Four false myths of creativity from The Innovation Architect blog: Creativity should be fun – brainstorming and coloured post-it notes are preferred to the hard work of challenging existing practices and solving recurrent problems. As a boss, are you prepared to be told that “you have been doing it wrong”? All ideas are good; all … Read more
Five little productive ideas to start the week from five interesting bloggers and authors. The end of busy at Zen Habits from Leo Babauta. “Doing nothing is better than being busy doing nothing.” Lao Tzu. Feeding the Idea Beast at the 168 hour blog by Laura Vanderkam. Where do breakthrough ideas really come from? PS Not checking … Read more
This is another blog post inspired by a TED video. This one on the world of online games by Jane McGonigle. Humans spend 3 billion hours a week spent playing online games. This is a lot. Many American teenagers will have accumulated more hours playing online games than school hours by the age of 18. … Read more
This is relevant for anyone who communicates regularly from a position of authority – doctors, scientists, professors… 3 Types of Experts I have had several people who have expertise say to me “but I haven’t been successful myself”. Toni Nadal isn’t better at tennis than Rafa, but he knows how to get results. Michael Porter … Read more
This question is really a game. Here is how it works: Relate a story of a time when you’ve made a mistake. Retell the story while only relating the actual mistake (without justification). The question is, “Why might it be difficult to do just Step 2?” I read Leadership and Self-Deception and The Anatomy of … Read more
Are some people born lucky? Richard Wiseman, author of Quirkology, describes a number of psychological experiements that he has conducted to understand the role and roots of luck in people’s lives. In each case, people were asked to self-evaluate their level of luck prior to the experiments, allowing Richard to create 2 groups – the … Read more
I was at the Sydney Cricket Ground yesterday and sat in the crowd with my friend Maurice. We watched Ricky Ponting and his Australia team score 267 runs against the Pakistan team on an overcast but warm day – perfect temperature for sitting outside. Maurice shared with me three pearls of wisdom that had been … Read more
Take a look around you. Take a look at the people you work with, the people you meet at parties, even the people you just casually pass in the street. How do they spend their days? Most of them work. They do some other activities as well. They sleep, eat, cook, hang out with friends, … Read more
The conclusion: it doesn’t matter how good the idea, it matters what the “buyer” thinks of you as a person in the first few seconds of your pitch. I have just read “How to Pitch a Brilliant idea” by Kimberly Elsbach in the Harvard Business Review. In 150 miliseconds a “buyer” will have categorized you … Read more
The brain: 3 pounds, you could hold it in the palm of your hand… but it can contemplate the vastness of the universe, the reason for its own existance or why I am writing this post at midnight when I need to be up at 5am tomorrow. How? There are 100 billion neurons in the … Read more