The Creativity Crisis? What Creativity Crisis? - Michael Schrage - Harvard Business Review

The most important thing to understand about America's "crisis of creativity" is that there isn't one. The notion that American business creativity is either at risk or in decline is laughable. Arguments that "Yankee ingenuity" is ebbing into oxymoron are ludicrous. They invite ridicule. So here it comes. Yes, America's economy is awful. But so what? Hard times haven't nicked, dented or damaged this country's creative core competence. To the contrary, they've made more people more interested in being more creative. Spend serious time at research university labs. Or sit in on 10K business plan competitions. Or wander through Silicon Valley incubators and Texas industrial parks. Or listen to top-tier venture capitalists. You'll be impressed. There's no shortage of creativity and ingenuity here. The evidence overwhelmingly suggests the only measurable "creativity crisis" America faces is an embarrassment of riches. We're spoiled for choice.

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Social Media and Its Dishonesty - Michael Schrage - Harvard Business Review

Would I lie to you? Read on.... Probably not, but forgive me for preserving the option. Would you conceal a damaging truth from your boss? I wouldn't presume to guess. But one person's "discretion" is another person's "dishonest." It's getting harder to determine where one ends and the other begins. That's why the virtues of transparency have been wildly oversold by digital utopians. The (social) networks to organizational hell are wired with good intentions. The let's-hold-hands-and-sing-Kumbaya arguments that "the more information we share the better off we are" are demonstrably rubbish. All too often, far greater transparency guarantees far greater conflicts. In fact, legitimate tensions between professional privacy and personal visibility are unavoidable. Confusing transparency with integrity and honesty is a recipe for disaster.

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