Reflections Using Arts Based Processes when Working with Centers of Excellence - Linda Naiman, Creativity At Work

Over the past year I have been invited by some of the largest and most successful companies in the world to introduce the arts as a catalyst for developing creativity, leadership and innovation within the organization. I’ve been working within specific business units of these global organizations, and I would describe these units as centers of excellence with an entrepreneurial appetite for creativity, innovation and the willingness to try something new. I’ve noticed the leaders who run these business units, track what’s on the leading edge, and invite “best of breed” to learn from. This approach, combined with sufficient resources, and sound-management practices, contributes to creating a culture that fosters innovation as well as excellence in business performance.

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The Dark Side of Creativity: Original Thinkers Can Be More Dishonest - Dan Ariely and Francisco Gino

Creativity is a common aspiration for individuals, organizations, and societies. Here, however, we test
whether creativity increases dishonesty. We propose that a creative personality and a creative mindset promote individuals’ ability to justify their behavior, which, in turn, leads to unethical behavior. In 5 studies, we show that participants with creative personalities tended to cheat more than less creative individuals and that dispositional creativity is a better predictor of unethical behavior than intelligence (Experiment 1). In addition, we find that participants who were primed to think creatively were more likely to behave dishonestly than those in a control condition (Experiment 2) and that greater ability to justify their dishonest behavior explained the link between creativity and increased dishonesty (Experiments 3 and 4). Finally, we demonstrate that dispositional creativity moderates the influence of temporarily priming creativity on dishonest behavior (Experiment 5). The results provide evidence for an association between creativity and dishonesty, thus highlighting a dark side of creativity.

Download the full study here.

Blending Art & Science To Create More Effective Ideas - Change This

“Blending art and science is about collaborating in ideas generation: the inter-relationship is critical, you can’t have one thing without the other. A bunch of code or data is just a bunch of numbers without the art.

Science can enable us to be more creative, and creativity allows us to get the most out of our data. But consider ‘the multiplier effect’. If either the data or creative are bad, the idea will fail. It’s not one or the other that we need, it’s both. It’s not science plus art equals results, it’s more science times art, so a zero for either means failure.

That is where the interesting ideas are - at that intersection. The future is all about ideas connecting. Those who can bridge art and science will be in demand, will be powerful.

So if our ideas are going to change hearts and minds, let’s blend them together.”

Download this great piece from Change This and James Trezona.

Lessons Learned: STARTUP IS VISION - Eric Reis

The following is a rather unusual guest post. One of the more surreal parts of speaking publicly and putting ideas out into the ether is to watch other people run with them. I can't seem to help tuning into comment threads on blogs, news aggregators, etc. Internet people being what they are, a lot of these comments are nasty, brutish, and short. However, every once in a while, I come across someone who consistently corrects other people's mistakes. Someone who seems to get it. And who am I to complain if that someone happens to be a giant robot dinosaur named FAKEGRIMLOCK?

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Simple, Hard Work + Talent = Creativity - Keith Sawyer

I think Sawyer leaves are crucial component out of this discussion - practice. Nevertheless, a recommended read. I’ve often cited the research of Professor Anders Ericsson, showing that world-class expertise only emerges after you invest 10,000 hours of “deliberate practice.” Ericsson’s research is consistent with a well-known finding of creativity research: “The ten year rule,” the observation that major creative contributions generally don’t happen until a person has been working in an area for at least ten years. (If you do the math, ten years comes out to about 10,000 hours.) Ericsson studied a wide range of expertise–chess players, musicians, and others. In one of his more famous studies, he analyzed how many total hours violin students at a top music conservatory had rehearsed over their lifetimes. The number of hours rehearsed correlated highly with ratings by conservatory faculty.

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