Paint + Pipette
A blog on the art & science of creative action.
Curate to Create
This insightful guest article conjures the spirit of legendary restauranteur Danny Meyer, who said, “ABCD so you can ABCD: Always be collecting dots to always be connecting dots.” The collection- and connection-instinct is at the heart of a curator. Read on…
Augment Your Intelligence: Embrace AI to Enhance Decision-Making
Generative AI represents enormous potential for innovation. But even well-intentioned leaders can undermine their own efforts to explore. If they aren’t careful, they can end up reinforcing counter-productive biases amongst the very teams they’re trying to unleash.
Question the Question
All too often, the stated “problem” keeps a team from innovation: the problem is the problem. Being willing to question the premise, rather than accept it blindly, is a critical practice for creative health.
The Problem With Human x AI Collab: It’s Not the AI
If you’re getting mediocre–or even bad–results from AI tools like ChatGPT, it’s not because the tech is bad. Research suggests that you’re probably settling for mediocrity.
Go Pro in Innovation
To become a professional in any field takes an enormous amount of skill, and hard work. Routine practice is a hallmark of the “professional” in any context. Here’s how to take a professional mentality into the innovation arena.
Have and Share a Bad Idea
From Steve Jobs to Taylor Swift to Seth Godin, there’s remarkable consistency among “the greats”: having bad ideas is a necessary precondition to having good ones.
Prune Your Ideas
To stimulate innovation, ideas and experiments are critical. But how to free up resources necessary to drive new initiatives forward? Start by pruning back some work that’s past its prime. Here’s how.
Make Space to Fail
Business leaders should take a page out of one of the most brutally-straightforward innovation laboratories in the world: lessons from Jerry Seinfeld and Steve Martin’s stand-up routines.
Emphasize Desirability
Bernard Arnault became the richest man in the world — surpassing Musk, Bezos, and Buffet — not by focusing on profitability, but by foregrounding desirability. We all should.
Don’t Sprint Until…
Great ideas are not the function of episodic, haphazard bursts of effort. They’re the function of a well-honed individual and organizational ability. So before you sprint, do this…
Collect and Connect
One of my all-time favorite origin stories is a case study in innovation: a collision between boredom, R&D, ineffective technology and a frustrated choirboy.
Kindle What You Love
Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs — and what propelled their project forward — have made me wonder whether the sterile calculus of today’s valuation-obsessed start-up culture has its priorities out of whack.
Work Different
It is profoundly uncomfortable to choose to work differently. But sometimes, the best way forward is to allow yourself to retreat. Work different.
Squint At New Ideas
What can leaders do to promote creativity and innovation in their organizations? According to bestselling author and innovation guru Tom Kelley, when they’re shown new ideas, they should squint.
Keep A Bug List
Great leaders know that every innovation begins with a problem. Instead of telling their people to “bring me solutions,” they encourage folks to be on the lookout for problems worth solving.
Observe Your Customers
To make empathetic engagement with customers as rich as possible, it’s essential to immerse in and observe them in the wild, and to do so regularly. Some tips from an outstanding innovation leader.
Create Desirability Data
Most organizations’ first question of a new idea is its technical specifications: can we even build it? The most important question is not technical, but human. A better question is, “Should we build it?…”
Allow Yourself to Wonder
We all like to deduce, to prove, to know for certain. But the most interesting opportunities for innovation are a function of wonder. Specifically, of a team willing to be humble and vulnerable enough to not know.
Embrace Surprises
Imagination is sparked by surprising information. Customer insights leader Kelly Garrett Zeigler tells a story that highlights the importance of welcoming an unexpected direction.