In this 5th episode of the book series, I turned my attention back home. Like me, Jean Rosier is a Brazilian who found in Portugal a new scenario to cultivate ideas and provoke questions.
With a unique trajectory between education, business, and creativity, he is one of the minds behind Perestroika, a school of creative activities that has transformed the way of teaching in Latin America, and which is now also flourishing in Europe. He is also an international speaker and has collaborated with companies such as Red Bull, Coca-Cola, Oracle, Walmart, and LinkedIn. In October, he released his first book, Hacked Creativity (translated from Portuguese by me), the result of years of research, classroom practice, and reflection on creative thinking.
In our conversation, Jean shared three central ideas that guide his vision. First, creativity is a trainable skill, accessible to everyone, as long as it is fueled with curiosity, intention, and practice. Second, creating requires action. It is necessary to get ideas into the world, test them, make mistakes, and redo, transforming thought into experience. And, finally, true creativity is born from the attentive eye, that is, from the ability to observe our contexts, connect stories, and transform references into new possibilities.
Between reflections on neuroscience, visual metaphors, and classroom experiences, Jean reminds us that good stories are the inspiration to make things happen, and, as his own trajectory will reveal next, it all starts when we decide to roll up our sleeves and explore what we can actively transform.
To begin with, what led you to study creativity? Was there a specific moment that set you on that path?
I never thought I had that ability to be creative. When I chose to take the Marketing & Advertising course in college, it was never because people said I was creative. They said I was good at “solving problems” or that I was good at “selling things”. My father, for example, always said that I had this commercial vein very present and, as a winemaker, suggested that I work with him doing wine marketing. But that wasn’t for me.
When I entered college, on the first day of the creative marketing class, the professor asked: “Who here doesn’t consider themselves creative?” I was the only person to raise my hand. I thought more people would raise their hands, too. At that moment, I felt like an outsider. “What am I doing here among the creatives?”
But I’ve always been an optimistic, glass-half-full type of guy. I thought that by being there, I could at least learn to be creative. But no, the University never taught me to be creative. It expected me to be creative. It judged me creatively. But it never taught me how to think creatively. As the Advertising side didn’t work out very well, I decided to focus on Marketing and worked for a while in a tool company and in a digital company.
A while later, I did a two-month exchange program in New York and got inspired. I came back with two ideas: the first idea was to make a kind of proto-Netflix in Brazil. Back then, in the US, there was a service where you could choose on a website what movie you wanted to watch, and two days later it was in your mailbox. But I then realized that it wasn’t going to work in Brazil. The other idea was to do something related to bringing people together. At that time, I was the manager of the largest Orkut surfing community, a famous social network in Brazil in the 2000s.
However, as soon as I returned, a friend called me to find out what I was doing. I was out of work at the time. He said, “The Perestroika guys are looking for someone, and I thought of you. I think you will be a great fit.” And I said: “Peres-what? What’s that?” They had created a course, but they wanted to turn it into a school. The course had a creativity class with Felipe, who later became my partner. After watching his class, I thought: “Man, this is something you can learn. And more than that, creativity can be studied.”
It was in this class where Felipe was teaching, in his view, how the creative process works. He’s a naturally creative guy, and he deconstructed his creative process to teach in his class. I was delighted. It was when I decided to study creativity and focus more on the subject.
Your passion for creativity and even teaching it arose within Perestroika itself, where you later took over the class. About the book, when and how did the idea of writing it come about? What was the moment when you realized that you would have to put this experience in a book?
Since I learned to like to read, basically. That was something I started doing late. In my family, I have an older sister, and she has always been an avid reader. I remember going out to play soccer, and she, at thirteen, was in her room reading Agatha Christie. How did she manage to sit and read? I just wanted to play, and my sister read. I couldn’t conceive that. But, in one way or another, reading has always been in my visual reference.
Later, entering the educational universe, I realized that I needed to seek information, but it didn’t start with creativity. I noticed the importance of being able to stop, sit down, and absorb a new way of thinking. At school and college, they direct you to which books to read, which doesn’t necessarily interest us. But one day, passing by a bookstore, I saw a book and thought: “This book is interesting, I liked the beginning, and I’m going to buy it.” And then I started reading frequently, until it became an addiction. Today, I’m a guy who buys a lot of books and reads a lot. It became a great passion.
With this passion, it was in my unconscious mind that it would be amazing to write a book, because I always admired people who did. I remember that the first autograph session I went to was André Carvalhal’s, a famous Brazilian writer, in Rio de Janeiro. We already had a professional relationship that became a friendship. I asked him, “How did you manage to sit down and write three hundred pages?” He said, “Dude, just keep going and writing.”
Then, in 2016, we launched Perestroika’s online course platform. At the time, we were three partners: Tiago, Felipe, and me. We agreed that we needed a minimum of three courses, and each of us had to create one. Felipe was first, I was second, and then Tiago. It was a must.
I started writing the scripts for KGB (Kreativ Gamify Brainstorm), my course on creativity. It was a very cool course and sold a lot. By creating the content for the course, I noticed that I could sit down and write. But it was made of short scripts, where each class had two to three pages. In the end, I had about thirty to forty pages of content. After a few years, we decided to update the course to bring new theories, new authorial movements, experimentation with tools, and so on, because the KGB was already getting outdated.
So, I decided to create a new course, KRIA. That’s where I thought of the creative thinking wheel, which is the backbone of the entire course. I wanted to write more in-depth. I did a lot of research, and that course ended up getting longer. I wrote about eighty to ninety pages of new creativity content.
After a while, I had one of those New Year’s resolutions. I reopened the course script and decided to turn it into a book. But I wanted to write with a slightly different narrative, maintaining a language of dialogue. So far, I’ve received feedback that it seems my book is talking to them. I was very happy, because that was exactly what I wanted. I’ve also always liked the narrative of writers like Malcolm Gladwell and Charles Duhigg, who bring concepts filled with stories. For example, they open the chapter with a story, then bring their idea and, at the end, tie it to that story. This tied me to this narrative a lot, which I didn’t have in my course script.
One day, I went to speak at the first edition of the Web Summit in Rio de Janeiro. A journalist named Angélica Mari from Forbes wanted to interview me, and I mentioned that I was thinking of turning the course script into a book. She was super interested and asked me to send what I already had. Two days later, she replied that it was the best creativity book she had ever read.
That was kind of a breakthrough for me. I had something interesting there and decided to go for it. So far, two years have passed, between writing, contacting publishers, seeing formats, and so on, until the book was born. But it is a construction. It didn’t come by chance.
You not only delved into the theory of creativity, but you also brought your own experience. How did you turn this into a kind of practical guide to creativity? How was structuring the book for this purpose?
Before it became a book, this project was a kind of Frankenstein of materials from several different classes. In Perestroika, our methodology has this thing of building artifacts that help to visualize what we want to teach. For instance, during the pandemic, we developed the BUG course (named after the millennium bug) to place the individual at the center of learning, immersed in two interconnected contexts.
This need for a visualization artifact is very present in our educational arches. I had a lot of things and ways of thinking, but I didn’t have the artifact. I had some metaphors for the creative process. I had things kind of loose. But my backbone was not yet assembled.
So, I started drawing. First, it was the person, because I believe that creativity alone is not enough. It comes from within. The person needs to have the need, the will, and this is very much endorsed by Teresa Amabile, a professor at Harvard Business School. We need to have motivation first, then expertise, and finally critical thinking. For me, that was it. The motivation is the first step.
I also wanted it to have a sense of movement. The development of creative thinking is a process that has a beginning, a middle, but no end. As long as you are alive, you have the possibility to think about more options, to try different things, and to logically develop your way of thinking creatively.
I categorized them into stages. That was another reasoning I had developed, which was the creative levels. I was very bothered by the idea of being or not being. Everyone is creative, but they have different levels. So, the first step is to know yourself and know what level you are at. For example, it’s like playing the guitar. I know how to play the guitar, but if I compare my guitar-playing skills with Eric Clapton, obviously, he plays better than I do. But that doesn’t mean I don’t know how to play, just that my level is lower.
With that came the metaphor of martial arts. You have to “wear the kimono”, which is the moment that everyone accepts that it is. Our belt depends on how much effort you’ve already put into developing. If you haven’t put in any effort, you’re a white belt. And that’s okay. You can improve that.
Then came the neuroscientific questions. I just finished a postgraduate degree in neuroscience, and when I started studying creativity, I really wanted to explore the creative pragmatic side for people who were more skeptical of the creative issue. “Oh no, this is for artists, musicians. That’s not for me.” I’m not just talking about ideas or conceptions. It’s physiological. I discovered neuroplasticity, the myelin sheath, all this by buying books and trying to improve my arguments for classes. I had a lot of this neuroscientific background that I love to bring to the creative field.
Then came the second quadrant. First, you must want it. Then, you have to know yourself, know where you are, and accept yourself in that place. Then, you must practice. You have to focus, test, and experiment, because every time you practice, you can, in fact, modify your brain, the neuroplasticity. Then comes the most practical part that I love about the classes: the challenges of perception or logical reasoning. These are things that make the person interact with you, even if they don’t have a need, or apparently, it’s not something creative.
I reached the third quadrant, which comes a lot in the field of the individual. How is the act of having ideas? How does this act work? There is a system. I created this metaphor of the candy: to remove the packaging is to understand the challenge. Then we experiment, create, create, create. And then we package it again. I feel that people have this difficulty nowadays. How do I create? What will my process be to come up with an idea until it’s ready?
Finally, all of this can be facilitated with techniques, processes, and creative tools, which are the fourth quadrant. I present several tools in the book; some that I learned and made some modifications, others that I simply put in because I found them interesting.
My goal was to reach five quadrants. I couldn’t. But when I got to these four quadrants, I saw that it could have a wheel shape, which is pushed along the “experimentation road”. I felt that it was kind of a puzzle that I was putting together. I wanted to get to this artifact, this creative thinking wheel. I even thought it could be the title of the book, but it turned out to be its backbone.
In your own journey, you started with a creative block, where you thought you weren’t creative, but through your life experiences, you deconstructed this process. Regarding the book, what were your biggest blocks in the writing process, and what did you do to overcome them?
My main block was thinking that I didn’t have the ability to write something interesting enough to be read. As I am used to teaching, it is different. When we express ourselves, there is body language and a voice tone. I’m not a guy who naturally had an easy time speaking. On the contrary, I have always been very shy. Today, I do what I do, but it is nothing more than a great exercise in resilience and a lot of preparation. To this day, I rehearse to teach some classes that I am not used to. I’m thinking all the time about where I can improve.
So, in this place, I know that my physical, sound, and visual performance can, sometimes, make up for a fragility of content. In the book, I don’t have these artifices, so I was afraid that the content alone would not convey the intention and depth that would instigate people to read it. When this feedback came from Angélica, it was a big push. After all, we are talking about a journalist who reads a lot and writes very well.
I swear, I was scared. I said to Angélica, “Look, this is a draft.” And when she gave me positive feedback, I said: “Angelica, please be honest. I want criticism. I know there’s a lot I can improve.” She assured me she was being truthful and said my writing felt authentic. Perhaps because it came from adapting a class script into a book, and I didn’t want to lose how I felt in class, I managed to keep the same tone.
I confess that I wish I could have found more impactful stories that had a connection, the same way I feel when I read Adam Grant or Malcolm Gladwell. I’m passionate about chess, so when I found the Polgár family story, I kind of used it as the backdrop for all the reasoning of the creative thinking wheel. I wanted to launch it soon, but if I had more time, I would have invested more time in looking for more stories like this, where the book would also hold on to the stories and not just the content of the book itself. So, when I was on the verge of launching the book, there was that feeling of “Is it really ready?”
I also eliminated an entire chapter, where I talked about the VUCA world and the BANI world. When I first wrote it, it made a lot of sense. But when I read the version I sent to the publisher, I thought that chapter was boring to read. I expected to receive more constructive criticism from people who had a much greater literary background than mine. And they didn’t. For example, when I commented on it with the editor, he told me that he thought that too. I said, “Why didn’t you tell me that, then?” I eliminated the entire chapter, which was a lot of work, because I referenced it throughout the entire book.
There were times when I also opted for “less is more.” I want people to start reading. My friends bought it, and I asked them to read at least three pages a day. My book is a book that has a lot of interactions with the reader, so I invite people to pick up a pen and write on it. There’s no use just reading the book. You also need to move things around to get results.
I imagine you didn’t have a strict deadline for delivering the book. Also, there’s always that lingering sense that something could be refined: linking chapters more smoothly, rearranging a paragraph, or clarifying a sentence. How did you approach setting and managing your own deadlines?
One day, Flávio Tavares, who is a guy who created several major events in Brazil, sent me a message inviting me to join the list of a publisher to whom they would send books every month. As he knew that I liked to read a lot, he wanted to include me in this partnership. I accepted.
My book project was on hold at the time, and I took the opportunity to ask him for the contact information of some publishers to whom I could present a proposal. He gave me five publisher contacts. I sent a message to two people who I thought might be more interested in the project. First, I sent it to Sextante and Citadel. The people at Sextante read the manuscript and liked it a lot, but as they had just released another book of creativity, the timing was not the best.
At Citadel, I spoke with Marciano, who owns the publishing house. I sent him a WhatsApp saying that I was Jean from Perestroika. He said, “I don’t know Perestroika, but I entered your website and liked it. Let’s schedule a call.”
On the call, we only talked about life, but there was a connection. We had a lot in common and thought alike. At the end of the call, he said that he liked me and that he was going to publish my book. That was something that skipped a lot of steps. I was so lucky. Perhaps that is also why they were more careful about saying what was good and what was not. Closing the deal with a publisher was much faster than I expected.
Already with the publisher, they started to give the deadlines and everything. We closed the contract at the end of last year. I had it in my head that, as I was going to turn forty, I wanted the book launch to be in Brazil, so the date should coincide with my trip there. Our idea was to launch in April, but it wasn’t ready yet. The whole process of editing, proofreading, and designing the cover took longer than I expected.
When it was closer to the end, I squeezed them: “Look, I’m going to Brazil for my cousin’s wedding. I’ll be in Porto Alegre, and we’ll launch the book there. Let’s settle on that date then.” So, I also imposed these deadlines. I turned forty in August, and in October, I officially launched the book.
On a more personal level: how did writing this book impact your own creative process? Did you find yourself “hacking” your own creativity while writing?
Undoubtedly. For me, the coolest thing that the act of writing awakened, and that remains to this day, was my attentive look for cool things. You know that thing about having a folder with references? I already had these folders that I used for my classes. Writing the book, I revisited these folders many times, looking for what I could add. But a lot were left out, too, because there was nowhere to fit in, or I would have to structure something much bigger.
For me, this attentive look and having a place to put them were super interesting. Often, we collect a folder of references, but we never revisit it. The most pleasurable thing was having to dive into these references. Today, this is a complex issue: social media brings us a lot of cool baits, but sometimes a post that seems to have a lot of good or interesting information is shallow or doesn’t have much foundation. You must look deeper.
To include it in the book, it needed a solid foundation. I was particularly careful about grounding it in research and credible references. This process proved essential: first, having an attentive eye, and then deliberately exploring the topic in depth to connect it meaningfully with my writing.
You’ve said that you’re always eager to grow and open to learning new things. If you could start the book project again, knowing what you now understand about yourself and about creativity, would you change anything in the way you wrote or structured it? In what ways might the book have turned out differently?
I would start by collecting good stories and having greater diversity. For example, a story of a family in Africa, of a young woman in Pakistan, of a homosexual in Ireland. You know, something that would show that our creative capacity is born from this diversity, and that it doesn’t necessarily depend on some points that we sometimes think it does.
From the stories, I would try for, let’s say, six stories. I would pull the main learnings, so that they would flow either into the creative thinking wheel or, for each story, have an appropriate quadrant. But I would start with the stories and less directly from my content. In this book, I started with the content. Perhaps that is why it ended up as a more technical book, because it emerged from an educational narrative and not from stories.
I also don’t know if the authors I admire start from this place. But it wasn’t my case. I clearly had my content, my thesis. And from it, I found connections. Perhaps even the construction of my thesis would change based on the interesting stories I could have encountered.
What are the next steps to continue this theme, and how has the writing of this book opened doors to new challenges in your work?
I think the next challenge is to translate the book into English. I could have done the book launch here in Portugal at a friend’s art gallery, but his audience is 99% foreigners. What wouldn’t make sense, because the book is in Portuguese. I was also invited this year to speak at the Web Summit in Lisbon, on the creativity stage. I’m going to connect these two things, but I can’t launch the book there either, because the event’s official language is English.
Without a doubt, the second step is to connect creativity with artificial intelligence. In the book, I write a chapter about AI and the way I imagine it can enhance our creative thinking, especially in the stage of experimentation and the volume of ideas, but we don’t know what is still to come. However, I came up with a way to relate to AI and invite people to relate to it, especially having this creative direction. So, if it’s going to have a Hacked Creativity 2.0, it’s going to be about AI.
I confess that I am a little skeptical of literary productions in the near future, largely because of the ease of writing with AI. I don’t know if I would have that predisposition to put in as much energy as is necessary to write a book, because nowadays it’s easier. I don’t know if I would be strong enough to resist the temptation of having the AI participate in this construction, which may be natural in the future.
I can relate to that feeling. When I finished writing my book back in 2022, it was just before the explosion of AI tools, and writing feels so different now. Having gone through the process of writing a book without AI, how do you view this new way of writing alongside it? What’s your take on this idea of shared authorship or co-creation with AI?
I think AI can lead to a lazier posture in humans. It’s much easier now. For example, it is no longer necessary to structure a text; just throw an idea there, and a ready-made text comes out.
This is nothing more than the furor of some new technology that is useful and productive at this moment, but I think that all this commotion will not be sustained in the medium or long term. We are going to quickly identify what is produced by AI and what is not. And this is something that I have already noticed. For example, posts on LinkedIn: people who didn’t post anything are now writing long texts, and I see that this text has a lot of hyphens and emojis. It was definitely AI. I don’t even read it anymore.
I don’t know if I’m right or not, but it gives me an initial block. I write several texts with the help of AI, but at least I go through the trouble to revise, to edit, to bring my vision, my perspective, my narrative, and my authenticity to the text. There are people who don’t even care about it. This immediacy that we are experiencing will no longer be relevant. We will have to go back to seek, in fact, what the questions we want to ask.
My invitation is to use AI to help us think better, and not just answer what we need. It takes time to mature and create a more refined critical sense as a society, which will be the differential of people who stand out.
In the past, those who stood out were those who knew how to write well. Then came the video format. Then came the reductions in reasoning with Instagram. Nowadays, “everyone” writes because AI writes for them. But there are people who write better than AI. There are people who write better with AI. Our critical sense will notice it and stop rewarding the text for the sake of the text and prefer what actually brings a provocation, what makes you think differently.
I see a long way to go, with a lot of learning, a lot of overlapping information. I am always careful not to fall into the temptation of delegating to AI the construction of something that will be mine. Of course, it takes more work. And again, we return to Teresa Amabile with the importance of motivation. It’s easier for me to ask the AI to write a text about creativity. I ask it to write and I post it, done. But it’s harder for me to actually read it and edit it.
Alternatively, I can say to the AI: “I believe that creativity is not important. Bring me arguments to override that.” It will bring me some points that I may find interesting, but not all. Among those, one can be a starting point for me to look for some research that proves it, for example. The idea is to interact and explore together with an artificial intelligence, something that even with the most solicitous person would be difficult. And I have this “person” available there anytime, who requires more motivation, the desire to make it better. So, at the end of the day, it will end up that the most dedicated people will be able to have better answers and results.
Of course, common sense will continue to be common, and people will be leveled to another level, but to stand out, you will need the intention and perspiration to make it happen.
Jean Rosier’s book Hacked Creativity is available on Amazon. You can also learn more about his work on the Perestroika website or connect via LinkedIn.