill.

And this month, we arrive at one of the most exciting and fun skills of all: Creating.

Creating is where the Peripheral Thinker™ becomes a catalyst. It’s where imagination collides with intention, and novelty is forged from pieces we already possess. It’s a reminder that invention isn’t always about having more. It’s often about seeing more in what we already have.

The Creating skill isn’t reserved for the ultra-artistic or the naturally gifted. It is a learnable, repeatable process. It’s a way of thinking that turns unexpected combinations into breakthrough solutions.

If Playing is your sandbox and Building is your blueprint, then Creating is the spark that sets your ideas alight.

Let’s dive into what Creating really means, how to use it, and why it's a muscle you can grow and rely on for innovation, strategy, and growth.

VISUALIZING: A Quick Refresher

The Visualizing Skill Group is one of six skill groups in the Peripheral Thinking™ skills model. It involves interacting with space, senses, physical ideas, and new conceptual models. This group includes:

Playing: Constructing exploratory frameworks, rewriting rules, and engaging with ambiguity.
Building: Translating bold ideas into frameworks that support execution.
Creating: Exploring possibilities, connecting references, and inventing new ways of thinking, doing, and delivering value.

Peripheral Thinkers™ with strong Visualizing skills often see not just what is, but what could be. They mentally simulate possibilities, coordinate complexity, and connect disparate elements into coherent strategies. They are adept at shifting perspectives, looking at a product or system not just from the inside, but from above, below, and across.

These aren’t just mental exercises. Visualizing skills allow leaders to anticipate consequences, uncover opportunities hidden in plain sight, and invent alternatives where others see constraints.

Stat to Note: 75% of prolific innovators across all industries rank above average in Visualizing skills.

That’s not coincidence—it’s correlation born from capability.

What Is the Creating Skill?

Oxford defines creating as "causing something to happen as a result of one’s actions." But in the Peripheral Thinking™ universe, we go further. We treat Creating as both a practice and a perspective. It is not simply a reaction or a lucky burst of insight—it is a deliberate exploration of what doesn't yet exist.

Creating happens when you:

Explore possibilities others don’t notice or quickly dismiss
Connect ideas from vastly different domains
Rearrange known principles into unfamiliar patterns
Invent new ways of thinking, doing, and delivering value

It is the moment you realize that innovation isn’t about starting from scratch—it’s about reconfiguring the familiar.

Consider how many significant breakthroughs emerged not from genius invention but from purposeful recombination:

Airbnb combined trust-based hosting (from couchsurfing) with the economics of underutilized assets (from marketplaces)
Spotify didn’t invent music—they reinvented how we consume and access it
IDEO didn’t invent design—they reframed it as a human-centered, team-based process that created industries

Your ability to create is not defined by your budget or title. It is constrained only by your willingness to rethink what’s possible with what you already know.

How To Use the Creating Skill

You already carry with you a vast library of cognitive and emotional material. It lives in your memories, habits, frustrations, dreams, conversations, podcasts, and even the tiny details you overlook.

Most people operate on autopilot. But a Peripheral Thinker™ flips the switch to active assembly.

Imagine your experiences as puzzle pieces. But instead of completing a box-set image, your puzzle has no fixed reference photo.

Some pieces are jagged; others smooth.

Some have matching colors, others clash.

And yet, with experimentation and play, you begin to see patterns.

Creating means treating everything you’ve ever encountered as potential building material. Not junk drawers or random memories, but seeds of possibility.

Your barista’s workflow might inform your team’s customer service process.

A video game’s reward system might transform a dashboard or how your customers use your products and services.

Begin by acknowledging what you already know.

Then treat it not as static knowledge, but as flexible components ready to be flipped, stretched, and connected.

When To Use the Creating Skill

The Creating skill is most valuable when:

You're facing a challenge with no obvious solution
You're surrounded by groupthink or "best practices"
You want to escape price wars or product parity
You're hitting a plateau in growth, engagement, or innovation

Creating thrives in constraint. The tighter the box, the more explosive your leap outside it can be. It’s the antidote to stale meetings, predictable strategies, and mindless repetition.

It’s especially powerful when you find yourself asking:

"What else is possible here?"
"Why are we doing it this way?"
"What would happen if we..."

That’s your cue. Step into the role of creator.

When you develop this skill alongside others from skill Groups like Exploring (curiosity-based research) and Reasoning (integrated logic), Creating becomes even more effective.

The more you use it, the more powerful your Creating skill becomes.

And perhaps most importantly: You don’t have to wait for a problem to get started.

Create preemptively.

Create for the joy of it.

Store ideas.

Use them later.

Feed and water your Creating brain, and it will grow and serve you well!

A Story of Tech Fusion, Debris, and Pigs

Dr. Robert Ballard’s search for the Titanic wasn’t just about underwater archaeology—it was a masterclass in Peripheral Thinking™. The key to his success? He didn’t follow the standard script.

Tech Fusion

Ballard combined technologies in a way no one else had before:

ARGO, a deep-towed sled with real-time video feedback
ANGUS, a rugged photographic system built for harsh terrain

Together, they created a distributive, remote-first visual pipeline of the ocean floor—replacing expensive human-operated dives with scalable, robotic reconnaissance.

Debris Logic

Instead of searching for the Titanic’s hull directly, Ballard pursued what others ignored: the debris trail.

He hypothesized that as the ship sank, pieces would have broken off and spread over a long path—and by following that path, he could triangulate the main wreck.

That idea didn’t come from wishful thinking.

It came from a different, earlier submarine discovery: the USS Scorpion.

There, too, a debris field had proven more revealing than the main body.

Piggyback Strategy

Most people don’t know that Ballard’s expedition had an entirely different mission on paper: to locate two lost Cold War submarines for the U.S. Navy.

Finding the Titanic wasn’t part of the original budget.

It was the piggyback project—an outcome made possible only by stacking purposes, funding, and logistics.

Ballard:

Created a new way to explore the ocean floor
Reframed the search goal from target to trail
Built on unrelated discoveries and covert missions

That’s Creating in action.

Grow Your Creating Skill: Hands-On Brain-On Activities

You don’t get good at Creating by waiting for inspiration. You get good by practicing deliberate recombination.

For Auditory Learners:

Listen to 3 unrelated podcasts. Here are three examples: 1) The Beginner's Garden Podcast (Jill McSheehy), 2) Stuff You Should Know: "How Electricity Works", 3) TED Talks Daily: any episode
Write down 1-2 key insights from each.
Use those insights to create a hypothesis or a new process for your business.

Example: What if your onboarding process worked like garden planting? Or what if electrical resistance became a metaphor for customer churn?

For Tactile + Visual Learners:

The Puzzle Challenge

Buy 3 identical 100-piece puzzles
Mix them together. Yes, all 300 pieces.
Complete one puzzle image using visual references.
Complete a second from the 200 leftover pieces.
Complete a third face-down (no image)

This builds spatial reasoning, visual inference, and patience.

The Button Exercise

Buy a bag of 400-800 assorted, mixed colored buttons of varying sizes and styles.
Empty your bag of buttons onto a white surface.
Photograph the layout just as it is, right out of the bag.
Mix the buttons around (pile them up or spread them out).
Take another photograph.
Squint at each photograph, looking for patterns or images. It’s a bit like identifying a recognizable shape in the clouds.
Un-squint and arrange the buttons to resemble the image(s) you discovered.

This exercise strengthens your ability to notice emerging order in visual chaos.

For Readers + Writers:

Choose three books from unrelated categories (e.g., Sci-Fi, Biography, Economics)
Read the first chapter of each
Write a one-page business idea, policy change, or innovation inspired by insights from all three.

This builds cross-domain synthesis, abstraction, and flexible writing.

The Creating Advantage

When you treat Creating as a repeatable, enjoyable skill—not a special-occasion event—you become a strategic asset to any team, any industry, and any challenge.

Your Creating muscle is unique in that it does not decay. You don’t need ideal conditions. You don’t need funding or approval. You don’t even need a problem.

You can:

Create for future use
Create to improve clarity
Create to entertain yourself
Create as a gift for your future self

Some of your creations will be buried, others will resurface at the perfect time.

Either way, you’re building a personal archive of advantage.

Final Thought

Creating isn’t a luxury.

It’s a responsibility for anyone who wants to break convention, spark change, and shape what happens next.

And the best part?

You already have the pieces.

You just need the boldness to arrange them differently.

Ready? Set? CREATE!

Until next time, I'll be looking for you in the periphery, happily Creating.

Paul

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June 2025 Peripheral Thinkers™ Newsletter