We recently connected with Eric Christen and have shared our conversation below.

Eric, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s jump right into how you came up with the idea?

From an early age it was clear to my family and some school teachers that I had an exceptional imagination. I won 2 art awards at ages 9 and 13 (drawing and poetry) and my drawings of spaceships, aliens, superheroes and alternative landscapes scared my parents but were encouraged by the high school art tutor. Having an eclectic and fertile imagination is not a societally defined career title and for a couple of decades I was confused. I wanted to be a film maker, an artist, a designer, an architect, a writer and an inventor all at once. After graduating from design college with 2 distinguished creative awards (London winner for imaginative visions in the year 2084, national lighting design award) I settled for a career in Interior architectural and furniture design. But parallel to this career, which took me to the USA, I wrote several books and recorded over 60 inventions. In the USA, I was exposed to the concepts of Innovation coach and creative consultant and when I investigated the companies was surprised that most of them were specialized or just plain uninteresting. I felt certain I could offer a greater diversity of creative coaching and so in my 50s I set up my creative consulting website christolides.com which has 20 categories of innovative examples, from design and art to invention and original fantasy books.

Eric, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am an eclectic imagineer. This means, by my own preferred definition, that I am seriously talented in several creative fields. These include: art, industrial, graphic, and furniture design, architecture, creative writing, fashion, and invention. But one can study the 20 pages on my creative consulting site christolides.com. There are no professions for this range of abilities and so I decided to become an innovation guide, creative consultant and conceptual imagineer at around the age of 50. In the last 10 years I have spent time writing several original books of fantasy, philosophy, invention and absurd humor! This has been very satisfying though I haven’t made a substantial effort to market them. In fact, I could use a marketing or business partner. I am now getting ready to sell my inventions, one by one, and have started negotiations with potential investors. As a creative consultant, I can offer outstanding ideas and concepts to anyone, providing I have enough knowledge of their field. I am not an IT or space technology person so would need some training before I could generate relevant ideas.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

My primary mission is to express, complete and put out as many new concepts and ideas as possible before I die. Money has never been as interesting to me as generating exceptionally original ideas and concepts from invention and design to stories and artwork. My ideas are big. I am not interested in inventing a new kind of screw but rather answer and develop questions like what is the best possible use of computers? I have also written books of wild and groundbreaking short stories (Titanium Sushi, and Quantum Nipples) where I have tried to break all the literary and story structure rules. I am extremely happy when I achieve something that I have not seen or read about anywhere in the world. If I can sell these new ideas that is just a bonus.

Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?

I am old school and prefer to meet people in person. I find the internet, though convenient, extremely boring. I am going to tell you how I got a substantial project while living in Cyprus and working as a design consultant. At the time I was working for a primary lighting fixture distributer and designing lighting arrays in nightclubs and beach pubs. Everyday, I would pass by this rather ugly dark cylindrical office block of about 20 floors. One day, I stopped to look at it and walked around, thinking about how it could be improved. I knew of these mini floodlights from China called RGB floods – and then the vision of a continuously changing lighting effect that revolved around the whole building from top to bottom, entered my mind. I could clearly see several finished possibilities. So I went to the reception area and asked if it would be possible for me to meet the owner or perhaps the manager. Three days later I got a call and was invited to the top floor presidents office and explained my vision to him. A week later the new lighting design project was begun and my lighting partner took me out to a restaurant to enjoy the very best Greek food. The light show that evolved became a landmark in the city of Limassol.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.christolides.com
• Other: Creative Consulting email: [email protected]

Image Credits
Teacup Snail (Eric Christen /Katharina Klasen)