4 Ways To Amplify Your Creativity The holidays are over, the weather is lousy, and we’re sober again. We made all kinds of New Year’s promises, but the big one that will change our careers, if not our lives, is the promise to ourselves to become more creative. In my new book, Creative Intelligence, I show that creativity is learned behavior that gets better with training--like sports. You can make creativity routine and a regular part of your life. That’s true for big companies as well as small startups, corporate managers as well as entrepreneurs. The huge national policy storm brewing over “dwindling innovation” and an “innovation shortfall” also gives creativity an even greater agency. So here are four specific ways to lead a more creative life and boost your creative capacities. 1. Nearly every creative entrepreneur, artist, musician, engineer, sports players, designer, and scientist works with one, two, or a handful of trusted people, often in a small space. So you need to engage with creative people. 2. 3. 4.
Not Existing The other day I noticed that I hadnt heard from my friend in a couple of days. She hadnt checked in or tweeted in 4 days. She hadnt posted to her blog in a couple of weeks. I texted her and imessage “sent the message as text” I started to worry that something had gone wrong. You need not worry, my friend ended up sending a response before I went to bed so all was well. What I was reminded by this whole ordeal, besides for the paranoid framework ive inherited from my mom, was that my friends and I currently live in a world where we dont exist if we dont post to the network. This applies to EVERYTHING. A simple example is ordering food online. If I am hungry and you are not on my default ordering application you dont exist to me. I understand why establishments dont want to take part in the racket and pay up to be on the network. We are currently in an awkward times when we are not fully networked and multiple companies are trying to connect everyone to everything.
Street Fighter: The Movie — What went wrong The flight to Thailand was long. Stephen de Souza wished it were longer. Over the previous decade, from 1982 to 1992, de Souza had established himself as a screenwriting wunderkind. Most screenwriters can't land one blockbuster; he had a baker's dozen to his name, including Commando, The Running Man, 48 Hours, Another 48 Hours and Die Hard 1 and 2. As a bona fide hit-maker, the writer had amassed enough creative capital to do what so many successful screenwriters aspired to before him: become a director. Months before the flight, the snub-nosed and thick-spectacled fortysomething signed his first director's contract. De Souza hadn't cast the female lead. The role couldn't be played by just any woman. You get one shot at being a big-budget, Hollywood director. De Souza flipped through the airline's gratis magazine and glanced at his watch. Who you know The Capcom executives were in a hurry to have the first film ready by Christmas 1994 — roughly a year away. And that's when it happened.
Irrelevant Ideas Lead To Breakthroughs At Reebok, the cushioning in a best-selling basketball shoe reflects technology borrowed from intravenous fluid bags. Semiconductor firm Qualcomm’s revolutionary color display technology is rooted in the microstructures of the Morpho butterfly’s wings. And at IDEO, developers designed a leak-proof water bottle using the technology from a shampoo bottle top. These examples show how so-called “peripheral” knowledge — that is, ideas from domains that are seemingly irrelevant to a given task — can influence breakthrough innovation. Haas and Wharton doctoral student Wendy Ham approached that problem by attempting to define the conditions under which peripheral knowledge is likely to influence breakthroughs. Haas and Ham began mulling this question while conducting research at global advertising firm Saatchi & Saatchi — a font of fresh ideas, Haas recalls. Stocks vs. To help break that down, the authors distinguish between what they call “knowledge stocks” and “knowledge flows.”
10 Job Interview Tips From A CEO Headhunter No two situations are ever exactly the same, but as a general guide, these are the types of questions that could come up in a typical interview. 1. Why don’t you tell me about yourself? This question, often the interview opener, has a crucial objective: to see how you handle yourself in unstructured situations. The recruiter wants to see how articulate you are, how confident you are, and generally what type of impression you would make on the people with whom you come into contact on the job. Most candidates find this question a difficult one to answer. There are many ways to respond to this question correctly and just one wrong way: by asking, "What do you want to know?" The right response is twofold: focus on what interests the interviewer, and highlight your most important accomplishments. Focus on what interests the interviewer Do not dwell on your personal history—that is not why you are there. Highlight Important Accomplishments Stories are powerful and are what people remember most. 2.
Codex Seraphinianus: History’s Most Bizarre and Beautiful Encyclopedia, Brought Back to Life by Maria Popova “You see what you want to see. You might think it’s speaking to you, but it’s just your imagination.” In 1976, Italian artist, architect, and designer Luigi Serafini, only 27 at the time, set out to create an elaborate encyclopedia of imaginary objects and creatures that fell somewhere between Edward Gorey’s cryptic alphabets, Albertus Seba’s cabinet of curiosities, the book of surrealist games, and Alice in Wonderland. Now, for the first time in more than thirty years, Codex Seraphinianus (public library) is resurrected in a lavish new edition by Rizzoli — who have a penchant for excavating forgotten gems — featuring a new chapter by Serafini, now in his 60s, and a gorgeous signed print with each deluxe tome. In an interview for Wired Italy, Serafini aptly captures the subtle similarity to children’s books in how the Codex bewitches our grown-up fancy with its bizarre beauty: Thanks, Willy Donating = Loving Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter. Share on Tumblr
Research--You're Doing It Wrong. How Uncovering The Unconscious Is Key To Creativity Businesses invest billions of dollars annually in market research studies developing and testing new ideas by asking consumers questions they simply can’t answer. Asking consumers what they want, or why they do what they do, is like asking the political affiliation of a tuna fish sandwich. That’s because neuroscience is now telling us that consumers, i.e., humans, make the vast majority of their decisions unconsciously. Steve Jobs didn’t believe in market research. When a reporter once asked him how much research he conducted to develop the iPad, he quipped, “None. It isn’t the consumers’ job to know what they want.” Marketers are living a delusion that the conscious mind, the self-chatter in their heads and the so-called “verbatims” in surveys and focus groups, are the guiding forces of action. Einstein once said: “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. I know this firsthand because I have been “that guy.”
The Surrealist Chart of Erotic Hand Signaling by Maria Popova “You think no one understands / Listen to my hands” In the early 1920s, Surrealism emerged as a new cultural rhetoric and aesthetic rooted in using the element of surprise to open up new frontiers of the imagination, blending the playful with the philosophical. A Book of Surrealist Games (public library), originally published in 1991, is part activity book for grown-ups, part essential art history, featuring word and image games that the surrealists — including Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Pablo Picasso (to a degree), Max Ernst, and André Breton — developed to create their written and graphical art. First person to adapt this into an animated GIF gets a piece of candy. UPDATE: Reader Jamal Qutub did the honors: Donating = Loving Bringing you (ad-free) Brain Pickings takes hundreds of hours each month. You can also become a one-time patron with a single donation in any amount: Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter. Share on Tumblr
10 talks about the beauty — and difficulty — of being creative Radio host Julie Burstein has found the perfect analogy for creativity—raku pottery. A Japanese art form in which molded clay is heated for 15 minutes and then dropped in sawdust which bursts into flames, what makes this pottery so beautiful is its imperfections and cracks. Burstein interviewed hundred of artists, writers, musicians and filmmakers for her book, Spark: How Creativity Works, and heard many of them describe their process in similar terms — that the best parts of their work came from embracing challenges, misfortunes and the things they simply couldn’t control. As Burstein explains in this talk given at TED2012, “I realized that creativity grows out of everyday experiences more often than you would think.” In this talk, Burstein identifies four lessons that creative people should embrace: To hear how Burstein learned these lessons from filmmaker Mira Nair, writer Richard Ford, sculptor Richard Serra and photographer Joel Meyerowitz, listen to her wonderful talk.
Advice to Sink in Slowly: Designers Share Wisdom with First-Year Students in Poster Series by Maria Popova Unpacking the secrets of happiness and creativity one poster at a time. What better way to kick off the new year than with words of wisdom from those who have threaded before us? Advice is subjective. 'to create ideas is a gift, but to choose wisely is a skill' by Ryan Morgan 'Do what you love' by Andy J. 'Take Time' by Temujin Doran 'Use your library…you'll miss it when you leave' by Rebecca Cobb 'Finish what you start* *it may seem insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.' by Irina Troitskaya 'Ignore both of them' by Eleni Kalorkoti 'Go and look outside' by Robert Evans 'You have to leave your room to get there' by Ben Javens 'if in doubt, make tea' by Owen Davey 'trust your gut instincts' by Carys Williams 'Don't be afraid, everything will be alright' by Ben Javens 'collaborate' by Simon Vince 'Believe in the marks that you will make' by Stephie Ginger 'how to make friends in your first term' by Temujin Doran 'eat breakfast' by Always With Honor 'Be free!'
4 Steps To Breakthrough Ideas Gentile has since managed the R&D efforts of new technologies for toy products, theme parks, computer input devices, video games, 3-D web graphics technology, and virtual reality systems, along with their related consumer launch and marketing campaigns. These products have generated over $5.2 billion in retail sales. You have likely come across some of his work. If you ever tried the Nintendo Power Glove, rode Disney World’s DisneyQuest (the first immersive virtual reality theme park ride) or watched Cablevision’s VOOM (the first all-HDTV cable channel), you have been a beneficiary of his technical creativity. Beyond these, his boardroom walls are filled with figurines, toys, software boxes, and more of his inventions. So, when I got a chance to sit down with Gentile and pick his brain for a couple of hours, I felt like a young monk climbing the mountain to learn the secret. It started when his wife was pregnant. I’m surely oversimplifying a process that Gentile has honed over decades.
Picasso on Success and Why You Should Never Compromise in Your Art by Maria Popova “One must have the courage of one’s vocation and the courage to make a living from one’s vocation.” “Imagine immensities. In 1932, the famed Hungarian photographer Brassaï, nicknamed by Henry Miller “the eye of Paris,” was asked to photograph Picasso’s sculptures, which at the time were practically unknown, for the first issue of the pioneering surrealist art review Minotaure, edited by André Breton. But when Brassaï arrived at 23 rue La Boétie and entered Picasso’s studio, he quickly realized that beyond his modest photographic assignment lay a much greater reward — an invitation into Picasso’s private world and the gift of intimate perspective into his singular mind. In 1964, Brassaï — who was as talented a writer as he was a photographer — reached into his vase and decided to make his affectionate records of these dimensional tête-à-têtes public in the remarkable volume Conversations with Picasso (public library). Picasso by Brassaï Well, success is an important thing!
3 Storytelling Tips From "Breaking Bad" Creator Vince Gilligan During our recent chat with Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan on subject of the fifth and final season of the show, he illuminated several storytelling principles that have helped make the series such a success. Here are a few of them. Keep Getting to Know Your Characters While strong characters are essential to any good story, rigidity when it comes to character development can be dangerous. Make It Your Mission To Surprise Predictability has become a hallmark of network television, but Gilligan has been trying to constantly surprise his audience. Embrace Curveballs Gilligan says that while working on Breaking Bad, he’s frequently been thrown curveballs.