Use a forgotten sleep pattern to tap into your creativity It happened again! Last night, I went to sleep around 10:30 pm and woke up around 2:30 am with my brain completely fired up and intent on keeping me awake. And so I struggled with my mind to find peace and calm to go back […]
Psychological Distance: Brilliantly simple way to boost your creativity In this fascinating Scientific American article, the authors (Oren Shapira and Nira Liberman) tell us that creativity is not bound by the sole innate characteristics of an individual and can in fact be changed based on situation and context. Consider this experiment: 2 groups of participants from […]
A very creative way to promote ideas within a group: Mutual Fun In the following video, Professor Hayagreeva Rao from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, delivers the message that killing ideas is way more important that collecting ideas. Now, there’s the right way to do it and the wrong way to do it. In most companies, the decision […]
No, this issue is not about the (mostly) undeserved reputation some office dwellers have with poor hygiene. And BTW, the irony of a Frenchman talking about poor hygiene is not lost on me. This post is about creativity and a very simple way to make you more creative, In his recent book about creativity (Imagine, […]
I have been working for the same company for many, many years. When I talk to my friends from college, they ask me how could I be working for the same company for so long? I tell them I’m still having fun and still doing things that interest me. In asking them why they have […]
OK, you’ve set your mind to be more creative/innovative, but where do you start? I’m sure you’ve heard the expression “everyone’s a critic”. It describes the (good? bad?) habit people have of critiquing things that they find faulty or not up to their expectation. The next time you find yourself in that situation, do 2 […]
Innovation doesn’t always come from experts. Beware of the “curse of knowledge” It’s the early 1950s. Ruth Handler watched her daughter Barbara play with paper dolls, and noticed that she often enjoyed giving them adult roles. At the time, most children’s toy dolls were representations of infants. Realizing that there could be a gap in the […]
A lot of people don’t consider themselves very creative or innovative and yet they can be excellent photographers Now, you may ask: what does being a photographer have to do with being an innovator? To me the thought process is the same. You weren’t born a photographer but at some point you made a conscious choice to buy a […]
Let me start with this a true, personal anecdote… Many years ago, I was at a party chitchatting with a young lady, when the inevitable “what do you do for a living” question came up. The following ensued (with some embellishments): Her: what do you do for a living? Me: why don’t you guess? (I […]