Jonah Lehrer's 'Imagine: How Creativity Works' Video

It seems like everywhere you turn (on the internet), there's a thought piece, review or Q&A about Jonah Lehrer's new book, "Imagine: How Creativity Works." The 30-year-old science writer studied sexy examples of creativity (Bob Dylan) as well as unsexy ones (Swiffer) in his quest to understand that mysterious thing called inspiration, and his work seems to have touched a nerve. Now one of Lehrer's most provocative passages -- a defense of frustration as a necessary phase during problem-solving -- has been transformed into a short movie by animator Flash Rosenberg (side note: great animator name!). Which is great, because who doesn't love big thoughts expressed in drawrings? Rosenberg does the animation equivalent of liveblogging to a narration of Lehrer's words, and as expected, the story of Archimedes in the tub makes for righteous visuals.

Creativity Lessons from Charles Dickens and Steve Jobs - Anne Kreamer - Harvard Business Review

Creativity is the most essential skill for navigating an increasingly complex world — or so said 1,500 CEOs across 60 countries in a recent survey by IBM. And yet federally funded research and development — creativity, institutionalized — is down 20% as a share of America's GDP since the late 1980s. Private R&D spending has also tailed off since then, when it brought us breakthrough innovations like laser printing, Ethernet, the graphical user interface, and the mouse. And that was just from one company's private R&D engine, Xerox's PARC. At the same time, experts fret that our public school system doesn't foster enough creativity in our future workforce. All of which makes it easy to worry that we'll run out of creative leaders producing creative goods. But I think the declinism is overwrought. And that's because some of the best paths to encourage innovation are surprisingly simple.

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Exploring A 6 Year Case Study Evolving into World's Best Innovation Practice Behaviors

I thought you might like to know about a highly successful webinar we ran recently “How A Mature International Financial Services Organization Succeeded in Turning Innovation Into A Core Value for Success". The webinar explored how against the most turbulent financial times of recent history, Allianz UK over 6 years built and implemented a powerful innovation ecology that now contributes directly and measurably to the organization’s growth and value. It is one of the best examples of innovation practice globally I have come across and have had the pleasure to write and speak about. Interestingly,

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Entrepreneurs Need Creative Thinking After the Idea - Forbes

Most aspiring entrepreneurs believe their initial idea and inspiration requires the most important creative thinking. Experienced entrepreneurs will tell you that the initial idea is the easy part, and it’s the later implementation, and the competitive business marketing that are the real creative challenges. There is a tough balance here to achieve, since a large portion of starting and running a business requires analytical, logical thinking. In fact, our education and training to logically associate related concepts reduces our ability to add the creative side, even though we were all born without that bias. Maybe that’s why “thinking outside the box” is so rare. While looking for guidance on how to be more creative

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Shilo Shiv Suleman: Using technology to enable dreaming | Video on TED.com

Has our technology -- our cell phones and iPods and cameras -- stopped us from dreaming? Young artist Shilo Shiv Suleman says no, as she demos "Khoya," her new storybook for iPad, which floats us through a magical world in 7 minutes of pure creativity.

Shilo Shiv Suleman is an illustrator, storyteller and iPad book creator.