Browsing through my tweets I stumbled across this little gem of a presentation on solving problems in the 21st century. A flashy presentation by Humantific takes us through various ways of ideation/creation in the new type of teams and organizations required to tackle the problems of today. Through various methods of ‘free thinking’ research the eBook finishes with 10 key findings on how Design Thinking is affecting students of today, and how Design Thinking is being used to help us with increasingly complex problemsolving. Continue reading »

It’s the reason I still use iGoogle as my homepage. Even when I don’t have the energy to browse through 700 items in my RSS feed I still get random lines from some of my favorite blogs, one of my most favorite being the Seth Godin Blog. Today he surprised me with a list of ‘Random rules for ideas worth spreading’ and I’ve noted down a few of my favorites, just as a reminder to myself.

• Think big. Bigger than that.
• Are you a serial idea-starting person? If so, what can you change to end that cycle? The goal is to be an idea-shipping person.
• Waiting for inspiration is another way of saying that you’re stalling. You don’t wait for inspiration, you command it to appear.
• Don’t poll your friends. It’s your art, not an election.
• Be prepared for the Dip.
• The hard part is finishing, so enjoy the starting part.

Most of these ‘rules’ are about finishing an idea – seeing it through to the end (or in case of the ‘the Dip‘, knowing when to quit).

Read the rest of the list over on Seth’s blog, there’s more than a few left worth reading! (and yes this was a little bit of a Seth Godin fanpost but I really feel he’s on a role lately with the ’shipping’ thing!)

Initially, I picked up this book just for the sheer brilliance of its title. As it turned out it was the right book at the right time as well. The War of Art is about realizing your ideas, and with that you creative potential. Steven Pressfield, bestselling author of fiction novels ‘The Legend of Bagger Vance’ and ‘Gates of Fire’ reveals his secrets ‘to getting things done’ by dissecting the element of ‘resistance’, the thing standing between you and putting your creativity into practice.

“There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny. This second, we can turn the tables on Resistance. This second, we can sit down and do our work.”

The reason this book worked for me was because it didn’t focus on the solution, but on the problem. It effectively speaks to the inner nay-sayer in all of us that sabotages your ideas the moment they threaten to become to real.

Loved it because:

• The War of Art provides great context for a recognizable problem, drawing a beautiful metaphor with ‘The Art of War’ – overcoming your fears and knowing your ‘enemy’.
• The author speaks from experience and has a very credible record writing multiple best-sellers
• It manages to inspire effectively with the use of good examples and quotes, making it a real page-turner

You might not like it because:

• The Art of War is an almost philosophical approach to creativity and ‘getting things done’. If you are looking for real ‘GTD methods’ this book offers not many ‘tangible’ pointers to put ideas into practice (and see them get done to the end).

Bestselling author and entrepreneur Seth Godin outlines a common creative affliction: sabotaging our projects just before we show them to the world. Godin targets our “lizard brain” as the source of these primal doubts, and implores us to “thrash at the beginning” of projects so that we can ship on time and on budget.

Tim Brown says the design profession is preoccupied with creating nifty, fashionable objects — even as pressing questions like clean water access show it has a bigger role to play. He calls for a shift to local, collaborative, participatory “design thinking.”

Sir Ken Robinson at Creative Company Conference in Amsterdam talks about his new book ‘The Element’. A book about discovering and applying ‘passion’. The things that drives you, motivates you, and essentially makes you valuable. Sir Ken Robinson applies this in the context of our educational system, developing and educating in talent.

It’s a cold January morning and work traffic is trying to squirm their way through the Washington, DC Metro Station. Amidst the crowd a violinist starts to play. Out of the thousand people on their way to work only a handful responds to the tunes filling the station. If anything, they briefly turn and look at the violinist before checking their watch or getting pushed along by their mothers.

After 45 minutes, the performer has gathered 32 dollars. Most of which donated by people who didn’t stop to listen but made a contribution none the less as they walked passed the violinist. Continue reading »