What I learned From Improv Class
A decade ago, on a dare, I took a class in improvisation. I was surprised how much the class…
Category: Creative Thinking
The Amazing Invention of Braille
While studying to write the Myths of Innovation I read hundreds of accounts of how world changing inventions were…
Do you want a bar in your workplace?
Taking the question of how much does your workplace affect creativity in a new direction, the folks at Janelia…
Idea beginnings and endings
The beginning of a very bad idea often feels very good. And the beginning of a very good idea…
John Cleese on Creativity
I recently re-watched this excellent talk by John Cleese (of Monty Python) on creativity. The best parts are after the…
The hypocrisy of bosses asking for ideas
I discovered the CBC Comedy The Newsroom a decade ago, while watching PBS late one night. I didn’t know…
How To Find Your Voice
You have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself – Miles Davis There is a…
Bob Ross, Picasso and Creativity
Growing up in NYC in the 1970s, with a mere 4 TV stations, any show in regular rotation on…
Does Your Workplace Affect Creativity? Mostly No
There’s a misguided trend in looking to architecture to explain why some groups of people are creative and others…
Fermat and ideas are made of other ideas
A nice email from Ro about how the proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem is an example of ‘ideas are…
How To Be Creative – The Short Honest Truth
After a decade studying how creatives do what they do the answer is simple: they work. No one wants…
Triple inspired by a film: Girl Walk All Day
I’ve said before we live in the best age in history to be a creative. It has never been…
Ideas vs. Time: how long does an idea take to develop?
People often ask writers and filmmakers how long they worked on their most recent project. The mistake made is…
Syallabus for my Creative Thinking Course
I used to teach a class at the University of Washington on Creative Thinking. I’d love to teach it…
Creative Thinking Hacks: Video
Here’s my fast track course on creative thinking. Everything you need to know in about 20 minutes, with some…
Glass & Glass on creativity
Ira Glass, of This American Life, interviewed his cousin, the famous composer Phillip Glass. Here are some excerpts on…
The problem with The New Groupthink
I’m an introvert. I like being an introvert. I’m glad someone is clarifying what introverts are or are not,…
In Defense of Brainstorming
Periodically popular articles arise decrying brainstorming as flawed (Jonah Lehrer’s article in the New Yorker, Groupthink: the brainstorming myth, is…
Edison vs. Tesla: two approaches to problem solving
Two heroes in the pantheon of inventors are Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla. Of their many contrasts (ethics being…
The 5 best books on Innovation EVER
Before I share the list of the 5 best books on innovation, here’s a list of 5 things you…