It’s one of the most important skills out there, yet it’s also the most difficult. Mindfulness has so many implications to our lives, both inside and outside of creativity. Mindfulness is about taking control of how we perceive the world. We override the automatic behaviors that dominate our daily life and, instead, we view the
Creative work is often lonely. Most creative work requires long hours and deep thought. Personally, I think one of the most creative jobs out there is computer programming. It requires an incredible amount of problem solving. Unlike most other professions, when you make a mistake as a programmer, you can’t simply ignore it. Add to
What motivates great inventors? A 1991 study by Ford and Nichols looked into this. They asked 247 inventors to list their top three motivations for doing what they do. The inventors mentioned 24 different goals that motivated them to invent. The top 4 responses were: Mastery, Entertainment, Exploration and Happiness. The goals with the fewest
The world is constantly changing. As creative people, we want to be the driver of that change. The innovator would love nothing more than to be the fork in the road that takes the industry in a new direction. Organizations can either be the source of a disruption, or they can be responding to the
People who have studied the psychology of creativity understand that “Creativity” is an umbrella term that tries to capture a wide variety of actions that creative people take. People who see creativity as a single step are left with no action plan. Creativity isn’t something you can “DO” because it’s not actionable. The more specific
As artists and innovators, we often come up with highly unique and interesting ideas. We spend weeks or months creating something amazing. When it’s finished, we are then tasked with getting the word out about it. This is where a lot of creative people fail. They apply their creativity to creating their product or their
Getting my Master’s in Creativity & Innovation introduced me to so many ideas that I was never aware existed. Early on at Drexel University, I was introduced to a smaller field of creativity research called “Personal Creativity.” Generally, when we talk about being creative, we mean that we are creating something that the world hasn’t
More of the same never adds up to the best. Walk around the grocery store and you’ll see thousands of brand names trying to make you think they’re the best. They do this by trying to add something on top of their base offering. Take the cereal isle, which for decades has been trying to
We get frustrated by things big and small throughout the day. For most of us, we shrug it off and move on. But for the inventor, each frustration, each inconvenience, is an opportunity. I love taking my dogs on hikes. One of the common frustrations is that my dog will play around in a bush
Kaizen is the philosophy of continual improvement. Its premise is that small changes over a long period of time can really add up. Kaizen has been central to my personal and profession al life for over 10 years now. It’s so important to me that I have the Japanese symbol for kaizen tattooed on my