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.
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. 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.” Freud once conceded: “Everywhere I go I find a poet has been there before me.
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. “The central idea of peripheral knowledge really resonates,” says Wharton management professor Martine Haas. After all, who can’t think of examples when ideas that seemed to bear almost no relation to a given problem paid off in some unexpected way? 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. Stocks vs. Cooking or Archery?
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. 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. Managers need to identify and promote the creative circles within their organizations. 2. 3. 4.
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. 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. Step 1: Change the question Gentile was once asked by some researchers to help them figure out how they might commercialize robots they had been working on. It started when his wife was pregnant. 1. 2. 3. 4.
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.
How Remix Culture Fuels Creativity and Invention: Kirby Ferguson at TED by Maria Popova From Bob Dylan to Steve Jobs, or how copyright law came to hinder the very thing it set out to protect. Remix culture is something I think about a great deal in the context of combinatorial creativity, and no one has done more to champion the popular understanding of remix as central to creativity than my friend and documentarian extraordinaire Kirby Ferguson. The Grey Album is a remix. One thing to pay particularly close attention to are the many examples of how liberally and broadly Bob Dylan borrowed from other creators, appropriating, modifying, and building upon their work: It’s been estimated that two thirds of the melodies Dylan used in his early songs were borrowed — this is pretty typical among folk singers. This is the essence of the popular arts in America: Be a magpie, take from everywhere, but assemble the scraps and shiny things you’ve lifted in ways that not only seem inventive, but really do make new meanings. Donating = Loving Share on Tumblr