It’s a mistake to surround yourself with people who are just like you.
Creativity Tip Number 1: It’s a mistake to surround yourself with people who are just like you. Why? Because they’ll usually come up with ideas that are just like yours.
Creative people and companies make a concerted effort to look outside their normal circle of contact, so they can cross-pollinate their own ideas with insights and ideas from other people, departments, eras or industries.
Thousands of good ideas have been discovered simply because someone was curious enough to poke around in a seemingly unrelated industry or discipline. In his best-selling book, “A Whack on the Side of the Head,” Roger von Oech relates that legendary football coach Knute Rockne got the idea for his “four horseman” backfield while watching a burlesque chorus routine.
U.S. military designers borrowed from the cubist art of Pablo Picasso to create more effective camouflage patterns.
Dan Bricklin took the “spreadsheet” concept from accounting and turned it into VisiCalc, the program that launched the microcomputer software industry. Continue reading
We are living in troubled times, that’s for sure. But, there’s an ancient human power that is still alive and well in every corner of the world. Regardless of how difficult or discouraging life has become, there is still a persistent belief that the future will somehow be better than the past or the present. There is even a scientific name for this uniquely human trait; it’s called the “Optimism Bias.”
I once wrote a children’s book called Mistakes are Great. I wanted to alert kids that mistakes aren’t something to fear or avoid, they’re something to welcome with open arms. In fact, cultivating a love of mistakes is a secret sauce for all the best entrepreneurs, scientists, artists and new product developers.
Doing good for others has its own arithmetic.
Some of the best advice we ever receive is also the simplest.
