Category Archives: Creativity

Creativity across the entire enterprise

Posted on by

My colleague (and former roommate) Greg Stene is ramping up a new initiative. Greg has always been insanely bright and creative, but in framing his new business he’s asserting the importance of creativity in a way that I think doesn’t occur to most business people.

They’re still in the process of pulling the launch together, but here’s the first punch:

…the truth of being creative is deadly serious if you’re in business, government or the arts.

We’ve got to do more with less. And we’ve got to gain a competitive edge.

Creativity51 teaches organizations how to think more creatively, to gain that edge.

See that? Creativity = Resourcefulness. Budgets are tight, and conventional methods may lack efficiency and effectiveness. Continue reading →

Stew Friedman: become a more creative leader – think small

Posted on by

Stew Friedman has compiled a pretty impressive résumé through the years: Practice Professor of Management at the Wharton School, founding director of Wharton’s Leadership Program and of its Work/Life Integration Project, former head of Ford Motor’s Leadership Development Center and author of the bestselling Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life. So when he says that the key to effective leadership in times of turmoil is to be adaptive, flexible, and innovative, it makes sense to pay attention.

It all boils down to “playful creativity”:

Now, more than ever in my experience, people are feeling a need for greater control. When you believe in your own power to generate new ways of getting things done — that is, when you have the confidence and competence to produce meaningful change — then you are less likely to succumb to the stomach-churning anxieties that come from not knowing how you’ll deal with whatever obstacle that’s next to be thrown in your path. Continue reading →

Brainstorming? Here’s the biggest collection of resources we’ve ever seen

Posted on by

Most organizations brainstorm, and the savvy ones do so in ways that promote associative thinking and discourage challenges. There’s time for critique later – brainstorming is where you want to get every idea out, whether it’s viable or not.

There are plenty of rules and recommendations and guides and strategies for making brainstorming work, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen so much of it all collected in one place: courtesy of the Forensic Scientist Blog, here are 100 Online Brainstorming Tools to Help You Think Outside the Box.

Never mind that they use the term “think outside the box” – this is a must-bookmark resource.