Innovation in sports: Chessboxing
One breakthrough moment as a kid was the first time I played a pinball machine that, when you hit…
Category: Creative Thinking
Late bloomers vs. Young geniuses (Critiquing Gladwell, Part 2)
Gladwell’s article, titled Late bloomers: Why do we equate genius with precocity?, makes one major mistake in not addressing…
Why Designers Fail: The Report
Why designers succeed and fail in organizations is mostly a matter of opinion as there’s little data to support…
How to design an office for designers?
One question that came up at my session on Leading breakthrough projects at UIE 13 last week was how…
A million dollars for your best idea
Google, as part of their 10 year anniversary, is launching Project 10100, offering millions of dollars to the best…
And the winner of the invention contest is…
A few weeks ago I ran a little creative contest on inventions people would like to see. The best…
How to diagnose creative failures in organizations
One of the first things I do when asked to help organizations be more creative is diagnose where failures…
Ten Inventions I Want To See
I’m a reluctant technologist. I have a latent love for technology, but 90% of what gets bandied about as…
The irony of creative change
Making a good part of my living as a public speaker means many conversations with potential clients about their…
The creative life of a two hit wonder
There’s a great essay by Suzanne Vega on her perspective on having both a twenty year performing career and…
My favorite living artist: Olafur Eliasson
One of the great coincidences of my life is that my girlfriend in college (now my wife) was a…
Innovation by firing people
If the goal is to get a stagnant project to be more creative or productive, the best move is…
Critiquing Gladwell, part 1
A recent New Yorker had another excellent piece by Malcolm Gladwell, this time about simultaneous invention, the core topic…
Teaching kids creative thinking
The more I learn about creative thinking and about teaching, two subjects of great interest, the more depressing organized…
The pointless technology competition
Rube Goldberg was an engineering student who quickly realized he preferred making fun of engineers more than engineering things…
How to write songs and the creative process
Before the good, the bad. Over on wikihow, the entry on How to write a song has this as…
How Apple got everything right
The recent Wired article on Apple’s management practices is interesting for the wrong reasons. The article makes several points…
Thoughts on Google’s 20% time
Everybody loves to think one little trick can make their organization transform into a super creative powerhouse. With the…
Creator of dungeons and dragons dies at 69
I didn’t read much as a kid, but one book I read cover to cover dozens of times was…
New York Times on Myths of Innovation
As part of her Sunday business column on ideas, Janet Rae-Dupree quotes both me and the book a few…