My daughter, Chloe, recently had an unfortunately all-too-common experience in school. Chloe’s 4th grade art teacher asked the students in her class to draw a bear. Chloe went to work and came up with a cool purple, odd-shaped bear. She walked proudly to the teacher and handed over her work, anticipating great praise and admiration. … Read more
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Shadan Malik is an Age of Creativity entrepreneur. His company, iDashboards , provides exactly the type of value people seek today – aesthetics and insight as opposed to raw data. Shadan started out as a game developer, and also has a deep engineering background. He realized the businesses trend around a concept called Balanced Scorecards, … Read more
The cover story of Newsweek (July 19, 2010) reports on the state of Creativity in America. The findings, unfortunately, point to the first measurable decline in our collective creative abilities in our country’s history. While we are still the beacon of imagination on the world stage, there is now a leak that could significantly damage … Read more
If you wanted to start a groundbreaking business in 1981 where you could express your creativity and beat your competitors, I bet you wouldn’t have chosen the nail polish industry. At the time, it was a mature industry with deeply entrenched leaders such as Maybelline and Max Factor. Going head-to-head with these giants who were … Read more
“You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to do that!” the common phrase goes. “C’mon man, this isn’t brain surgery after all.” I started wondering why these two disciplines – rocket science and brain surgery – are so highly regarded. They both involve tremendous precision, years of study, mathematical calculations, complex directions, excessive memorization, … Read more
Take a quick look at your schedule for the next two weeks. If you are like most people, your calendar is packed to the gills with endless appointments, meetings, conference calls, and deadlines. When, in this insanely-busy schedule, are you planning to come up with your best ideas? In the always-on, 24/7 business world we … Read more
Bad Power Point presentations have reached the same punch-line status as lawyer jokes, yet most of us still use this ubiquitous tool. Some have moved to Apple’s Keynote, which has cool transitions and flaming bullet-points, but it is still essentially the same thing – a linear presentation system. A hot new company called Prezi finally … Read more
10 Signs that Innovation Will Go Horribly Wrong Big companies – and even modest-sized ones – depend on innovation. But how can you tell when things are about to horribly wrong? This list of 10 danger signs is very helpful for spotting the problems early: https://bit.ly/cuvQUy The Innovation Life Cycle It’s extremely difficult to foster … Read more
Jazz musicians are a curious breed. They study for years to master the rules, only to break them as quickly as possible. They approach their craft with intensity and purpose, but then can let it go and just groove when the feeling is right. I’ve known musicians that are bold and expressive on the bandstand, … Read more
In most free-market economies, there is a supply/demand equilibrium. In other words, if people want to buy potato chips or electricity or sporting goods, suppliers generally emerge to fill these needs. It strikes me as odd, however, that there’s a mismatch going on in the business world. According to an IBM study last month of … Read more