Posts tagged creativity

‘How Creativity Works’: It’s All In Your Imagination

What makes people creative? What gives some of us the ability to create work that captivates the eyes, minds and hearts of others? Jonah Lehrer, a writer specializing in neuroscience, addresses that question in his new book, Imagine: How Creativity Works.

Lehrer defines creativity broadly, considering everything from the invention of masking tape to breakthroughs in mathematics; from memorable ad campaigns to Shakespearean tragedies. He finds that the conditions that favor creativity — our brains, our times, our buildings, our cities — are equally broad.

Lehrer joins NPR’s Robert Siegel to talk about the creative process — where great ideas come from, how to foster them, and what to do when you inevitably get stuck.

Follow this link for the audio interview, interview highlights, and excerpts from the book: (http://tiny.cc/advgew)

Seagram’s New Look: a gingerly update to the iconic brand, (http://tiny.cc/ss1ucw)

Art for Exercise: innovative home exercise bike doubles as a sculpture, (http://tiny.cc/lw1ucw)

Persil Starch Crispy Clothes: Henkel designed the product for the needs of the Middle East region. DDB Dubai, in this print campaign for Persil Starch, dramatized the crispness of the clothes by transforming the people into one-dimensional characters in a three-dimensional world, (http://tiny.cc/n61ucw)

The Rise of the Designer Bakery: is there anything more basic, homey and familiar than a loaf of great bread? Yet it has become a luxury, (http://tiny.cc/8e2ucw)

HBR IdeaCast: Designing Spaces for Creative Collaboration. Check out this interview with Scott Doorley and Scott Witthoft, co-directors of the Environments Collaborative at the Stanford University and authors of Make Space: How to Set the Stage for Creative Collaboration. (http://tiny.cc/279a2)

I Want to Go to There: to lure tourists, Norway invests $377 million in stunning nature lookouts, (http://tiny.cc/w8d8c)

Design That Transforms the Eating Experience: food is the most fundamental product we consume, yet most people don’t appreciate the amount of research, design, and engineering that goes into the items at the supermarket or restaurant, (http://tiny.cc/a41dg)

Did You Know? Apple’s former Creative Director now designs bags, (http://tiny.cc/f5b3z)

The Future Graphic Designer: as the world digitizes, the role of a graphic designer or multimedia artist will become increasingly important for companies, (http://tiny.cc/ioo1c)

From Sketch to Still: the dreamy, Oscar-nominated 1920s sets of midnight in Paris, (http://tiny.cc/z9vfp)

Your Guide to planning a Great Conference: ten very good tips for putting on something valuable and memorable (http://tiny.cc/cw9jn)

Setting the Stage for Creativity: Most offsite strategic retreats occur in a resort boardroom with an elegant table and comfortable chairs, a notepad and perhaps a copy of some important charts laid out before everyone’s place. Michael Roberto, a management professor at Bryant University, instead urges you to decorate the room with photos and other materials that might spark dialogue. Have your rival’s latest product on display, for example, or some prototypes from your own innovators. “To think outside the box, CEOs have to set the stage,” he says.

How Do Your Employees Describe You? Connecticut-based business consultant Jesse Lyn Stoner has collected on her Seapoint Center blog funny terms she has heard over the years to describe bosses (http://tiny.cc/1v227)

Accumulated Wisdom ‘Undervalued’ Asset: with so much change occurring in business, consultant Brett Morris says it’s important to remember that when performing a process that didn’t exist five years ago, a person with 35 years of experience has no great advantage over someone with only five years experience – other than accumulated wisdom: “That’s an advantage that cannot be understated. Unfortunately it’s all too often undervalued.”

Clay Shirky on Managing Net Generation Workers: The professor, author, and social-media expert talks about the unique challenges of managing millennial employees (http://tiny.cc/4bdvz)

Quotes on Creativity provided by my colleague, Pavan Kumar:

“The things we fear most in organizations — fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances — are the primary sources of creativity.” – Alfred North Whitehead

“The chief enemy of creativity is ‘good” sense.’” – Pablo Picasso

“As competition intensifies, the need for creative thinking increases. It is no longer enough to do the same thing better … no longer enough to be efficient and solve problems.” – Edward de Bono

“Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things.” – Ray Bradbury

“Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity.” – Edwin Land

“To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.” – Joseph Chilton Pierce

“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” – Maya Angelou

“Things are only impossible until they’re not.” – Jean-Luc Picard

“Anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity.” – T.S. Eliot

“Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous.” – Bill Moyers

Set employees free for a ‘genius hour’: If you can’t free your employees for 20% of their time to pursue innovation of their own inclination, such as Google, how about a genius hour? Each week at Columbia Credit Union, each employee gets one hour, at a scheduled time, to work on new ideas or master new skills. While they do that, their boss pitches in to answer the ever-ringing phones on their behalf. 

Four-to-one odds this will spur staff: Leadership trainer Dan Rockwell challenges you to join him in applying the four-to-one rule: Every negative comment you make must be followed by four positive ones.“Words are rudders; they set and maintain the direction of life. Positive words take you where you want to go.” It required some adjusting, he notes, with “You did that wrong” becoming “I’m confident you can do better.” 

Honest questions, honest answers: Here are two questions for getting more honest answers from your staff and keeping them engaged: What is the dumbest thing you are working on? And where do you think the company is wasting time or energy?

When a weakness can be a strength: If you’re asked in a job interview to name a weakness, blogger James Clear says don’t offer a strength disguised as a weakness, as is common. Instead, offer a technical weakness that is totally unrelated to the job you are applying for, and casually make the point that it is unrelated.

You have to go through the process: Marketing consultant Sally Hogshead says every creative process has five emotional stages: possibility, doubt, agony, epiphany and finesse. Because much of the creative process is exhilarating, it’s natural to want to skip the agony - avoid it altogether, or rush through it. But she argues that the agony is where you create new ideas. It’s actually the best part, where inspiration lives and you create breakthroughs.

Accidental Mysteries Blog: incredible collection of photography, design, art, found objects, pop culture, illustration, vintage stuff, and the magic that can be found in everyday things. Currently featuring incredible photos from the Great Depression. (http://tiny.cc/t6o5a)

Create Your Bedroom On YouTube With IKEA UK. The IKEA UK YouTube channel features a tool for creating your own personalized bedroom - and it doesn’t look messy. (http://tiny.cc/pgxne)

Oh, How Transparent: Shanghai’s shiny new Museum of Glass opened as part of Shanghai’s campaign of becoming a globally important cultural and creative centre by launching 100 museums in a decade. (http://tiny.cc/y6y39)

These Brands Allow Users To Design Them. How’d They Pull It Off? Two bold new logo and branding experiments allow users to redesign the mark. So how are designers approaching the launch of a community, rather than just a design? (http://tiny.cc/xsk5n)

Will We Stop Reading and Start Watching Books?: with technology, e-books are now mini-portals of information and are veering into gaming, interactive programming, advertising, and online forums. Given all of these enhancements, will we forget how to read and end up just “watching” a book? (http://tiny.cc/8xwhf)