I’ll start with a caveat: Be cautious regarding advice on how to cope during a global pandemic. Unless the individual lived through the 1918 Spanish flu, he or she has as much experience with the current situation as you or I. That said, some advice out there is not only misleading but possibly dangerous. I’m …
Category: Innovation
5 Traits of Creativity Geeks
The timing was perfect: Mere days before leading a workshop on creative thinking at the Florida Creativity Weekend, my memoir Committed was named to a list of "40 Books to Unlock Your Creativity and Get You Started on Your Life's Best Work." I arrived in Sarasota, Florida, feeling I belonged. And that was important, because …
How To Put Your Whole Brain to Work
That's the mission of the creativity workshop I'm conducting on Saturday, March 21st, at the Florida Creativity Weekend in Sarasota, Florida. "Putting Your Whole Brain to Work" will be an 90-minute interactive session with games, storytelling, and of course a whiteboard. Here's the teaser on the conference's website: Does your creative process involve your right and …
Is Creativity Best Fostered Alone, in Pairs, or in Groups?
Collaborative teams spark the most powerful creativity. So Walter Isaacson tells us, repeatedly, in The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution. The power of teams was true in any form, whether it was like minds coming together through common interest, such as MIT's legendary Tech Model Railroad Club; government-funded corporate research …
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When Great Inventors Encourage Future Innovators
I knew when attending the White House ceremony for the latest class of National Medal of Technology and Innovation (NMTI) winners a week before Thanksgiving that I would have to blog on the experience. A logical narrative line to craft would have been the dramatic overlap in creative approaches pursued by NMTI awardees and the varied …
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7 Signs You Have a Creative Brain
What is it that sets a creative thinker apart from the everyday individual? My obsession with that question led me to drive across the United States so I could interview artists about their creativity; that in turn led to my forthcoming memoir. But Dr. Nancy Andreasen's obsession far predates mine. Armed with a PhD in …
5 Creativity Lessons from Hall of Fame Inventors
What are some secrets of truly creative thinking? Who better to ask than Hall of Fame inventors? That's exactly what I did last month when I was able to speak with several 2014 inductees into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, or NIHF, as well as past inductees. As I wrote back in April, NIHF …
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More Creatives With Multiple Talents
She is best known as "the most beautiful woman in the world," but the late silver screen star Hedy Lamarr is remembered in some circles more for the inventive genius she brought to wireless communications, decades before its time. Lamarr was an immigrant from pre-World War II Austria. She left behind a life that had …
Separating Curiosity from Creativity
Can you be creative without being curious? I find myself curious to learn the answer to this question. On some level it seems like asking if you can enjoy peanut butter without peanuts. Loads of creativity scholars tell us that curiosity is what drives creativity. But what if forces in our lives reduce our level …
The Linguistic Legacies of Technological Change
It is an annual obsession of ours: What new technological words have been added to the dictionary? When did "email" make it in? How about "tweet"? Of course, making the dictionary may insure a word immortality, but it doesn't guarantee continued cultural dominance. I use the word "fax" nowadays about as much as I say "defenestration." (Saying …
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The Artist's Road 