a-creativity i-creativity

This from David Parrish

Creativity loves a crisis. Especially at times of crisis we need creativity. Indeed some of the most creative solutions in human endeavour have come about because of a crisis.

But what do we mean exactly, by ‘Creativity’? There is artistic creativity: the visual arts, music, literature, design, architecture, film and video, TV and radio, crafts and advertising, for example. These are the kinds of artistic creativity on which the concept of the ‘creative industries’ is based. Examples of artistic creativity are numerous and obvious: the art of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, the literature of Shakespeare, the music of Mozart. More recently there have been modern classics in design, architecture and cinema.

But there is also a more general kind of creativity, which we might call ‘ingenuity’, ‘innovation’, ‘invention’, ‘lateral thinking’, or simply ‘problem solving’. We can find this kind of creativity in all fields of human activity: for example in science, education, politics, finance, engineering, agriculture, health care and warfare.

More here: http://blog.davidparrish.com/files/a-creativity-i-creativity.-david-parrish.pdf

The NZ Creativity Challenge

New Zealand April 2013 The NZ Creativity Chalenge - a gathering of creatives
All the updates will be on https://www.facebook.com/NZCreativity?ref=hl
Head over and LIKE us. Thanks

Design Thinking

Great clip
http://www.designthinkingmovie.com/

Is creativity the No.1 skill for the 21st century?

This from Mark Batey in Psychology Today.

Against a backdrop of uncertainty, economic turmoil and unprecedented change a new picture is emerging of the skills and traits for success (and perhaps even simply survival) in the modern era. At the heart of this essential skillset for the future lies... creativity.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/working-creativity/201102/is-creativity-the-number-1-skill-the-21st-century

Teachers teaching creatively

A great article - from Margaret Haviland
A few weeks ago fellow Voices blogger Shelley Wright wrote a provocative blog on flipping Bloom’s Taxonomy and beginning the learning experience with Creativity. As the person most directly responsible for our school’s professional development I have been wondering what professional development looks like when you turn Bloom’s on its head.

More: http://plpnetwork.com/2012/06/05/encouraging-teachers-teach-creativity/

Imagination and the future economy

The Imagination Age is a way to define the period in which we currently live, between the fading Industrial Era and the coming Intelligence Era, in which machines will be smarter than people.
From an interview with Rita King in Forbes
http://www.forbes.com/sites/drewhansen/2012/08/06/imagination-future-economy/

Creative Mornings

This a great site that offers a monthly breakfast lecture series for creative types. They have recorded a lot of the previous lectures from creative people from all over the world including New Zealand [Auckland]

http://www.creativemornings.com/

Every school needs an innovation day

Although the pressure of having to cover loads of content so that students do well on standardized tests is real, given the success of the Innovation Day, Mathew Bebbington believes every school should allocate one day per week for students to learn freely through projects. Doing so would certainly help students see how what they're learning can be applied to problems in the real world. After all, that's the kind of thing that makes students fall in love with learning, not moment-in-time test scores.


More here: http://www.good.is/post/why-every-school-needs-an-innovation-day/

Freedom to Learn

Google and 3M give their employees sizeable chunks of time to work on their own projects with intriguing results... could the same idea work in schools?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2012/jun/14/freedom-teaching-learning

Explaining and inducing savant skills

From the amazing mind of Allan Snyder: "I argue that savant skills are latent in us all. My hypothesis is that savants have privileged access to lower level, less-processed information, before it is packaged into holistic concepts and meaningful labels. Owing to a failure in top-down inhibition, they can tap into information that exists in all of our brains, but is normally beyond conscious awareness. This suggests why savant skills might arise spontaneously in otherwise normal people, and why such skills might be artificially induced by low-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation."


More here: http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/364/1522/1399.full

Facilitating Insight

Our experiences can blind us. Once we have learned to solve problems by one method, we often have difficulties in generating solutions involving a different kind of insight. Yet there is evidence that people with brain lesions are sometimes more resistant to this so-called mental set effect. This inspired us to investigate whether the mental set effect can be reduced by non-invasive brain stimulation.

More from Allan Snyder and Richard Chi here:
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0016655

Transforming organisations with the arts

“The interesting thing about an artist’s way of work is the ability to think differently and to create something new and unexpected out of something perceived as static and impossible to change.”
Jan-Peter Idström, Chief of Clinical Studies, AstraZeneca


http://creativeclash.squarespace.com/storage/TILLT%20Europe%20Policy%20recommendations%20March%202011.pdf

Where does that creative spark come from?

Stanford's Tina Seelig teaches people how to get their creative juices flowing. She's done this for the past dozen years with students at Stanford and at companies around the world.
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/april/ingenius-seelig-creativity-043012.html

Innovations that will change tomorrow

We tend to rewrite the histories of technological innovation, making myths about a guy who had a great idea that changed the world. In reality, though, innovation isn’t the goal; it’s everything that gets you there. It’s bad financial decisions and blueprints for machines that weren’t built until decades later. It’s the important leaps forward that synthesize lots of ideas, and it’s the belly-up failures that teach us what not to do.http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/06/03/magazine/innovations-issue.htm

Creativity and Education

The Top 12 TED Talks on creativity and education.
http://www.saybrook.edu/forum/creativity/creativity-resources

The Componential Theory of Creativity

The componential theory of creativity is a comprehensive model of the social and psychological components necessary for an individual to produce creative work. The theory is grounded in a definition of creativity as the production of ideas or outcomes that are both novel and appropriate to some goal. In this theory, four components are necessary for any creative response: three components within the individual – domain relevant skills, creativity-relevant processes, and intrinsic task motivation – and one component outside the individual – the social environment in which the individual is working.


More here: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/12-096.pdf

The Creative Edge on Facebook

A lot of links to creativity research, articles, sites etc can now be found on my facebook page.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Creative-Edge/271547596234802
Feel free to go there and LIKE the page and you will have automatic updates on creativity related matters.
Cheers
Wayne

Thinking Creatively: Just Add Milk

Shaking up everyday rituals — even the order of preparing a breakfast dish — may be a way to stimulate innovative thinking.
http://www.psmag.com/culture-society/thinking-creatively-just-add-milk-39972/

How to make a region innovative

To foster economic growth, innovation clusters need to draw on the power of an interrelated “quad” of sectors: public, private, civil, and academic.
http://www.strategy-business.com/article/12103?gko=ee74a

Disruptive Innovation

Harvard Business School professor and the world's most influential management guru according to the Thinkers50, lays out his landmark theory. http://blogs.hbr.org/video/2012/03/disruptive-innovation-explaine.html?referral=00056&cm_mmc=hbd-_-syndication-_-HBSExecEd-_-2010&spMailingID=4062085&spUserID=MjQxOTA0MTU4NTIS1&spJobID=124762181&spReportId=MTI0NzYyMTgxS0

Visual Notetaking

Employees at a range of businesses are being encouraged by their companies to doodle their ideas and draw diagrams to explain complicated concepts to colleagues.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303978104577362402264009714.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLE_Video_Top

Killing Creativity: Why Kids Draw Pictures of Monsters & Adults Don't

Age doesn’t necessarily squander our creative juices, but when we make the leap from elementary school to middle school our worldview becomes more realistic and cynical. The question is: what did Jobs and Spielberg do differently? How do we maintain our naiveté?

http://bigthink.com/ideas/killing-creativity-why-kids-draw-pictures-of-monsters-and-adults-dont?page=all

The Creativity Challenge

“The challenges we currently face are without precedent. More people live on this planet now than at any other time in history. The world's population has doubled in the past 30 years. We're facing an increasing strain on the world's natural resources. Technology is advancing at a headlong rate of speed. It's transforming how people work, think, and connect. It's transforming our cultural values. If you look at the resulting strains on our political and financial institutions, on health care, on education, there really isn't a time in history where you could look back and say, "Well, of course, this is the same thing all over again." It isn't. This is really new, and we're going to need every ounce of ingenuity, imagination, and creativity to confront these problems.” Sir Ken Robinson

A gathering of creatives is planned for April 2013 in Taranaki, New Zealand.

The Creativity Challenge is intended to be a three-day gathering for personal, professional, and organisational creativity — a feast of 120 minute [some longer] - concurrent workshop sessions presented by some of the best creativity leaders in New Zealand and world-wide. The forum will expose participants to a wide range of perspectives on the research and practice of imagination, creativity and innovation. And on top of the scheduled programme, there will be evening salons, pecha-kucha, dialogue sessions, music, dancing, and just plain fun.

Intertested? Contact wayne@future-edge.co.nz

a-creativity: -i:creativity

Creativity loves a crisis. Especially at times of crisis we need creativity. Indeed some of the most creative solutions in human endeavour have come about because of a crisis.

But what do we mean exactly, by ‘Creativity’?

http://blog.davidparrish.com/tshirts_and_suits/2012/04/a-creativity-i-creativity.html

This article is based on a presentation "a-Creativity : i-Creativity" by David Parrish at TEDxNapoli on 14 April 2012.

Innovating by the seat of our pants

The Internet isn’t really a technology. It’s a belief system, a philosophy about the effectiveness of decentralized, bottom-up innovation. And it’s a philosophy that has begun to change how we think about creativity itself.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/06/science/joichi-ito-innovating-by-the-seat-of-our-pants.html?_r=2

The No.1 habit of highly creative people

“In order to be open to creativity, one must have the capacity for contructive use of solitude. One must overcome the fear of being alone.” ~Rollo MayMore here: http://zenhabits.net/creative-habit/

Jonah Lehrer on How to be Creative

Creativity can seem like magic. We look at people like Steve Jobs and Bob Dylan, and we conclude that they must possess supernatural powers denied to mere mortals like us, gifts that allow them to imagine what has never existed before. They're "creative types." We're not. But creativity is not magic, and there's no such thing as a creative type. Creativity is not a trait that we inherit in our genes or a blessing bestowed by the angels. It's a skill. Anyone can learn to be creative and to get better at it.More here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203370604577265632205015846.html

More about habits

Robert Fritz writes "Human beings, by their nature, are habitual. And there is a good reason for this. Habits can make life easier and more convenient. And so the idea of habits, themselves, is this: habits can be a very good thing to have."
But what of bad habits? More here:
https://www.wisepond.com/blogs/2012/03/20/habit-habits?utm_source=sublist&utm_medium=emailmarketing&utm_content=rec1&utm_campaign=aboutyouari

Habits and Creativity

Shared by Shona Glentworth
A habit is something that we do endlessly and without thinking. Imagine if all of us had to think consciously to orient our intentions when we do something in our day to day.

“Your habits are incredibly powerful.” When you are in an environment that supports a habit, you end up carrying out that habit without thinking. If you are interested in habit change, then, you need to become aware of your environment to help stop yourself from behaving mindlessly.”


http://www.josebaldaia.com/intuinovare/?p=4426&lang=en

Talent, Passion and the Creativity Maze

"We live in a world mad for talent. From Hollywood and sports to executive search firms and HR departments around the globe, everyone seeks that special mix of natural abilities and attitudes that will make performance pop. A few months ago, Douglas Conant wrote a terrific blog post on how to find talented candidates for a job. When evaluating a potential hire, Conant looks for a strong mix of three qualities — competence, character, and skill as a team player. He gives great advice on how to find such a person. But he's missing a crucial ingredient."

http://blogs.hbr.org/hbsfaculty/2012/02/talent-passion-and-the-creativ.html#.T0xAJRYLEec.twitter

What is a school for?

The economy has changed, probably forever.

School hasn't.

School was invented to create a constant stream of compliant factory workers to the growing businesses of the 1900s. It continues to do an excellent job at achieving this goal, but it's not a goal we need to achieve any longer.

In this 30,000 word manifesto, I imagine a different set of goals and start (I hope) a discussion about how we can reach them. One thing is certain: if we keep doing what we've been doing, we're going to keep getting what we've been getting.

Our kids are too important to sacrifice to the status quo.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/stop_stealing_dreams/2012/02/stop-stealing-dreams-the-entire-manifesto-on-the-web.html

You can download it in various formats

Creativity and the Aging Brain

"The aging brain resembles the creative brain in several ways. For instance, the aging brain is more distractible and somewhat more disinhibited than the younger brain (so is the creative brain). Aging brains score better on tests of crystallized IQ (and creative brains use crystallized knowledge to make novel and original associations). These changes in the aging brain may make it ideally suited to accomplish work in a number of creative domains. So instead of promoting retirement at age 65, perhaps we as a society should be promoting transition at age 65: transition into a creative field where our growing resource of individuals with aging brains can preserve their wisdom in culturally-valued works of art, music, or writing."


http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/life-art/200903/creativity-and-the-aging-brain

My intertest in this is purely academic and nothing to do withj me getting old you understand!!

Entrepreneurs Need Creative Thinking After the Idea

Shared by Shona Glentworth     http://www.implement.co.nz

Most aspiring entrepreneurs believe their initial idea and inspiration requires the most important creative thinking. Experienced entrepreneurs will tell you that the initial idea is the easy part, and it’s the later implementation, and the competitive business marketing that are the real creative challenges.


http://www.forbes.com/sites/martinzwilling/2012/02/25/entrepreneurs-need-creative-thinking-after-the-idea/

Creative Edge Facebook Page

Hello to all who visit this Creative Edge blog.

I am just letting you know that many more links are to be found on my Creative Edge facebook page. All you have to do is go here and click on like and you will get all the updates.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Creative-Edge/271547596234802

True Innovation

Shared by Shona Glentwoth http://www.implement.co.nz

“INNOVATION is what America has always been about,” President Obama remarked in his recent State of the Union address. It’s hard to disagree, isn’t it? We live in a world dominated by innovative American companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google and Facebook. And even in the face of a recession, Silicon Valley’s relentless entrepreneurs have continued to churn out start-up companies with outsize, world-changing ambitions.
But we idealize America’s present culture of innovation too much."


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/opinion/sunday/innovation-and-the-bell-labs-miracle.html?_r=2

Before I die

Candy Chang is an artist who explores making cities more comfortable and contemplative places. This is her site. Enjoy her projects here.
http://candychang.com/before-i-die-in-nola/

Groupthink

More about the pro's and con's of brainstroming.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/01/30/120130fa_fact_lehrer?currentPage=all

Back to South Africa

I have just heard I have been invited back to Africa in October to run creativity workshops at a couple of creativity gatherings in South Africa and one in Namibia - cool!
http://www.sacreativity.co.za/

I would love to go other places in the world so feel free to invite me.

And you might be interested that planning is underway for a creativity forum in New Zealand in April 2013.

More here: https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Creative-Edge/271547596234802

The Perfect Storm

Welcome to the 21st Century: The Perfect Storm for Creativity by Gerard Puccio, Ph.D.

"I have been in the field of creativity studies for more than a quarter of a century and have never seen a better time to be in the business of helping others develop their creativity, Creative Problem Solving, and creative leadership skills. Yet with opportunity comes risk. There has never been a more important time for creativity because we are in a state of perpetual change that has brought on crisis for many, and opportunity for those with creative foresight, skill and attitude. Creativity is in demand, because life in the 21st century demands it."
http://www.profnetconnect.com/gerardpuccio/blog/2010/12/19/welcome_to_the_21st_century:_the_perfect_storm_for_creativity

Why do people say no

From Marci Seagal
http://www.creativityland.ca/2012/why-do-people-say-no-collecting-thoughts/

I’m often brought into companies who want to overcome hurdles to innovation. They want to move forward and at the same time are reluctant to adopt new strategies and metrics, and to influence new behaviours and attitudes to create new futures. What’s that all about?

Cash can't buy creativity

An open, supportive and stimulating workplace is more important than pay or bonuses in driving the success of fast-growth small-to-medium enterprises, an RMIT University study has shown.


http://www.rmit.edu.au/browse;ID=9pjqmck5wn2n1;STATUS=A

Rules for Writers

Shared by Charles Cave

Writing Tips by Henry Miller, Elmore Leonard, Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman and; George Orwell
http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/writing_rules.html

The Yin and the Yang of Corporate Innovation

In the hunt for innovation, that elusive path to economic growth and corporate prosperity, try a little jazz as an inspirational metaphor.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/27/technology/apple-and-google-as-creative-archetypes.html?_r=2

Offices stifle creativity

Cramped, claustrophobic working environments stifle employees' creativity and means they have fewer 'lightbulb' moments of inspiration, research shows.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/9035811/Claustrophobic-offices-stifle-creativity.html

Simple. Simplex. Simplexity: Interview with Dr. Min Basadur by Dorte Nielsen

It’s not every day you get the chance to meet a person of Dr. Min Basadur’s stature, let alone be given the privilege of interviewing him face to face. It’s perhaps testament to his talent that he is difficult to describe accurately with one professional title. He’s an Author, Thinker, Inventor, Consultant, Strategist, Innovator, Speaker, Researcher, Professor, Problem Solver and Founding Director of Basadur Applied Creativity Inc. and The Center for Research in Applied Creativity.


http://creativityresearch.blogspot.co.nz/2012/01/simple-simplex-simplexity-interview.html

Forget Networking. How to Be a Connector

Shared by Robert Alan Black
We all know people like them, people who seem to know everyone. They're always able to help -- or if they can't, they know someone who can. You meet them for the first time and in 15 minutes, you're talking with them like you're childhood friends. They're successful, smart and funny, with a likable touch of self-deprecation. And they're interested in everything.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/222707

Famous Creators on the Fear of Failure

While intended as advice for design students, these simple yet important insights are relevant to just about anyone with a beating heart and a head full of ideas — a much-needed reminder of what we all rationally know but have such a hard time internalizing emotionally.http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/05/12/fear-of-failure/

Visualising Creativity

The ability to think creatively, and from that innovate, is a key skill in any business. Whether it’s sales, customer service, operations or management, being able to solve problems and develop new products and services is ultimately the difference between business success and failure.
http://blog.mindjet.com/2012/01/visualizing-creativity

Creativity is not what it used to be

Dimis Michaelides' thoughts on creativity
http://www.dimis.org/

How the mind creates ideas

More from Michael Michalko in Psychology Today
"When you are brainstorming for ideas and have a thought, the value of that thought depends upon how you interact with it. We are educated to be critical, judgmental, logical thinkers and to instantly evaluate and judge thoughts based on our past experiences. If there is any ambiguity, the judgment is invariably negative and the thought dissipates back into nothingness. The ordinary mind has no tolerance for ambiguity because it is conditioned to simplify the complexities of life."
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/creative-thinkering/201201/how-the-mind-creates-ideas

Creativity Crisis?

Big Think is a site worth exploring. This short clip featuirng Tom Stewart, then editor of the Harvard Business Review, is one exploring aspects of creativity.
http://bigthink.com/ideas/2864

Free Email Courses

Mindwerx International and the Buzan Centre @ Mindwerx are committed to Tony Buzan's vision of Global Mental Literacy - that is the ability of everyone to understand how their brains work and how to improve the way they think and learn.
10-Day How to Mind Map®
10-Day Teaching Others to Mind Map®
8-Day Introduction to Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats®

http://www.mindwerx.com/free-email-ecourses

Creativity and Mental Illness

Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder have been linked with creativity. The relationship may occur because some of the genes that contribute to schizophrenia and bipolar disorder also contribute to creativity.

http://psychnews.psychiatryonline.org/newsArticle.aspx?articleid=334891

Creativity: Dissonant Goals into Radical Harmony

The idea that visionary geniuses are best-poised for radical innovation is simply misleading. Maybe Jobs or Steve Wozniak were visionary geniuses working in uninterrupted solitary isolation … when they weren’t busy working crazy-long hours with the rest of their über-talented crews in the cultural cradle of high-tech innovation.


More here: http://www.fastcodesign.com/1668889/the-truth-creativity-comes-from-blending-dissonant-goals-into-radical-harmony

12 steps for fostering your creativity

Marie Patchen in her blog Mynx Writes says "If I could, I would take every single bit of advice in this poster and turn it into one of the 12 Steps For Fostering Your Creativity this weekend. However, rest assured that you don't need to stop at the 12 steps listed here today. Find your own copy of this poster, frame it up, and hang it in your writing space - and don't be afraid to open yourself up to being the creative creature that you are."


http://mynxwrites.blogspot.com/2012/01/12-steps-for-fostering-your-creativity.html

Why creativity

Why Creativity? looks to the heart of the very question addressed in the title. With insightful and motivational answers from some of today's most creative minds, including Julien Smith, David Meerman Scott, Patrick Algrim, Matthew E May, Gregg Fraley, Mike Brown, and Frank Chimero. You can download the ebook right now, for free from http://aspindle.com/ebooks/why-creativity/

Creative Dissidents: Stop Shortchanging Talented Kids Who Challenge Us

Mark Phillips is a columnist for the Marin Independent Journal and the The Answer Sheet. He has this to say.
"A few years ago I spent time at Eagle Rock School, a wonderful school in Colorado for so-called "at-risk" kids from all over the country. I noticed that many of the best students were highly creative kids with extraordinary leadership, presentation and communication skills. Exploring further, I discovered that many of these same students had been in and out of two or three high schools prior to coming to Eagle Rock; in some cases voluntarily, in some cases not."


http://www.edutopia.org/blog/creative-dissidents-mark-phillips

POPUPHOOD

The POPUPHOOD is a new urban initiative and small business incubator revitalizing Oakland, block by block. This is an innovative strategy for breathing new life into the city’s retail sector in downtown’s hip, historic Old Oakland neighborhood.


http://vimeo.com/33187820

The Introversion - Creativity Link

The ability to reach inside your mind to produce and develop great thoughts is a quality that we all cherish. How can you best develop your own creativity? The answer may lie partly in the makeup of your personality and partly in your ability to marshal certain brain powers


http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201201/the-introversion-creativity-link-how-build-your-brains-alpha-power

The Art of the Idea

Shared by Francois Coetzee

John Hunt is an award-winning playwright, author, and Worldwide Creative Director of TBWA. He has witnessed again and again the power of original thinking to transform both companies and individuals. At the Berlin School President's Lecture, John will be sharing his ideas about what creative leadership means today as he presents his new book, The Art of the Idea. In this book Hunt addresses everyone from the global boardroom to the man on the street, demonstrating how to create space so ideas can breathe. Copies of his book will be available at the event for purchase.

Part 1 of 6: Start here and follow the links on the side

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGpDIV-PIrY

It takes Two in the Innovation Tango

Greg Fraley has his say about the effectiveness of brainstorming.
http://www.greggfraley.com/blog/?p=2658

Effective Brainstorming Works

A recent New York Times article by Susan Cain challenged the effectiveness of brainstorming. Here is the link to Susan Robertson's rebuttal.

http://ideastogo.tumblr.com/post/16173123532/groupthinkrebuttal

Beyond Brainstorming

Creativity is an idea-shaping process. Ideas themselves are a source of other ideas—and a useful strategy to remember something is to associate it with other ideas. One method of catalyzing the processes of creativity and memory is Tony Buzan's Mind Mapping technique.


http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/psychology-masala/201201/beyond-brainstorming

Miniature Pot Hole Gardens

British artist/gardener Steve Wheen has been installing these gardens around East London for the past year and a half.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/keenan/20-miniature-pothole-gardens

That bad time made me more creative

Many people face challenges in their lives they not only overcome, but are able to use for enhancing their creative work.

Mixed-media and glass artist Ginny Ruffner recovered from a near fatal car accident and a coma for five weeks and was confined to a hospital for five months.
Her story here: http://talentdevelop.com/5454/ginny-ruffner-that-bad-time-made-me-more-creative/

To make creativity sustainable, don’t wait.

Shared by Robert Alan Black

Mere ideas aren’t worth anything.

When professional creatives are paid it’s because they either have worthwhile knowledge and experience that they can actively educate others about, or because they create work that sells.

In both cases, the only way to make creativity sustainable is to do something with your ideas.

http://www.creativesomething.net/post/16408033437

Introversion and creativity

The ability to reach inside your mind to produce and develop great thoughts is a quality that we all cherish. How can you best develop your own creativity? The answer may lie partly in the makeup of your personality and partly in your ability to marshal certain brain powers.


http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201201/the-introversion-creativity-link-how-build-your-brains-alpha-power

How to Squeeze Creativity From Your Employees

The makers of an Oscar-nominated short film app weigh in on managing uber-creative employees, running a studio like a start-up, and why CEOs should take more business trips.


http://www.inc.com/eric-markowitz/how-to-squeeze-creativity-from-your-employees.html

Brian Wilson and Creativity

via Tara Grey Coste and the American Creativity Association

Lives are messy. Maybe that's why we try to put them in little boxes with neatly printed labels. Albert Einstein becomes "brilliant physicist." Ezra Pound is "crazy poet." Actors, musicians, authors, scientists -- all boiled down to a handful of words.

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/13/living/brian-wilson-creativity/index.html

Technologies impact on creativity

Has the Internet spoiled creativity? Enhanced it? Or is creativity just changing with the rest of the world?
http://blogs.psychcentral.com/research/2012/creativity-under-pressure-in-the-new-media-landscape/

via Tara Grey Coste and the American Creativity Association

Creative Reinvention in 50s and Beyond

Reinvention, encore careers, Don't Retire, Rewire, "Now I can wear purple" -- Boomers in the third age who want to change their lives are now in the spotlight. Many of us want to exercise our minds, bodies and creativity in new ways. But, what does it do for us to challenge ourselves to do new things? Is it just more fun?


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/karma-kitaj/creativity_b_1180007.html

Take a Line For a Walk: A Creativity Journal

This isn’t your typical sketchbook. Robin Landa, Professor of Design at Kean University in New Jersey, collaborated with some of the nation’s top creative experts to bring readers a brainstorm session in the form of a journal. Contributors include Rick Valicenti of 3st, Pentagram’s Michael Bierut, and design critic Jessica Helfand, among other well-known artists and designers. “Consider this journal your creativity coach or personal exploratory zone sans pressure,” Landa writes in the introduction. Seattle’s Modern Dog Co. designed the book.


http://www.designersreviewofbooks.com/2012/01/take-a-line-for-a-walk-a-creativity-journal/

The Art of Junk: 7 Creative Approaches to Trash Reuse

The concept of "recycling" usually refers to the breaking down of used items into raw materials and then using those materials to make new items. In contrast, the concept of "reuse" includes both using an item again for its original function, as well as for "new-life reuse" where it is used for a brand new function.


http://www.cultcase.com/2008/04/art-of-junk-7-creative-approaches-to.html

The Future Belongs to the Curious

"We are all lifelong learners, from day one to twenty-thousand-and-one, and that’s why we keep exploring, wondering and discovering, yearning and learning, reaching with more than just our hands… The future belongs to the curious.”
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/01/11/the-future-belongs-to-the-curious-skillshare/

Is your clutter killing your creativity?

From Goeff Goins

"Clutter is not my friend; it is my enemy.

Clutter is procrastination. It is the Resistance — a subtle form of stalling and self-sabotage. And it keeps me (and you) from creating stuff that matters.

The mess is not inevitable. It is not cute or idiosyncratic. It is a foe — and it is killing our art."

http://goinswriter.com/clutter/

Bringing your whole brain to work

Michelle James of The Center for Creative Emergence, shares her expertise on the brain and its effects on human behavior … specifically as it pertains to creativity. We talk about stories, improv, somatics, natural resistance, risk-friendly work cultures, generational creaitvity, discovery sessions, and more in this 30-minute interview.


http://wemeanbiz.tv/2012/01/04/creativity-in-business-bringing-your-whole-brain-to-work-michelle-james/

Finding creative inspiration

Guy Garvey, Isaac Julien, Martha Wainwright and other artists give their top tips for unleashing your inner genius.

https://apps.facebook.com/theguardian/culture/2012/jan/02/top-artists-creative-inspiration

Creativity Has Become the Elephant In the Board Room

From Jim Prior in the Huffington Post
In 2012, politicians, economists and expert commentators will undoubtedly continue to speak out on how creativity and innovation are essential if we are to overcome the current economic malaise. Yet, for every creative company that commits to doing thrilling things, there are many more dull businesses throttling new ideas.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-prior/creativity-has-become-the_b_1180607.html

How the Unconscious Mind Boosts Creative Output

New research finds we’re better able to identify genuinely creative ideas when they’ve emerged from the unconscious mind.
http://www.miller-mccune.com/culture/how-the-unconscious-mind-boosts-creative-output-38841/

Effective use of creativity and innovation

Learn six important rules on how organizations can use creativity and innovation to boost performance. Nancy Napier, professor of strategy and executive director of the Centre for Creativity and Innovation in the College of Business and Economics, shares insight gained from her research into that question in this week’s Beyond the Blue faculty podcast “Effective Use of Creativity and Innovation.”

http://cobe.boisestate.edu/cci/2012/01/04/beyond-the-blue-podcast-effective-use-of-creativity-and-innovation-with-nancy-napier/

Are we getting dumber?

"We are mentally lazy. Our education has conditioned our brains to circumvent deliberative and creative thinking wherever possible through rote memorization and robotic learning of formulas and principles. We have not been taught how to think for ourselves, we have been taught what to think based on what past thinkers thought. We are taught to think reproductively, not productively. We have been trained to seek out the neural path of least resistance, searching out responses that have worked in the past, rather than approach a problem on its own terms. This kind of thinking is dehumanizing and naturalizes intellectual laziness which promotes an impulse toward doing whatever is easiest or doing nothing at all."


From Michael Michalko http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/creative-thinkering/201201/the-idiocracy-theory

Dr Suess for Adults

Based on Dr. Seuss's final book before his death, this is a story about life's ups and downs, told by the people of Burning Man 2011.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahv_1IS7SiE&feature=share&oref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fl.php%3Fu%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.youtube.com%252Fwatch%253Fv%253Dahv_1IS7SiE%2526feature%253Dshare%26h%3DcAQGEUccpAQG0M-s-i_5hFXpyouUkQ2-ViRHMUEuQoo2PfA&has_verified=1

Creativity - what is it and how do you express it?

Perspectives from a bunch of creative people.

http://www.business2community.com/strategy/ponderings-creativity-what-is-it-and-how-do-you-express-it-071836

7 ways meditation increases creativity

Our creative intelligence is not accessed by effort in the conventional sense that you learned at school or work. We cannot try or strive or strain for it, any more than we can strive to have fingers or feet. It’s more about dissolving the internal barriers that come between us and our innate creative potential, so we can align with it and allow it to flow more freely.


Meditation is a doorway between our inner and outer worlds. Between “reality” (the seemingly solid world that we can see, hear, smell, taste and touch) and an elusive “something else” we sense beneath, between and beyond what those five senses can grasp.


Meditation offers enormous benefits for everyone, and a set of particular benefits for those who are engaged in a creative activity like writing.


http://janefriedman.com/2012/01/02/meditation-increases-creativity/?mid=574

Four Types of Creativity

Creativity can be either emotionally or cognitively based, and it can also be spontaneous or deliberate. That gives you the four quadrants.
http://www.whatmakesthemclick.net/2011/02/03/100-things-you-should-know-about-people-57-there-are-4-types-of-creativity/#.TwsgmsnQ2jo.facebook