Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Creativity”
January 7, 2020 TAKE THE 30-DAY CREATIVITY CHALLENGE One the first day of class, a pottery teacher split her class into two halves. To the first half she said, “You will spend the semester studying pottery, planning, designing, and creating your perfect pot. At the end of the semester, we’ll have a competition to see whose pot is the best.” …
December 17, 2020 Find just the right something for the creative person in your life can feel like a lot of pressure. Some original thinkers are more hands on and others prefer more techie things. Regardless of the type you’re looking to please, here’s a list of 28 gifts that will show them you understand their tastes and want to …
October 22, 2020 For innovative leaders, critical thinking is at the heart of everything they do. We’ve developed a tremendous reliance on technology to deliver data and analytics. Heck, I’m not sure I’d know how to get from home to the grocery store 3 blocks away without Google maps. But researchers from McGill University have determined that all the help …
September 17, 2020 Most successful – not to mention remarkable – discoveries throughout history have come because someone was simply curious. Inventors interested in flight were curious about birds. Curiosity in whales inspired scientists to invest the submarine. A Swiss engineer was curious about how burrs stuck to his dog’s coat and invented velcro. People are born naturally curious. You …
Learn how drinking alcohol can help remove barriers to creativity, innovation and coming up with great ideas.
February 14, 2020 People say “creatives” have a natural knack for what they do. I think they do, to a certain degree. But mostly these original thinkers have a way of looking at the world that other people don’t. It’s not a hidden secret sauce. In fact, an article on Thrive Global listed the most important things that creative thinkers …
January 9, 2020 Creativity is one of those things that sounds romantically easy to do, but often leaves you scratching your head. Even the creative geniuses get stumped from time to time. The key to getting your creative mojo going is practice. Consistent practice. Since January is International Creativity Month, I wanted to give you some ideas about how you …
November 20, 2019 Mark Twain said that, “Humor is the great thing, the saving thing after all. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations, and resentments flit away, and a sunny spirit takes their place.” He’s not wrong. Studies show that a sense of humor can make you mentally and physically healthier, make you more …
November 7, 2019 Last year a CEO in a global organization asked me to dinner. We’ve known each other for more than a decade, and he’s had a steady ascent up the corporate jungle-gym. (We all know it’s not actually a ladder.) Now that he had the view from the top, I asked him what looked different. He was quick …
October 11, 2019 I still remember it like it was yesterday. It was my first “real” job – I was the marketing director for a mid-size architecture firm. Every Monday started the same, with a meeting in the conference room. Just me and the five partners of the firm. I felt completely out of my league. They were well-traveled, experienced …
June 13, 2019 There’s an ever-widening gap between what’s natural to us as children and what’s taught into us through the educational system and corporate culture. American author, educator, media theorist and cultural critic, Neil Postman says “children enter school as question marks and leave as full stops.” The same thing happens to employees as they enter the work world. …
May 30, 2019 Disruptive innovation celebrates the renegade brands that take an industry by storm. Other companies sit on the sidelines watching with envy as they grab market share and generate incredulous revenue. “Why can’t we be like them?” they ask. People believe true innovators are a rare breed. But in reality, most people are original thinkers. They just need …
May 2, 2019 A couple of weeks ago I spoke at a conference in Stockholm, Sweden about how to bring new ideas into an organization. At the end, a woman in the audience raised her hand and asked a question: What do you do when management kills your great idea? Hands down, when I talk about innovation and how to …
January 31, 2019 There’s a story of a young boy who showed great promise as an artist. His father, an art teacher himself, sent the boy to schools to hone his talent through rigid academic exercises. A natural finesse had him easily mastering difficult techniques. Instructors entered his work in competitions against more established artists and the student quickly gained the attention …
January 17, 2019 In the world of great ideas, there’s iconic brands that get all the credit. Take LEGO, for example. This is a company that sells little rectangular pieces of plastic. But they consistently churn out great idea after great idea. Go to their website and besides ordering products, you can build things, share them with friends and watch videos. Five …
April 17, 2018 by Carla Johnson I spent last week at Oracle’s Modern Customer Experience conference in Chicago. One of the refreshing things about the work I do is being able to lift my head from my desk and spend time with really groups of people who focus on customer experience from many different angles. That’s the gift that Oracle’s …
January 4, 2018 by Carla Johnson When I was a kid, I couldn’t wait for Sunday nights. I grew up on a farm and work was never a 9-to-5 gig. With crops, hogs and cattle, we worked whenever work needed to be done. But Sunday nights were different. Sunday night was when we had milkshakes and grilled cheese sandwiches for …
September 7, 2017 by Carla Johnson None of us got into B2B marketing to do boring work. Let’s think about our first jobs; we were fresh out of college…a bright-eyed, 22-year old excited about changing the world. Maybe we started working for a boron mining company and we had fabulous ideas! We were going to do things that the mining …
August 10, 2017 by Carla Johnson I recently shared a post on the brutal truths about creativity that no one wants to talk about, which resonated with many readers. As I’ve talked with people about creativity, they tell me that’s something they ‘aren’t.’ When I take it further get into the transition from creativity to innovation, they tell me that’s …
July 25, 2017 by Babette Ten Haken Leveraging small team big ideas are critical components for business growth, scalability and expansion. In addition, these ideas move employees forward from self-limiting thought processes preventing professional development. I’ve found that team composition is highly variable in small to mid-size businesses. Not only are employees hired to fill individual positions. Also, regard for their …
