One of Google’s stratospheric successes might never have reached escape velocity if folks weren’t allowed to indulge pet projects. Here’s the inside scoop.

Jon Beekman, Founder and CEO of ManCrates, shares an enlightened tactic for helping innovators find the breakthroughs they aren’t even looking for.

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, they did. But they persisted, nonetheless.

An eccentric habit may shed light on how Harvard’s B.F. Skinner became one of the most influential psychologists of all time. He learned to value his midnight thoughts so much, he set a nightly alarm!

What can leaders do to promote creativity and innovation in their organizations? According to bestselling author and innovation guru Tom Kelley, they should squint.

Innovation is a numbers game, subject to considerable odds. IDEO’s Brendan Boyle says play is a key lever to drive risk taking and the broad experimentation required to ultimately succeed.

Stanford Professor Clifford Nass studied hundreds of students, to explore what distinguished self-proclaimed “multitaskers” from the rest of us. His conclusions, and their implications, won’t surprise you.

Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Charles Duhigg explains how inefficient-seeming activities can alter how we make sense of information, and turn it into valuable knowledge.

“I don’t know,” might be three of the hardest words to say, especially for a teacher. The teacher is the one who’s supposed to know. And yet, not knowing creates space for the unexpected to emerge…

The best creators are constantly learning. There’s immense value in doing something you’re not good at, specifically for the sake of seeing from a fresh perspective.

Legendary Stanford professor Bob McKim used to give design students a simple assignment: keep a bug list. This was decades before computer programming gave the term the meaning it has today.

It’s a grave mistake to assume that a spectacular outcome started out spectacularly. As Ed Catmull, Founder and CEO of Pixar says, “Our job is to take movies from suck to not suck.”

Author, teacher, and artist Gary Zamchick writes, “In a time of rapid disruption, it’s more important than ever to live in the liquid space between building and dreaming — a place where conceptual, innovative, and transformational leaps drive innovation and change.”

Gavin Guidry, Creative Director at R/GA, says, “If my experience has taught me one thing, it’s this: to get the results clients are looking for, they need to forget about cultural relevance, and focus on community relevance.”

Whenever a student asked legendary Stanford Professor Bob McKim for feedback on a new design concept, he consistently gave the same response: “Show me three.” Those three words contain a remarkable depth of wisdom.

“Would anyone be interested in staying after class tomorrow to brainstorm experiments?” This simple post is one of the most-engaged-with in all of LaunchPad12’s Slack messages. It illustrates a profound source of wisdom.

We crave for our processes to buttoned up all nice and neat. But the creative process is rarely nice and neat. It is, as folks like to say, “non-linear.” I’ve realized how I’m guilty of eliminating all the messy bits that actually lead to the interesting outcomes.

In "Add Subtraction", the author explains how we tend to change the world by adding new things, but subtracting can lead to better results.

What do you do when your work is being publicly attacked? Few have grappled with the question as deeply as Becky Margiotta, co-founder and champion of the 100,000 Homes campaign.

When we think of innovation, and the quantity required to break through, we think in terms of “different” ideas. Iterations are every bit as much viable alternatives, according to James Clear and Mr. Beast.