Creativity

The secret sauce is “socialstructing.”

I gave a talk at the Canadian Marketing Association in Toronto last week. Leaving the hall, I fell into step with a young marketer. She seemed stressed. “How are you doing?” I asked. “I liked your talk,” she said, “but it’s hard. Everyone wants to be innovative but no one wants to make a mistake.” […]

Why gamble on untested strategies when you could quickly apply an approach that’s already been proven elsewhere?

Oppositional goals can actually increase creativity.

Great innovators have long known that the secret to unlocking a better answer is to ask a better question. Applying that insight to brainstorming exercises...

Believe it or not, Pixar was once a scrappy startup. The multi-billion dollar juggernaut with a near-perfect record of churning out hit after hit today was once “a bunch of guys going on their gut” according to Andrew Stanton, a co-founding filmmaker with the company whose credits include writing and directing Wall E and Finding […]

Is there a corporate leader who doesn't extol the virtues of innovation these days? Yet if innovation is so important, why do so many companies have so...

Professors Barry Nalebuff and Ian Ayres recommend a companywide "open" suggestion box that will lead to better ideas.

You need the right state of mind.

If you want creativity, you need to encourage it, and allow time for it to percolate. That was the focus of this year’s Front End of Innovation conference in Boston. Steve Johnson, New Media professor at the Columbia School of Journalism, talked about the importance of creating a “hunch-friendly environment.” That is, give your employees […]

People throughout your organization are energetically pursuing the new. But does all that activity add up to a strategy?

It’s time to make a choice.

The best ideas take time.

Whether you are trying to create a new product, solve problems more effectively, become the most successful company in your industry, or find creative...

Many people believe that good ideas are rarer and more valuable than good people. Ed Catmull, president of Pixar and Disney Animation Studios, couldn't...

Strategic planning has fallen from the pedestal it occupied when it came on the scene in the mid-1960s. Strategic planning failed because it is not the...

I’m worried that the discussion about innovation is losing its vitality and that a handful of beliefs are becoming dangerous dogmas. Two that worry me the most are: Innovation and design should be user-centered — i.e., users are the first and foremost source of insights. Innovation processes should, therefore, start from observation of mainstream or […]

Just look at what Google and Groupon have done to boost productivity.

Last week, there was a wonderful essay in The New York Times about a leadership program created by the old Bell System back in 1952. The all-powerful...

Too much transparency can backfire.