Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “Creativity”
June 28, 2022 I had a boss early in my career that almost made me lose my ever-loving mind. Just when we needed to get down to business, he’d meander off on a tangent. I was smart enough to know it wasn’t appropriate to try to wrestle him back to the business at hand, but inexperienced enough to know how …
April 5, 2022 You know how you have this image in your brain about what “creative” people look like? And the kinds of work they do? Yeah, that’s exactly what’s holding you back from being creative yourself! People regularly tell me that they aren’t creative. That they need to take care of business things and don’t have time for that …
February 15, 2022 Ideas are like parking spots: The more you need one the less likely they are to show up. There’s a simple tool, however, that can change all that. This image is a Necker cube. It’s an illustration of a three-dimensional object that’s designed to alternate between two perspectives. One is a cube facing down and left, and …
August 31, 2021 Have you ever felt like the future was out of your control? That anything could come for your job security, or being able to provide for yourself or your family? The number of people out of work hit record highs last year. This made people’s theoretical fear of spiraling out of control an undeniable reality. Dealing with …
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 3, 2020 If you asked 10 different people to define innovation, you’d get 20 different responses. It’s one of those things that seems simple to define and understand but turns complicated when you’re pressed for specifics. It’s no wonder. Innovation has turned into one of the biggest cliché words executives use to talk about how they differentiate their companies …
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 …
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 16, 2019 In 1968, the deputy director for NASA came to George Land with a problem. Land was a general systems scientist who founded a research and consulting institute to study the enhancement of creative performance. The deputy director told Land that they had a lot of smart people working for them, but they needed a way to root …
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 …
April 18, 2019 “Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious after awhile. That’s because they were able to synthesize new things.” — Steve Jobs This quote is one of Steve Jobs’s most famous. When we …
April 5, 2019 Hiero was a tyrant who believed that his goldsmith was cheating him. He didn’t know how to prove it – he suspected the goldsmith was swapping out gold with silver – so he hired Archimedes, a local mathematician and engineer, to prove it for him. This was an important assignment. The object in questions was a …
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 …
March 28, 2017 by Carla Johnson A Harvard grad, Dr. Donald W. MacKinnon was a psychology professor at the University of California at Berkeley who researched creativity. In 1949 he founded The Institute of Personality Assessment and Research (IPAR). After his retirement, he was a visiting fellow at the Center for Creative Leadership. Throughout his career, MacKennon dug deep into …
