Jonah Lehrer: Fostering Creativity And Imagination In The Workplace Beethoven would try as many as 70 different versions of a musical phrase before settling on the right one. But other great ideas seem to come out of the blue. Bob Dylan, for example, came up with the lyrics to the chorus for "Like a Rolling Stone" soon after telling his manager that he was creatively exhausted and ready to bail from the music industry. Scientists are now learning more about how such moments occur, says science writer Jonah Lehrer. "Moments of insight are a very-well studied psychological phenomenon with two defining features," Lehrer tells Fresh Air's Dave Davies. Scientists have determined that people in a relaxed state and a good mood are far more likely to develop innovative or creative thoughts. "They have an incredible track record of [innovation] — they've got almost 1 to 1 employee: product ratios ... At 3M, every engineer has an hour a day to do whatever they want: whether that's work on a side project or simply tinker with a hobby. Nina Subin On hard work
The Disrupters: Working Outside The Business Norm Growth Needs Space: A BBH Cannes Speech (With A Difference) Last Friday in Cannes, BBH’s own Sir John Hegarty gave the following speech co-authored with co-founder Nigel Bogle (Nigel was unfortunately unable to join him due to illness). The premise of their speech is powerfully simple: growth needs space. Space needs difference. Of course we could simply have put the video of Sir John’s speech here on the blog, alongside the slideshare. However, as @jeremyet puts it: ‘given the opportunity to celebrate the power of difference, we wondered whether we could develop something fast that would give the viewer of the filmed speech a different and enhanced experience. Cue vidazzl, which brings to life relevant keyword searches from across the web as you watch the speech. Sir John Hegarty at Cannes via vidazzl.com Gabor (Creative Technologist) adds a note on the choice of technology and the time frame: ‘The oldest email I found in my mailbox about vidazzl is just a bit more than a month old. vidazzl credits: Jeremy Ettinghausen – Creative Director
Five big ideas from five big thinkers. | NEXTNESS 1. Nicholas Felton. Let data tell your life story. Last week, Facebook released its newest and arguably most important update: Timeline. It lets you tell the story of your life through milestones, events, and -- crucially -- data, so that over time what you read, listen to, watch and do will combine to tell the story of your life. Timeline was inspired by Nicholas Felton, poached by Facebook to join its product team after five years of developing complex and beautiful life ‘Annual Reports.’ Nicholas says, I don’t know exactly when my love for charts began. “His work was a huge inspiration on a lot of the big ideas that we presented today,” Facebook VP of product Christopher Cox said at Timeline’s launch. More: Nicholas Felton’s website | blog | On Twitter @feltron | Daytum, the site he developed to assist people track their own data. 2. She calls the concept behing her curation ‘combinatorial creativity‘: Her blog gathers the dots we need to connect to come up with something new. 3. 4. 5.
Ibm's report creative leadership report july 2011 The Creative Method v2 Mindset Architecture While one may not agree with Hamlets’ statement that “there is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so”, it is clear that our mindsets matter a lot in how we perceive life, how we are perceived and the degree of success we may have in our varied endeavors. In rapidly changing and chaotic times an agile mindset can be critical to success. While there are many personal trainers to help sculpt our bodies into somewhat supple forms, there are few folks who show us how to exercise our minds to be as flexible as they need to be. Here is some of what I have learnt over the years: 1. Three in particular: Globalization. One can fantasize as much as one wants but these three forces are unstoppable and now the Internet (“Connection Engine”) acts like Viagra on them, where each force connects to and rejuvenates the other. All the fretting, complaining and hoping that these three realities go away is a complete and total waste of time. 2. 3. Look at the world through a different lens. 4. 5. 6.
5 Rules for a Creative Culture by Ben Chestnut, Founder of Mailchimp 1. Avoid rules. Avoid order. 2. 3. 4. 5. (via FastCompany) Ken Robinson On The Principles Of Creative Leadership Sir Ken Robinson is among the world's elite thinkers when it comes to creativity and innovation. The author of Out of Minds: Learning to be Creative, a 10th anniversary edition of which was published in March, and The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, Robinson has dedicated much of his professional life to helping governments, educational systems and businesses understand that creativity is not a fanciful luxury. "Creativity is not some exotic, optional extra. It's a strategic issue," said Robinson while in Cannes where he was invited to speak about the necessity for creativity in innovation. Here Robinson talks about making creativity a priority, his disdain for the term creative industries, leadership from the middle, and why in times of economic crisis creativity is an urgent imperative. I've always believed that we all have these immense natural talents--we don't all know what they are and we have to discover them.
Le grand retour des publicitaires dans les médias sociaux Citoyens ! La demi décennie qui vient de s’achever avait annoncé la mort de la publicité dite “classique”. Print, TV, affichages auraient du connaitre un déminage en règle, au profit d’une nouvelle ère pour la communication ; des disciplines nouvelles avaient donc vu le jour comme par exemple le social media marketing ou encore le marketing expérientiel. Il s’avère que si de nouvelles pratiques ont effectivement explosé ces dernières années, elles n’ont pas concurrencé la publicité mais ont bien au contraire renforcé sa présence et son impact. Des chiffres éloquents : la publicité en croissance presque partout Carat a récemment mis à jour ses prévisions 2011 : un redressement majeur a vu le jour aux US tandis que le marché asiatique continue d’exploser. Les études, héritage de la publicité et implémentation de nouvelles méthodologies “digitales” Dans une économie de l’attention, il ne suffit pas d’envoyer un message pour que celui-ci crée du consentement auprès de cibles ou publics.