The Creativity Crisis Back in 1958, Ted Schwarzrock was an 8-year-old third grader when he became one of the “Torrance kids,” a group of nearly 400 Minneapolis children who completed a series of creativity tasks newly designed by professor E. Paul Torrance. Schwarzrock still vividly remembers the moment when a psychologist handed him a fire truck and asked, “How could you improve this toy to make it better and more fun to play with?” He recalls the psychologist being excited by his answers. The accepted definition of creativity is production of something original and useful, and that’s what’s reflected in the tests. In the 50 years since Schwarzrock and the others took their tests, scholars—first led by Torrance, now his colleague, Garnet Millar—have been tracking the children, recording every patent earned, every business founded, every research paper published, and every grant awarded. The potential consequences are sweeping. Plucker recently toured a number of such schools in Shanghai and Beijing.
IDEO’s Culture of Helping Artwork: Freegums, Celestial Plane, 2010, fully tileable ink drawing, 24″ x 36″ Few things leaders can do are more important than encouraging helping behavior within their organizations. In the top-performing companies it is a norm that colleagues support one another’s efforts to do the best work possible. That has always been true for pragmatic reasons: If companies were to operate at peak efficiency without what organizational scholars call “citizenship behavior,” tasks would have to be optimally assigned 100% of the time, projects could not take any unexpected turns, and no part of any project could go faster or slower than anticipated. But mutual helping is even more vital in an era of knowledge work, when positive business outcomes depend on creativity in often very complex projects. Helpfulness must be actively nurtured in organizations, however, because it does not arise automatically among colleagues. Leadership Conviction The Two Sides of the Helping Coin Processes and Roles
Important Lessons in Creativity from Ed Catmull, Pixar Founder and Disney Legend I have read many books on creativity, but the one that towers far above them all is Amy Wallace and Ed Catmull's Creativity, Inc. It was given to me by my head creative genius, Brian De La Torre, who wanted me to better understand the creative process and what it takes to come up with consistently awesome creative work. The themes in this book, however, might surprise you. When It Comes to Commenting on Creative Work ...There are many important factors that come into play here, but the most important tenant that was installed by Ed Catmull is that the story must come first and be prioritized over all else (including egos, titles, technology, time and budget). That's easy to say and a hell of a lot harder to live up to. To avoid this, Pixar created a safe zone when seeking feedback on its movies. Creativity Brilliant Ideas Take TimeIt almost sounds clich, but outstanding creative work takes time. You ARE a Creative PersonTo tell yourself, "I'm not creative" is a lie; pure and simple.
How Netflix Reinvented HR - HBR Artwork: Freegums, Good Vibrations, 2011, acrylic on wood, 8′ x 15′ Sheryl Sandberg has called it one of the most important documents ever to come out of Silicon Valley. It’s been viewed more than 5 million times on the web. But when Reed Hastings and I (along with some colleagues) wrote a PowerPoint deck explaining how we shaped the culture and motivated performance at Netflix, where Hastings is CEO and I was chief talent officer from 1998 to 2012, we had no idea it would go viral. We realized that some of the talent management ideas we’d pioneered, such as the concept that workers should be allowed to take whatever vacation time they feel is appropriate, had been seen as a little crazy (at least until other companies started adopting them). But we were surprised that an unadorned set of 127 slides—no music, no animation—would become so influential. People find the Netflix approach to talent and culture compelling for a few reasons. The first took place in late 2001. “OK,” I said.
Picasso on Intuition, How Creativity Works, and Where Ideas Come From by Maria Popova “To know what you’re going to draw, you have to begin drawing.” “Inspiration is for amateurs — the rest of us just show up and get to work,” painter Chuck Close memorably scoffed. “Show up, show up, show up,” novelist Isabelle Allende echoed in her advice to aspiring writers, “and after a while the muse shows up, too.” Legendary composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky put it similarly in an 1878 letter to his benefactress: “A self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood.” Picasso having lunch at the Brasserie Lipp, chatting with Pierre Matisse, Henri Matisse's son. This was one of the questions the famed Hungarian photographer Brassaï posed to Pablo Picasso over the course of their 30-year-long interview series, collected in Conversations with Picasso (public library) — the same superb 1964 volume that gave us Picasso on success and why you should never compromise creatively. I don’t have a clue. Donating = Loving Share on Tumblr
Designing A Happier Office On The Super Cheap When Google set up shop in New York City in 2012, the Internet was flooded with pictures of its stunning new $1.9 billion space. The world marveled at lounges with deck chairs and slides, eco-friendly kitchens stocked with healthy food, and rooms designed to look like the inside of a tiny Chelsea apartment—complete with fake bathtubs and stovetops—for employees who like the idea of "working from home" at the office. Most companies don’t have Google’s budget; they can’t simply buy a new building, gut it, and redesign it from scratch. Business leaders who are tight on resources and stuck with an existing space may find it easier to ignore the question of office design altogether. But according to Elliot Felix, founder of Brightspot, a strategy firm that helps organizations rethink their space, this is entirely the wrong approach. Eight years ago, he led the team that wrote Google’s global design guidelines. 1. When it comes down to it, great design is simply about solving problems. 2.
This Is What Your Grocery Store Will Look Like In 2065 Grocery stores aren't really known for innovation; 50 years ago, a supermarket down the street might have looked basically the same as it looks today. But 50 years in the future—as the food system reacts to a changing climate, water shortages, and shifting technology— you might find things at your corner store radically changed. In The Future Market, a pop-up grocery store that will be built in New York City next summer, a group of designers will work with the food industry to demonstrate what the bodega of 2065 might look like. You might, for example, walk into the store with a digital food ID that tells the store your allergies, food preferences, and dietary needs, and then you might shop on a touch-screen shelf that automatically delivers your order—possibly picking fresh vegetables from an in-store hydroponic farm on the way. The pop-up store will also include details about each fictional product inside.
Slack More than a decade ago, Stewart Butterfield set out to create an ambitious online game with his wife at the time, Caterina Fake. It didn't go anywhere. But the photo-sharing service they invented on the side, Flickr, turned out to be a keeper. History repeated when Butterfield again tried to create an online game and ended up producing Slack, a collaborative messaging platform for business use that has become a phenomenon since its launch in August 2013. Slack entered a crowded category, competing against established players such as HipChat, Flowdock, and Campfire. Only 24 hours after Slack launched, 8,000 companies had signed up. Slack still feels like a powerful instant-messaging client, but much of its potential stems from the institutional knowledge that companies build up as they use it: "Every discussion, every decision, every link, every document," Butterfield says.