Hussain Almossawi, Designer and author, INNOVATOR'S HANDBOOK

Welcome back to our podcast, Unlocking Your World of Creativity. We are so pleased to welcome on our program today a designer, a creative director, a filmmaker, an animator, and a man that wears many more hats, Hussain Almossawi. 

Hussain Almossawi is an innovator, product designer and visual effects artist who has worked across industries and around the world consulting for companies such as Nike, Apple, Google, Adidas, Intel, and Ford Motor Company, among others. He is a regular keynote speaker on innovation and design and has taught at several universities. In 2019, Hussain founded Mossawi Studios, a multi-disciplinary design studio specializing in creating memorable, iconic, and bold experiences. He loves blurring the lines between product design, visual effects, and storytelling.

In today’s episode, we discuss: 

• Hussain’s new book The Innovator's Handbook, a short guide to Unleashing Your Creative Mindset and we get to hear a short excerpt from Chapter five, Cultivate Curiosity.
• Encouragement for young creatives moving up in their career
• Lastly, what’s coming up next in Hussain’s creative future 

“As a designer, as a creative, the way I look at it, you can either act or react. You can be a leader or a follower. That's the cool thing about it, there's no right or wrong.” 

The Innovator's Handbook, a short guide to Unleashing Your Creative Mindset  

In Hussain’s book he helps designers and creatives 

• harness their fire, 
• flex their courage, and 
• supercharge their ideas to create remarkable products, services, and experiences.

What was Hussain’s intent when he decided to create this book? 

• He wanted to be a quick read, 
• A short, fun read with lots of illustrations in it. 
• Something that was not overwhelming to him. 

He explains that Innovation always felt overwhelming to him, even the books that he has that are super insightful. He tried to break it down. Create something to get a person’s ideas going and start to make the reader think outside the box. 

**At 11:23 minutes we hear a short excerpt from Chapter five, Cultivate Curiosity that Hussain reads for us. 

Encouragement for Young People and Inspiration

Hussain’s advice to somebody who is young in this space or wants to get into it is:

• Always be humble and hungry. 
• Always try to see how you can go to the next level. 
• There's no right and wrong in innovation. Every idea can become something.
• Dream big, think big. Don't limit yourself. 

“Fear. It all goes back to fear. Fear is the number one thing that stops you from coming up with ideas, fear of speaking, fear of thinking out loud, fear of sharing ideas with other people and so on. So, be fearless. Be humble, and be hungry. And that will take you very far.”

** Where you live shouldn’t be an inspiration for what you create. It doesn't matter where you are, he says. There's always hidden stories that you can use as your insights when you're designing.

What next?

1. First, Hussain is trying to find ways to blend the digital space and the physical space. Mixing the two and taking him back to the idea of intersections and mixing two things together. He has found it’s opened a lot of new doors to be more innovative and creative and