Early stage founder gets devastating feedback on a rough concept pitch. What should she do? Don’t give up quickly! Make small tweaks before making big pivots.

What if eliminating failures reduced the likelihood of a breakthrough. There’s lots of research that suggests that’s the case. So why do we carefully craft policies designed to eliminate failure?

A legendary assignment at Stanford puts students face to face with critical gaps in their life. Identifying those gaps is straightforward enough, but closing them is the real design challenge!

Charles Darwin, while working on the theory of natural selection, wrote an astounding 15,000 letters to over 230 collaborators across more than 10 different scientific fields. Few appreciate the power of sharing partially-formulated thoughts as much as he did.

Today’s post comes from Chris Aho, an integral member of the ideaflow council. Chris writes about his 20+ year responsibility to deliver fresh material weekly — and what that taught him about cooking up ideas.

John Cleese highlights a classic study of architects in his recent memoir, “Creativity: A Short and Cheerful Guide,” which illuminates the value of purposeful procrastination, and how it sets creatives apart.

Whitney Burks is one of the most creative people I know. She boasts prodigious output across a varied stream of responsibilities and interests. Her secret: “obscene, ostentatious deadlines.”

This post comes from super-designer, Adam Weiler, Global Manager of Social Innovation at Steelcase. Adam writes, “…

B.F. Skinner is one of the most influential psychologists of all time. His strict working habits reveal not only how he became such a prodigious writer, but also how he became such an inventive researcher: he made the most of the night watch!

How does one increase the velocity of experimentation? According to Thomas Edison, “To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.”

Every innovator should know how to craft clever experiments; but one clever experiment is hardly sufficient. One critical insight is that quantity matters - as does resolution, and velocity.

We tell our students at Stanford to create portfolios of early stage directions for a simple reason: it increases the likelihood of success. Research shows that we’re unlikely to select our highest-potential idea.

Linus Pauling, the only person in history to win two individual Nobel Prizes, succinctly describes the essence of productive creativity: “The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.” Sounds simple enough. But just how many is “lots”?

A theme has emerged in my studies of breakthrough thinkers: the role that parents play in shaping aspirations. Breakthrough parents not only plant bold dreams in their kids’ hearts, but they also prove willing to make the sacrifices necessary to realize those dreams.

This fabulous provocation comes from the host of ABC’s This Working Life, Lisa Leong. Lisa says, “A curious, creative collective is emerging to redesign the world of work. Underpinning the second renaissance is the idea of bringing humanity back to the workplace.”

Entrepreneurial endeavors are fraught with uncertainty and risk. Being rigorous about one’s approach is one way to maximize the likelihood of success: running cheap experiments with scientific precision is the best way to resolve that uncertainty.

In her legendary memoir on writing and life, Anne Lamott shares a simple but crucial tip for avoiding one of the worst feelings that can ever befall an individual in the midst of creative pursuit.

A love for the truth fuels the innovator. What we learn from Plato, Newton, and Einstein is, when you’re on the brink of ushering in a new era, you’ve got to be willing to resist well-intentioned opposition.

So new ideas are really just unexpected combinations of old parts. Surprisingly, the best way to sell a new idea is to emphasize the old parts it’s made from. Folks are suspicious of too much novelty.

When Bob Sutton told our class, “There is no such thing as a new idea; only old things combined in new ways,” I thought he was wrong. Turns out, I was the one who was mistaken.