2011 Recapped: Top 10 Provocative Pieces
As 2011 wraps up, we’re quickly closing in on The Creative Leadership Academy. As a year-end exercise, we’ve collected our top provocative thoughts to stimulate your brain well into the new year. The January 2012 Creative Leadership Academy will feature some provocative, prolific thinkers and, in no particular order, these are our favorite pieces that came from them in 2011.
1. “Inspiration is the most effective way to unleash innovation in yourself and your organization. ” — Andy Stefanovich. In this podcast with Andy Stefanovich he discusses some great tips for finding inspiration and bringing more innovative thinking to your life.
2. In this piece, “Daniel H Pink: employees are faster and more creative when solving other people’s problems,” Pink discusses an interesting phenomenon: the fact that sometimes those outside of a problem are able to find a better, more innovative solution than those closest to it.
3. In this quick video, “The Purpose of Constraint,” with Chris Waugh of IDEO, Waugh discusses the ways that constraints can give you a good starting point for problem solving.
4. In another podcast, Andy Stefanovich discusses Innovation, Growth and Change and how to bring inspiration to life in an organization so it doesn’t get buried under more menial tasks or bureaucracy
5. In this speech on “Exploring the Science of Creativity,” Jonah Lehrer discusses the science of creativity and the forces that can help us find that “aha” moment, skip to 8:40 for Jonah’s section.
6. In this video from The Economist’s The Idea Exchance series, David Kuehler of P&G’s Clay Street Project gives a great three minute talk on innovation and creativity where he discusses the ways a team can keep “going vertical: flowing from moment to moment to moment” in problem solving.
7. This Mashable feature, “HOW TO: Develop Ideas That Will Disrupt Your Industry” published back on February 17, 2011 by CLA Provocateur Luke Williams focuses on disruptive thinking and the ways that something as simple as mismatched socks can change an industry.
8. In perhaps our most recent post on this list, Laura Seargeant Richardson discusses “The Kaleidoscope Mind: Some Easy Ways to Teach Creativity” in The Atlantic
9. In “Every Child Is A Scientist,” a piece in Wired by Jonah Lehrer, he discusses a study that explores the power of uncertainty and looks for strategies to “keeps us playing with the world, eager to figure out how it works.”
10. This piece from back in April 2011 by Dan Pink “Why we all need a ‘To Don’t’ List, just like Moses” still holds true. Will you use a to-don’t list to cut through the clutter and focus in on what you need to accomplish in 2012?
