Learn how drinking alcohol can help remove barriers to creativity, innovation and coming up with great ideas.
8 Things Creative Thinkers Know that You Don’t
February 14, 2020 People say “creatives” have a natural knack for what they do. I think they do, to a certain degree. But mostly these original thinkers have a way of looking at the world that other people don’t. It’s not a hidden secret sauce. In fact, an article on …
77 Ways to be More Creative
January 9, 2020 Creativity is one of those things that sounds romantically easy to do, but often leaves you scratching your head. Even the creative geniuses get stumped from time to time. The key to getting your creative mojo going is practice. Consistent practice. Since January is International Creativity Month, …
Interview with an Innovator: Tim Washer on Inspiration, Humor and Embracing Vulnerability
November 20, 2019 Mark Twain said that, “Humor is the great thing, the saving thing after all. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations, and resentments flit away, and a sunny spirit takes their place.” He’s not wrong. Studies show that a sense of humor …
Questions or Full Stops
June 13, 2019 There’s an ever-widening gap between what’s natural to us as children and what’s taught into us through the educational system and corporate culture. American author, educator, media theorist and cultural critic, Neil Postman says “children enter school as question marks and leave as full stops.” The same …
Which Type of Employee Are You?
May 16, 2019 In 1968, the deputy director for NASA came to George Land with a problem. Land was a general systems scientist who founded a research and consulting institute to study the enhancement of creative performance. The deputy director told Land that they had a lot of smart people …
Is Management the Enemy of Innovation?
May 2, 2019 A couple of weeks ago I spoke at a conference in Stockholm, Sweden about how to bring new ideas into an organization. At the end, a woman in the audience raised her hand and asked a question: What do you do when management kills your great idea? …
How Carcasses, Cats and Critters Sparked Brilliant Innovation
April 18, 2019 “Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious after awhile. That’s because they were able to synthesize new things.” — Steve Jobs This …
How to Find Insights
April 5, 2019 Hiero was a tyrant who believed that his goldsmith was cheating him. He didn’t know how to prove it – he suspected the goldsmith was swapping out gold with silver – so he hired Archimedes, a local mathematician and engineer, to prove it for him. This …
How to Conduct a Brand Transplant
January 31, 2019 There’s a story of a young boy who showed great promise as an artist. His father, an art teacher himself, sent the boy to schools to hone his talent through rigid academic exercises. A natural finesse had him easily mastering difficult techniques. Instructors entered his work in competitions against …
Why You Have Brand Detachment Disorder
January 17, 2019 In the world of great ideas, there’s iconic brands that get all the credit. Take LEGO, for example. This is a company that sells little rectangular pieces of plastic. But they consistently churn out great idea after great idea. Go to their website and besides ordering products, you can …
How Creative Are You? Take the Test.
March 28, 2017 by Carla Johnson A Harvard grad, Dr. Donald W. MacKinnon was a psychology professor at the University of California at Berkeley who researched creativity. In 1949 he founded The Institute of Personality Assessment and Research (IPAR). After his retirement, he was a visiting fellow at the Center …
If LEGO Built Your Brand Experience, What Would It Look Like?
March 9, 2017 by Carla Johnson Marketers love massively creative work. We hype Super Bowl ads. We study the most innovative companies. And we follow curious minds. But that’s where much of our inspiration ends and reality sets in. We have bosses who would never go for such wild ideas. …
Design Thinking: What It Is and Why It Matters to Marketers
May 2, 2017 by Carla Johnson When people hear the word “design,” it conjures up images of architects, graphic designers and maybe a programmer. These are the people who stereotypically take an idea or concept and bring it into the real world. They put different pieces together, many of which …
Insights vs Measurement. Are You Holding Yourself Back?
February 9, 2017 By Carla Johnson “Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”– George Bernard Shaw Daniel Pink’s book A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future helped me realize I wasn’t crazy. I grew up in a house full of left-brain people – my dad …
Do You Suffer From Brand Detachment Disorder?
February 7, 2017 by Carla Johnson Super Bowl ads are the mother lode of creativity. They’re the most watched show on television every year and the buzz of marketers for weeks on end – potentially years. From this year’s National Geographic spot for its upcoming show Genius and Audi’s ad …
The Secret Phrase that Jump Starts Creativity
January 12, 2017 by Carla Johnson Great ideas seem to be a chicken-or-the-egg conundrum. Are companies fertile with fabulous ideas because they woo creative people? Or is it the creative people who create the culture? Companies that consistently crank out innovative work have learned how to streamline the process – …
Play Your Way to More Innovative Customer Experiences
December 6, 2016 by Robert Rose In January, Facebook held its 50th hackathon, a 24-hour Red Bull- and coffee-infused get-together where coders work on innovative applications or new features for existing products. These kind of events are legendary in Silicon Valley, of course; Facebook isn’t the only company to conduct …
Sleepless in the C-Suite: What keeps CMOs up at night?
August 2, 2016 by Carla Johnson “What keeps you up at night?” For marketers, there’s plenty. The annual Tech Heads survey of marketing directors and business buyers points out exactly this. This year’s results reveal that B2B CMOs are six times more likely to lose sleep than gain it in …
Welcome to the Creative Age – Are You Ready?
May 19, 2016 by Chuck Frey We’re living in the Creative Age, where ideas are the coin of the realm. Are you prepared to leverage the opportunities it can bring your way? During the Industrial Age, brawn ruled the day. Only a relative handful of leaders and managers were paid …
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