I'd like to start today's article with a story about something that shook me up a bit recently. I recently bought a diamond engagement ring at an amazing online store, but needed to get the size adjusted slightly. Instead of sending it back to the USA by post, I decided to find a good quality [...]
Update: The feedback to my interview has been phenomenal, and the BBC has even selected a snippet featuring me from the full interview to be used for the "Radio 4 in four" highlights show, which you can listen to here: They selected the part where I talk about the simple things you can do on [...]
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Computers are becoming creative. Before going any further, watch the short video above. It is a short film called Zone Out, it was created in only 48 hours by a director called Benjamin... ...and it is complete and utter garbage. But that isn't a problem, because [...]
Have you ever wondered what it takes to keep teams coming up with breakthrough creative ideas, year after year? One of the secrets is in how often there is an influx of new talent into the team. While it’s tempting to keep successful teams working together on project after project, after a while these teams [...]
A new study by the US Department of Labour has found that people currently in the most creative professions, including Designers, Musicians and Artists, came predominantly from richer parents. The people in these creative professions were by far and away the most likely to be earning significantly less than their parents earned, usually no more than [...]
According to a recent study by the Unilever Foundation, there is a strong desire for corporations to improve their innovation capability by working more closely with startups. Based on the results of a recent survey of 204 corporate brand managers and 114 startups about how their companies planned to collaborate together, the following results [...]
That morning cup of coffee may be doing you more harm than good. It is certainly affecting your creativity. What’s the first thing you do when you get to work? Even before you open your email inbox and look through all those requests from managers and colleagues? For a large proportion of people, the very [...]
With it’s Kickbox programme, Adobe is giving every employee with an idea the opportunity to go out and experiment on it. The smartest part: they’re completely happy for that idea to fail. Adobe as a company has an innate link with creativity. After all, it produces some of the most widely-used software products used in [...]
When people think of innovation, they often think about companies that are doing things in a fundamentally new way to the current status quo. Often, these innovations need to be "better" (itself a tricky thing to define). But not only a little bit better, but substantially better. As Google famously says, they want to be [...]
What can you learn about brainstorming from an expert who has led more than 1,000 brainstorming sessions? Ironically, it is that "Brainstorming doesn't work". That comes as advice from a new TEDx talk on creativity by Bryan Mattimore, the co-founder and “Chief Idea Guy” of the Growth Engine Company. [Ed: He's also a great guy] Watch [...]
