Creativity is not a binary, either-you-have-it-or-you-don’t sort of thing. David Kelley once told me, “People fail to realize that the first-order goal is to be getting in practice. The first step is training your mind to think differently.”

Amos Tversky said, "The secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed. You waste years by not being able to waste hours." Here are some tactics for productively wasting hours…

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…

Self-care is all the rage, and rightly so. We cannot do our best work without attention to the instrument of self. But for all our emphasis, we’ve missed a vital component of wellness.

“Fish don’t know they’re wet.” IDEO founder David Kelly says it’s critical to question the things we take for granted. Entrepreneur Gabriela Gonzalez Bux recounts a remarkable example in today’s guest post.

Steve Jobs said, “Theres a temptation in our networked age to think that ideas can be developed by email and iChat. That's crazy. Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions.”

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.

Taylor Swift and Isaac Asimov feel the same way about doing creative work: It can be embarrassing! How an innovator navigates those waters can make all the difference. Ben Franklin’s tactics provide clues…

Thomas Edison is one of history’s most prolific inventors. He made regular professional use of an under-rated if not derided personal past-time. New research suggests his radical strategy works!

Taylor Swift illuminates one of the most counterintuitive findings in all the creativity literature: the best way to have a good idea is to allow yourself to have lots of bad ideas. Seth Godin agrees.

One of the greatest compliments you can pay a collaborator at the d.school is to say they’re “sparkable.” What exactly does that mean? They’ve learned to have a particular effect on creative combustion.

Maya Angelou and Thomas Edison have given me unexpected permission. One of their secrets — quickly becoming mine — is to not tidy up so much.

It is profoundly uncomfortable to choose to work differently. But sometimes, the best way forward is to allow yourself to retreat. Work different.

Jake Karls, co-founder of Mid Day Squares, flips the “perfectionist” script. Here he shares his unexpected formula for crafting deeply engaged fans.

The single-most important decision I make weekly is to shed the “teacher’s cap” and put on the student’s. The only way to continue to inspire is to seek inspiration, myself.

Innovation is a numbers game, which is music to my ears since I’m a statistics nerd. One of my favorite counterintuitive statistical truths is Bayes’ Theorem. Study it to beat the entrepreneurial odds.

The evidence is clear: back-to-back meetings strain our brains! One innovation leader gives “corporate athletes” a simple rule to make sure they show up ready to sprint.

Innovators ranging from Lin-Manuel Miranda to Jeff Bezos wielded down time as a deliberate strategy. For all our connectedness, being unplugged has never been more important.

We shouldn’t see sick days as days we can’t work. A few of my favorite breakthroughs prove, perhaps we should see them as a gift — an opportunity to receive a new vision of the future.

A recurring theme on the road to creative mastery is how we (wrongly) perceive those who are successful as having never struggled. The truth is, many endured rejection.