If you’ve read my books, you know that my answer is yes! The most innovative teams have something that I call group flow. It’s when a group is performing at its peak–realizing the maximum potential of the group. It’s more likely when everyone blends egos and participates equally. It’s the group version of your own… Read More Are Teams More Creative When Everyone is Equal?
My niece Sarah was in CVS and, for some reading material, she bought the TIME special issue The Power of Personality. While reading it, she discovered that I’m quoted at length in the article “The Creativity Code.” I didn’t even know about it! Thanks for texting me, Sarah! You made my day. The article quotes… Read More “The Creativity Code” in TIME Magazine
One of the most solid findings in innovation research is that creativity happens in social networks–what I call group genius. When it comes to innovation, a social network doesn’t mean Facebook or Snapchat. It means the connections you have with other people in real life. People in your profession, of course, but it helps even… Read More Why You Should Attend This Year’s Conference in Person
Corporate retreats: Remember them? Off-site meetings where the entire company flies or drives to a cool location for a few days of team-building, networking, and fostering corporate culture. There might be costumed characters, escape rooms, water balloon battles, yacht cruises around the harbor, open bars, famous musicians on stage. Sometimes, real work actually gets done–brainstorming… Read More Fun! Off-Site Retreats Are Back
The creation of Christmas, the secular holiday, is a story of collaborative creativity. Christmas trees, giving gifts, Santa–all emerged from a distributed social process. It’s a story about history and culture; about the industrial revolution and the family; and about how our conceptions of childhood have changed. It’s a story of social innovation. Some older… Read More The Collaborative Creation of Christmas
The research is pretty strong: People have better ideas when they interact with others. When people get together they often have collectively-owned ideas that no one person would have alone. This research is widely accepted by both psychologists, sociologists, and organization scholars. But there’s been a backlash, perhaps starting with Susan Cain’s 2013 book Quiet:… Read More The Serbian Hermit Who Prefers to Be Alone
Jony Ive, the legendary designer of the iPhone, is now designing Apple’s new Cupertino headquarters, known as Apple Park. He worked closely with Steve Jobs before his passing, and now with CEO Tim Cook. As professional creatives, they know the importance of collaboration in creativity: Ive and Cook place great importance on employers being physically… Read More Creative Collaboration at Apple Park
I had a great time giving this morning’s keynote at the annual Montessori teacher’s conference (NAMTA). They invited me to talk about how to foster creativity and collaboration in high school classrooms. In my keynote, I gave an overview of the core lessons from my creativity research, combined with my learning sciences research: Creative learning… Read More Montessori, Collaboration, and Creativity
I just read some fascinating research by Marshall W. Van Alstyne in Harvard Business Review. The figure below shows a network of high collaboration on the left, and a network of much lower collaboration on the right. The explanation turns out to be simple: it’s caused by two very different incentive systems. Alstyne found that “the… Read More Create Collaboration With The Right Incentives
I just read a fascinating article* by Professor Katherine Giuffre, of Colorado College, that asks the question: Do social networks contribute to creativity? Previous research is pretty compelling: social networks and collaboration contribute to greater creativity. But as Giuffre points out, no one has compared creative and non-creative periods during the lifetime of a single person. As… Read More The Social Networks of Emily Dickinson, Paul Gauguin, and Charlotte Bronte
The Creativity Guru 