In 1925, Dick Drew had an idea. As a sandpaper salesman, he often found himself in auto body shops selling to mechanics who needed to smooth their repairs. Somewhat absentmindedly, he noticed that the butcher paper mechanics used to outline paint jobs would routinely ruin the carefully-detailed lines, and wondered, “What if I could make a tape that wouldn’t tear the paint off the cars?” After all, it’d be something else to sell the bodyshops he served…

I’ve been working on a special little project that I’m excited to share - will be sending details to the P&P newsletter next Tuesday…

Get excited…

If you were to set a creativity KPI, how might you define the indicator? My money is on inputs: Inputs drive outputs. If you want to amplify your creative output, inputs are your single-greatest point of leverage. Deliberately seeking unexpected and fresh input is the key to stimulating one’s own imagination and creativity.

“My investors, my employees, my wife told me, ‘That’ll never work.’ And they were right. It didn’t work. And it took us a year and a half of one failed experiment after another, one test after the next.” Marc Randolph is the co-founder of Netflix, and here he gives a master-class in what we call “maximizing experimental ROI,” or eROI…

“Do I really have time for a hobby?” If you’re like me, you can read a remarkable post about the remarkably unremarkable practices of remarkable innovators and think, “That’s all well and good for Claudia Kotchka, and Mervin Kelly, and Einstein, and Joyce Carol Oates. They can afford to garden, or fiddle, or wander up a hill. But me? I’m too busy.” Nonsense…

Claudia Kotchka — legendary leader of innovation, and a longtime favorite collaborators — on disciplines that fueled her creative practice while leading design innovation and marketing over a 30-year career at Procter & Gamble…

Kevin Kelly, the founder of WIRED, says, “A multitude of bad ideas is necessary for one good idea.” This is an oft referenced, but seldom practiced, truth. It resonates with Isaac Asimov’s observation that, “For every new good idea you have, there are a hundred, ten thousand foolish ones, which you naturally do not care to display…”

Senior leader earnestly trying to bring tools of experimentation into her work: “I’m still struggling with when to experiment. Just take this week, for example: Monday was a holiday, and between Tuesday and today (mid-day Thursday), I’m on meeting #29”…

The concept of experimentation-driven-learning relieves a great deal of the pressure in the midst of expectations of perfection. It lowers the perceived risk of taking action because it’s a declaration of figuring out. There is a downside to such freedom, though: folks can easily forget they were doing-in-order-to-learn…

Henrik Werdelin is a legitimate candidate for most interesting man in the world. He’s also a fastidious notebook-keeper, and surprisingly, -trasher. But before he chunks them, Henrik does something very important…

“Can I shut your door? I've got an idea - and it's either the dumbest thing an attorney has ever said, or it's the key to taking this case to the Supreme Court…” And with that introduction, a rookie attorney introduced a radical new sequence of logic which propelled one of the world’s largest law firms to one of its most celebrated victories…

Experience is a dangerous thing. It’s a currency most organizations highly value, and the stock in which most professionals trade. To be more experienced in any field is almost de-facto better. That is, until a fresh perspective comes along and the world changes in an unexpected way…

Gary Starkweather almost single-handedly invented the laser printer when no one else believed it was possible. There was one problem that threatened to derail the project, but a solution revealed itself in his sketchbook...

A product that started as a desperate act of invention in the kitchen blender, ended up becoming one of the most beloved office supply products of all time. The story behind Liquid Paper’s inspiring beginnings…

When Jesper Kløve, CEO of NNE, a pharma engineering firm in Denmark, discovered his company’s why, it came as a bit of a surprise…

Most folks assume the goal of a brainstorm is to “be creative,” and thus perceive it to be a high stakes endeavor. But “creative” is a collective outcome, counterintuitively achieved by…

It’s sadly true that too often, we’re only listening enough to figure out what we are going to say next. This is true in social interactions, and it’s also ironically true even in the supposedly-human-centered-innovation space…

Whenever we speak about the volume of ideas needed to achieve a breakthrough, one question inevitably arises: “How do I select from such a vast quantity of ideas?” There are all sorts of “systems” and recommendations folks often make, but these answers strike me as just a little too clinical…

Every once in a while you come across a story that blows your mind on multiple levels. This fantastic tale of froyontrepreneurship and corporate chicanery too good not to share in all its glory. Enjoy.

Most efforts to stimulate creativity and innovation are essentially driving forces: trying to incite some new behavior. Behavior theorists suggest a different tack: “Instead of asking how can I get him or her to do it, (instead) start with the question, ‘Why isn’t she doing it already?’