Defining a Legacy–How David Hodge created Miamideas

Intro: Welcome to Listen For Insight. I’m your host David Ternik. We have for you 

David Hodge, President of Miami University, and his insights on innovation and 

creativity in education. I send you now to our interviewers…Korey Smith and 

Amanda Burke.

Korey: What inspired you to make this the year of creativity and innovation at 

Miami? What was sort of the background that got that started?

President Hodge: The year started when I received an electronic–an ebook–from 

a former faculty member here on creativity and I read this book over the summer 

and I was going wow you know what, I haven’t thought about some of these things 

before and it was really pretty cool and so I sent it around to some others because 

he had suggested that this might be a good summer reading book for the next 

summer. 

So I thought ok so let me shop it around. So I thought this could be potentially very 

quite nice and so I did and I got back this incredibly strong feedback from people 

who said wow this this is pretty cool this could work. And then they said this may 

not be the right book for it but the idea of having this kind of a book could be really 

cool. And the more we talked the more I realized given this response why restrict it 

only to the summer reading program where we have the incoming freshman, as 

important as that is lets, let’s see if we can’t expand the influence. And from there 

that was the pathway into thinking about it as a yearlong enterprise on the part of the 

university. 

What’s different though, I think, or what I thought was really distinctive as I started to 

talk about making this the year of creativity and innovation–one of the first things 

that I heard from people is ok that’s great so it’s fun to highlight it. It’s important to 

make sure that people recognize the importance of creativity and innovation but we 

really want to make sure that we have a lasting legacy from the year…that we want 

to be a different university as a result of these activities long-term permanent 

changes not just a year of celebration. And so I thought that was really important 

and the more we thought about it the more we focused on two major overriding 

goals. 

Number one is we know that we need to produce graduates that are more creative. 

That people everywhere are looking for creative individuals and every one of us, no 

matter what job we’re gonna have, no matter what occupation we end up in, the 

more creative we are the more successful we are going to be in those positions. So 

goal number one: figure out or begin the process of figuring out how through our 

pedagogy or curriculum and so forth, we can produce graduates who are more 

creative and therefore more impactful. 

And then secondly, how can we be a more creative university. How can we 

continue to evolve in ways that are true to our vision and our mission, true to our 

values and yet be more flexible and end up being better able to do the things that we 

want to do. So those are the two big goals that emerged from this. 

It all started with one email…with an ebook about creativity. Shared it with others, 

said great idea maybe–not the right book– but great idea. And by the way this is 

good for the whole university and therefore the year of it– and the year of creativity 

and innovation. And as a result, we hope to have some really long-term significant 

impacts at a path that Miami was already on but we’ve hopefully accelerated and 

emphasized that.

Korey: So you mentioned this idea of increasing people’s creativity. So do you think 

that creativity can be taught or is it that some people are just born with that ability or 

in other words what is sort of this nature vs nurture idea of creativity?

President Hodge: Well, the two questions you asked, I would say yes to both of 

them. Yes, it can be taught. And, yes, some people seem to have it more naturally 

than others, but all of us all of us can find a way to enhance what we do. I don’t 

consider myself a particularly creative person but I’ve been astonished at how I’ve 

started to check myself. I get into a solution to something and then I’ll go well what 

am I assuming here that’s blocked me from thinking about this in a novel way and 

leading to a better solution? So absolutely, positively no question about it. We can 

find ways to be more creative.

Korey: In your annual address you cited this idea and you mentioned earlier of 

creativity being so desired by future employers and you also mentioned the idea that 

creativity and innovation are actually on the decline. So what do you think is, sort of, 

blocking either the university or just the country or the world as a whole from 

becoming more creative if that is such a desired quality? Why aren’t those, why isn’t 

there more initiatives like there is the Year of Creativity and Innovation at Miami? 

President Hodge: I think the criticism is largely focused on what we’re doing in K-

12 and how the trends there are not good trends. They are not trends that are 

nurturing creativity but they are trends that are trying to set standards and standards 

that are actually…they may seem good on the surface… but because we’ve been so 

rigidly trying to adhere to those standards, they are actually forcing us away from 

investing in more creativity and innovation. 

This is what Sir Ken Robinson, who will be our commencement speaker, is so well 

known for, and as you may know he’s the most listened to person in TedTalk history 

and a large part of his core message which is our K-12 system is broken. It’s not 

doing what it needs to do in terms of enhancing and encouraging creativity in our 

children. 

Amanda: Another thing you talked about in your annual address is having these 

habits of mind to encourage yourself to be creative. So have you worked on 

developing some of these habits of mind for yourself? Like what are these habits on 

mind that you’ve adopted into your personal routine?

President Hodge: Well there…there are certain small tactics that you can use 

about how to ask a question differently and I reference a number of those in the 

annual address. And these are just tactics which say ask this question or ask that 

question or ask the question differently or ask this question in another way yet and 

every time you do that it it it takes you down a different path. So if you want to solve 

a problem you might turn out to say, what could I do to make this worse. And you 

start out and you go ok and you start to do it and you say okay wait a second and 

then you start to open up your mind and say here are some new solutions that I 

hadn’t thought of. 

So it’s those kinds of techniques I think that we need to practice on a more regular 

basis in order to just naturally do it, you take a problem and say how do I take… 

imagine it to be a cube… how do I take that problem and just turn it around and look 

at it from this side, that side and the next side? These tactics, these techniques 

these questionings or approaches are simple ways in which you can learn to do that 

systematically.

Korey: So you ended the address by encouraging people to learn more about 

creativity and innovation. So, as you’ve led this initiative of creativity and innovation 

at Miami for this year and you’ve sort of maybe learned more about what those 

mean, what is something that you have learned or something that you’ve grown 

personally, just from being involved in the year of creativity and innovation?

President Hodge: I think that I’ve been awfully impressed by how many people are 

interested in this field and in this area. We come back to why is it important? Well 

it’s important because we live in a fast changing global world. What this means is 

that when ideas are emerge that their potential impact is huge because we’re now 

global but that those who get the idea out first have a huge advantage because they 

are the ones who reach the global environment first and reap the benefits of doing 

that. So in one macro sense, that’s what this is all about. And that’s a significant 

motivator in in and of itself. 

But what I’ve also found is that talking to a lot of people that this desire that I 

described earlier my own desire my intrinsic motivation my desire to always be 

better and seek something that’s going to be better is actually in most people. And 

what we are trying to do as a university, certainly, as well as with our students is to 

stimulate that activity, there is a hunger there, people actually say hey I want to 

figure this out, I want to figure out how do my job better. 

For the university as a whole, our emphasis on lean management has been one of 

the really productive areas. I don’t like that term very much because lean suggests 

just trimming away to get slimmer and all of that, when in fact what it is is a 

continuous improvement process where you take a problem or you take something 

that you view as being substandard and say how can we think differently about this 

process , how can we re-design it, how can we get rid of unnecessary steps and 

yield an outcome that is probably less expensive which is one the of the goals we 

have, but more importantly, most importantly, that its better and and and that kind of 

experience is is a tremendous feedback, 

So it builds momentum and people just have that reinforcing and reinforcing and get 

hungrier and hungrier for it, it’s addictive in the right way for people to believe in 

doing this. It also creates a degree of efficacy, a meaning for ourselves its its I like 

what I’m doing I like who I am I like the organization I am a part of because I believe 

I’m having an impact and I’m making a difference. 

So for me one of the biggest things of this year is to just see the level of enthusiasm 

that people have and that they embrace this. And I think it really starts from this 

desire above all else to to make a difference and to achieve good things and to 

create outcomes that are better than the ones we have.

Korey: I know that you were involved with getting with a group of students after the 

summer reading book, um can you just talk a little bit about that and maybe how you 

saw some of that desire in you know the very incoming students to further their 

creativity and innovation?

President Hodge: Well we, we had this little exercise that we were doing where we 

had them making a video and doing all of these other sorts of things and and in that 

the part of it was we started out with kind of getting to the power of yes and it’s a 

simple technique where you um ask someone uh you you make a proposal like in 

this case it was ah the original conversation was about some new uh hero uh you 

know marshmallow man or whatever it was and the other person’s reaction was to 

be be critical at first in a negative way and say well it’s not going to work because of 

this or it’s not going to work because of that. And, and yet when we turned that 

around in the next stage and started to say now your answer is yes and, um, I was 

not fully prepared for the dramatic impact it had on the way the students had a 

conversation. Not only did they get more engaged, the volume in the room went up, 

the energy went up, and it was it was just startling to see it. So that was an example. 

We had experienced it ourselves, those of us who had the sessions in the previous 

day’s workshop where we had all gone through the same thing and uh had the same 

personal experience and we said okay, okay, so we were in a special case. It’s not 

going to happen with the students. Wrong. It happened big time with the students uh 

and it was really very encouraging to see.

Korey: Have you been able to promote that yes and type of thing in people that you 

interact with that are not students or are pretty far removed from the idea of 

creativity and innovation? More focused on maybe business or running a university?

President Hodge: Yes, we’ve ah, in the in the president’s cabinet we’ve tried a 

number of these things, ah, deliberately trying to do this, try this yes and sort of 

thing. And but again, it’s one of those things where it’s a technique that you might 

use to make yourself more aware, but then if we do it right, it’s that we’ve kind of 

changed part of the tone of how we interact on regular business throughout the year. 

And I think that’s where the biggest impact has come is that we’ve kind of 

internalized that and said, there are different ways to approach, approach these, 

let’s not put the hypercritical phase on it to begin with. Let’s let’s have our idea 

dump. Let’s throw the ideas out there, let them go, build on them, say yes and yes 

and as often as we can, see where it goes. And I think we’re seeing much more of 

that happening right now amongst this group.

Korey: What advice would you give to us or just Miami students in general as we go 

out into the real world about how maybe we can use creativity or use innovation that 

we’re learning here in the future?

President Hodge: Well, the first thing I would say is it’s all about attitude. The 

most important thing that you have is just the attitude that you want to make 

something better that you feel that you have possibly the power to do so which is 

committed to that, you are driven by it that’s number one. No question about it. 

Number two is keep reviewing, come back and read a few things about creativity 

and so forth on a regular basis to kind of renew and spark your interest in that. Take 

a few techniques that you think are ones that you really feel comfortable with and 

that you like to use. Such as instead of solving the problem, making it worse and 

how that might work you know something like that. If that’s something that’s 

comfortable for you and it’s worked, make it work. 

The last thing I would say is in creativity we think that we focus on the individual 

being more creative, but the truth of it is, it is groups who are going to be more 

creative; and so the question is how can you learn to be a better group member. 

How can you learn to lead groups and how to have group dynamics be one in which 

people are challenging each other and going off of these different directions. Doing 

all these sorts of things, and then bringing them back together again to find a 

solution. Ultimately, that is where the biggest impact will be. Solving complex 

problems collaboratively and creatively.

Host Voiceover: We asked President Hodge to give us any last advice on 

innovation and creativity.

President Hodge: It just, it comes back to the, to the fundamental notion that we 

can all enhance our creativity individually and as groups, ah as teams to be more 

precise. Ahh I think it’s an exciting time to be in a world that we live in because there 

are so many ideas swirling out there we can reach out, we can grab them, we have 

access to the kinds of information some technologies the previous generation could 

only have dreamed of, it’s just a fantastic experience, in in that regard. So, if we can 

find ways to spur that creativity and innovation umm we will individually lead richer 

lives and we’re going to have more impact on the organizations that we work with 

and serve. That’s pretty good motivation I think. 

Korey: Well thank you for taking the time out. Before we let you go, we just need to 

do a little technical thing. At the end of all our podcasts, we have the interviewee just 

say their name and then a quick word about who they are and say thank you for 

listening for insight. So if you could just say your name and who you are and then 

say thank you for listening for insight.

President Hodge: Yes, I’m George Clooney

[laughter]

…

President Hodge: I am David Hodge, President of Miami University, and thank you 

for listening for insight.