The Torch Principle: Interview with Javier Deami

Javier Ideami is a multidisciplinary creative director, engineer, artist and entrepreneur. Javier is the founder of Ideami Studios and many other ventures all around the world, from Silicon Valley to the jungles of Bali. He has spoken at prestigious institutions, from Stanford University and UC Berkeley in California, to the United Nations FAO Headquarters, the financial center of London, the faculty of architecture of the University of Rome, the International Cultural Diplomacy Conference in Berlin and many others. He has received awards in areas as diverse as software engineering, music, filmmaking, photography, technology installations, etc.

His latest book is the nonfiction, The Torch Principle.

For More Information

• Visit Javier Ideami’s website.
• Connect with Javier on Facebook and Twitter.
• Find out more about Javier at Goodreads.

About the Book:

Are you facing personal or professional challenges that require original and innovative solutions? Are you tired of the typical solutions that don't produce lasting results? Would you like to find a better balance between your creative and your analytical muscles in order to empower your career, health and well-being?

The Torch principle (Creativity) is a unique book + online platform (torchprinciple.com) that empowers your creative muscles and helps you generate original solutions to your personal and professional challenges. Award winning creative director Javier Ideami brings you a book plus an online all in one platform to empower your career, health and well-being through radically enhancing your creativity.

·        Learn multisensory brainstorming techniques.

·        Generate unique solutions to your personal and professional challenges.

·        Reach a better balance between your analytical and your creative muscles.

·        Empower your career, health and well-being through creative thinking.

·        Get access to an online platform (torchprinciple.com) with videos, tools and graphics that help you visualize and understand the content as well as exercise your creative muscles.

The Torch Principle gives you the background knowledge you need combined with specific exercises and techniques that can help you find solutions and ideas for the personal and professional challenges you face. It also helps you reach a better balance between your analytical and your creative muscles. This, in turn, benefits your career, health and well-being.

We all have challenges, personal and professional. Typical solutions often don’t last and can’t adapt to the complexity of the situation we face or are ineffective against the competition. That’s why you need truly innovative and original solutions. You need to diverge strongly before you converge onto those solutions. To diverge strongly you need strong creative muscles. The Torch Principle gives you exercises to train your creative muscles and the tools to produce ideas and solutions that can overcome complexity and competition. Solutions that last.

For More Information

• The Torch Principle is available at Amazon.
• Discuss this book at PUYB Virtual Book Club at Goodreads.

Q: Welcome to The Writer's Life!  Now that your book has been published, we’d love to find out more about the process.  Can we begin by having you take us at the beginning?  Where did you come up with the idea to write your book?

How creative thinking works is my passion since I was a kid. That passion eventually led me to create my own methodology for multisensory and multidisciplinary brainstorming. That, in turn, took me to direct many creative thinking workshops in which i helped businesses and individuals generate useful ideas and solutions to specific professional and personal challenges. I wanted to bring the benefits of creative thinking and of my workshops to as many people as possible. The Torch Principle book (http://torchprinciple.com) became the solution to spread these techniques and teachings as wide as possible in a compact and easy to share form.

Q: How hard was it to write a book like this and do you have any tips that you could pass on which would make the journey easier for other writers?

Because of its depth and scope, It was hard to keep focused during the years that it took to produce both the book and the online platform at http://torchprinciple.com (videos, graphics and tools). The editing and formatting phases were also complex. When you are deep into those phases you realize that writing the book is only the beginning of the process. A good editing and formatting phase is key to produce a truly professional result. For other writers I would emphasize the importance of building a community of followers before you publish the book, having a marketing plan ready before the launch and hiring editing and formatting experts for those very key stages of the publishing process.

Q: Who is your publisher and how did you find them or did you self-publish?

 After extensive research I decided to self-publish because I wanted to connect the book to many of my ventures and projects and that implied having total control over its distribution. I feel that self-publishing is becoming more and more a viable and positive choice for writers around the world.

Q: Is there anything that surprised you about getting your first book published?

The complexity of the editing and formatting phases. Writing a long and deep book is already a big challenge in itself. But it is the editing and formatting phases that can make or break the whole project. They separate a truly professional result from one that doesn’t reach the mark.

Q: What other books (if any) are you working on and when will they be published?

The Torch Principle book is unique because it comes together with an online platform that includes videos, graphics and tools (apps) that accelerate the process of training your creative muscles (http://torchprinciple.com). At the moment I am focusing on maintaining and expanding this platform to keep increasing the value that readers of The Torch Principle receive with the book.

Q: What’s your favorite place to hang out online?

I use Facebook quite a lot because i have many friends around the world and Facebook is the easiest way to stay in touch with them as often as I like.

Q: What’s your nightly ritual before retiring for the night?

Read something inspiring that my mind can incubate through the night, and relax watching a movie or talking with a good friend or loved one.

Q: Finally, what message (if any) are you trying to get across with your book?

We all have challenges, personal and professional. Typical solutions often don’t last. They can’t adapt to the complexity of the situation or are ineffective against the competition. That’s why you need truly innovative and original solutions. You need to diverge strongly before you converge  onto those solutions. To diverge strongly you need strong creative muscles. The Torch Principle book gives you exercises to train your creative  muscles and the tools to produce ideas and solutions that can overcome complexity and  competition. Solutions that last.

This book is my life’s mission. Reaching a better balance between our creative and analytical muscles enriches our career, health and well-being. Just as you need to train your body muscles in a deep way in order to run a marathon, you also need to train your creative muscles if you want to generate innovative solutions to your professional and personal challenges. For that, you need two things. First, the understanding of how the balance or lack of balance between your divergent and convergent thinking strategies can affect your professional and personal life. Second, specific multisensory and multidisciplinary exercises and techniques to strengthen those creative muscles and your ability to diverge strongly. These techniques will help you regain a better balance between your thinking strategies and will allow you to generate useful solutions and ideas to your personal and professional challenges.

Q: Thank you again for this interview!  Do you have any final words?

The Torch Principle is a unique book because it comes together with an online platform (http://torchprinciple.com) that expands and complements the content of the book. This platform includes unique tools to feed your multisensory brainstorming processes. These include apps to do soundstorming, lightstorming, etc. (including the Posterini ideation module at Posterini.com. http://posterini.com is a poster maker and creative platform that includes a powerful ideation module for brainstorming). I invite you to watch the trailers of The Torch Principle book at:

Trailer of the book: https://vimeo.com/151386010

Torch Metaphor Video: https://vimeo.com/146327112

You can also explore more of my work at my central website on http://ideami.com

And keep on diverging!