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…

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.

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.”

Seinfeld brilliantly details the core molecular structure of the creative process: equal parts idea generation and scientific testing. And he approaches the process with yeoman’s determination.

As holiday season comes upon us, it’s worth considering the outsized impact that simple gestures like expressing appreciation for others can have on our collective creative potential. One of the highest-ROI activities you can pursue is spurring someone else on in their craft.

Dr Charles Limb, a Johns Hopkins neuroscientist obsessed with improvisational jazz, conducted a fascinating study on creative flow. It has profound implications for what we practice, and what we value, in our individual lives and organizations.

The instinct to get out into the world for inspiration is one that’s got to be cultivated. Malcolm Gladwell, Tina Fey, and Twyla Tharp all have slightly different recommendations… but they rhyme!

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.

The most exceptional innovators are just as diligent about their inputs as they are their outputs. Academy Award-winning producer Brian Grazer has kept up a rigorous input practice for thirty five years.

LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman and John Steinbeck might be wildly different characters, yet when it comes to sparking creativity, they both employ an unexpected hack.

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.

Ever wonder where Amazon’s famous flywheel-spinning organizational innovation, the “two pizza team,” came from? Hint: it didn’t come from a brainstorm…

Frustrated by bad design, Steve Jobs left his desk. He didn’t do it absent-mindedly; he did it deliberately: looking for something that would unlock the riddle.

To arrive at a breakthrough, you have to take a break from the breakneck pace. Without reflection, important insights get missed. Just ask Steve Martin…

Spectacular entrepreneurs craft clever experiments. And a robust experimentation practice demands a rigorous ideation ritual. At Stanford, this is how folks build the muscle.

World-class creators like Jon Acuff literally count their ideas. It’s one of the simplest ways to measure your creative capacity, and whether it’s growing.

The surprising secret to YouTube sensation Mr. Beast’s rise to prominence? Gathering likeminded learners to exponentially reduce the ramp of a new pursuit. Such folks are lunatics.

A common thread of breakthroughs is that they occur in “accidental” or unexpected ways. What if, instead of dismissing the accidental elements as irrelevant, we started deliberately deploying them?

What do Kobe Bryant, Jerry Seinfeld, Michael Phelps, and the digital artist Beeple have in common? They all made sacrifices to do something special.