A vibrant, productive creative practice is comprised of equal parts inspiration and effort. Knowing when you need which is an essential capability.

Ownership is an exceptional innovation diagnostic. Who came up with the good idea? A dysfunctional team will have a very clear memory of a very straightforward process.

Some problems can be hard to see from different perspectives. William Hardaway, a design leader in higher education recommends taking a light-hearted approach to exposing unexplored angles.

Gathering likeminded learners (aka lunatics) exponentially reduces the ramp of a new pursuit, normalizing courage in the face of intimidation. YouTube sensation Mr. Beast breaks it down here.

Spectacular entrepreneurs craft clever experiments. But a robust experimentation practice demands a rigorous ideation ritual. In Stanford’s LaunchPad, we tell aspiring founders to do this.

One of the simplest ways to measure your creative capacity is to count how many solutions you can imagine for any given problem. World-class creators actually, literally, count their ideas.

Where does the authority to lead transformation comes from? Innovation leader and Stanford d.school coach Bill Pacheco shares insights from a recent engagement.

For all the talk about overcoming creative blocks and getting unstuck, we can neglect an important reality: A block is essential to a breakthrough! We need to learn to cherish them, and seek them, too…

A good hypothesis is one of the most valuable assets in the scientific world, and they’re only getting more valuable. The question is, how to form them? This is where design thinking shines.

One of the most powerful ways to accelerate the quality of our ideas is to actively seek and embrace critique. Leaders who model embracing critique create psychological safety for others to accelerate, too.

I’ve learned to ask MOC guests, “What’s something you do as a part of your normal work process that requires some explanation or justification?” I’ve been shocked by how consistently folks do things that seem to be, well, weird.

Here’s my simple, battle-tested guideline for winning at SXSW. Developed to help me combat the tendency towards comfort-seeking and awkwardness-reduction. Applied in painfully cringe-worthy moments, with delightful results.

Deep in the throes of SXSW FOMO, I found myself heartened to keep up my daily blogging practice by an unlikely hero: Mike Winkelmann, aka the digital artist Beeple, who’s been making daily sacrifices for his art for over a decade. Spoiler: it paid off.

Wildly inventive and creative individuals have a habit of gathering conceptual pieces — aka legos — before they know exactly what they’re going to do with them. The more legos you collect, the more unexpected combinations you can make.

David Ogilvy attributed many business leaders’ difficulty with original thinking to what he dubbed “the tyranny of reason.” Austrian filmmaker Markus Mooslechner shared a few superrational techniques for escape with me at SXSW.

How did I have the boldness to approach a living legend of innovation? I learned from one of my own students. Another SXSW serendipity story…

Many early career decisions are driven by implicit — or often explicit — scripts that our communities and contexts force upon us. These scripts limit not only our perspectives, but more importantly, our potential.

Take stock of your last breakthrough, and of how you talk about it, both to yourself and to others. If you don’t call it “creative,” then chances are, you won’t call on creativity the next time you need it.

I’ll never forget the first time I caught a glimpse of my own dormant creative potential. It’s like a whole new world of possibility opened up to me. Ever since that moment, it’s something I’ve wanted to unlock in others.

Leverage is one of the most fundamental mechanisms of value creation, yet few folks look far enough beyond the balance sheet to reap the rewards of the strategy. Here’s how to bring the benefits of leverage into daily life.