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The Myths of Creativity: Outsiders, Not Experts

Twitter Summary:  Sometimes the toughest problems don’t need experts.  It’s the youthful inexperience of those with a basic knowledge that tend to yield the most creative of solutions.

Principle

This is the last post dedicated to David Burkus’ book The Myths of Creativity.  Prior posts discussed the Mousetrap myth, the Eureka myth, and the Cohesive myth.  Today is dedicated to what Burkus calls the Expert myth.

The Expert myth is a “belief that a correlation exists between the depth of a person’s knowledge and the quality of the work that person can produce.”  I love that Burkus calls this idea out for being bs...

December 26, 2013 Books, The Myths of Creativity One comment
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The Myths of Creativity: Conflict Breeds Creativity

Twitter Summary: Teams that promote constructive conflict consistently outperform teams that focus on cohesion.

Principle

My recent posts have been about David Burkus’ book The Myths of Creativity and some of the great ideas he shares.  For this post I want to write a bit about what Burkus calls The Cohesive Myth.

A lot of us buy into this myth, where we think  “most creative ideas and products come from teams that suspend criticism and focus on consensus.”  Burkus shows through a few examples, like Pixar, how bogus this idea is.  In reality, teams that promote constructive conflict in their creative process consistently outperform teams that focus on cohesion.

Burkus makes his point when he shares a story about Pixar animation and how they make films...

December 13, 2013 Books, The Myths of Creativity No comments
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The Myths of Creativity: Creativity Through Incubation

Twitter Summary: Great ideas are uncovered when we disengage ourselves from our work and intentionally let our minds wander.

Principle

So far I’ve shared a few posts touching on David Burkus’ book The Myths of Creativity.  Today I want to share a bit about what Burkus calls The Eureka Myth.

Burkus writes that many of us subscribe to “the notion that all creative ideas arrive in a ‘eureka’ moment…we conveniently gloss over the tireless concentration that came before the insight, or the hard work of developing the idea that will come afterward.”

The reality is that most great ideas that appear to come from a flash of inspiration are actually part of a larger process that culminates in that moment...

December 3, 2013 Books, The Myths of Creativity No comments
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The Myths of Creativity: Convince The World You’re Worth It

Twitter Summary: No matter how awesome your new idea may be or how many problems it solves, you still have to convince the world you’re worth it.

Principle

Last week I shared the primary theme from David Burkus’ book The Myths of Creativity, which is that anyone and everyone can be creative.  Over the next few posts I’m doing to dig into some of the specific myths Burkus debunks and the great examples he uses to do so.

Even if you build a better mousetrap, you still have to convince the world you're worth it.

Even if you build a better mousetrap, you still have to convince the world you’re worth the change.

Today I want to write about what Burkus calls the Mousetrap Myth.  A lot of us believe that if you build the next greatest mousetrap, “getting others to see its value [will be] the easy part, and that if you develop a great idea, the world will willing embrace it...

November 19, 2013 Books, The Myths of Creativity 4 comments
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Interview: Author Richie Norton

Richie is author of The Power of Starting Something Stupid, a book about crushing your fears, making dreams happen, and living without regret.  You can read a number of posts I wrote about his book here.  Richie was nice enough to sit down with me and talk a bit about his book and tell me about a book that greatly influence him.

Book that influenced Richie: Banker To The Poor by Muhammad Yunus.

Principle from Banker To The Poor that affected Richie: Social entrepreneurship.

Impact of that principle: Started cashmere business in Mongolia, taxi company in Samoa, impacted development of entrepreneurship program at university, eventually wrote a book.

Get to know more about Richie Norton at his site http://richienorton.com and pick up his free 76-day challenge guide at http://richienorton...

November 13, 2013 Interviews, The Power of Something Stupid 2 comments
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The Myths of Creativity: Anyone And Everyone Can Be Creative

Twitter Summary: Creativity may seem divinely inspired, it’s really all about the process.

Principle

I’m super excited to start sharing some of the great ideas David Burkus has in his book The Myths of Creativity over the next few weeks.  To lay the foundation for these posts I wanted to start with his underlying premise.

“Creativity is less the outcome of a divine blessing or visitation and more the result of designing the right ecosystem and filling it with properly trained people with diverse perspectives.  [Ultimately,] under the right conditions, anyone can be creative.  Everyone can generate great ideas.”

What Burkus is trying to explain is that creativity is not about an external divine influence, it’s about implementing a  processes that unleashes the creative inner talent ev...

November 12, 2013 Books, The Myths of Creativity No comments
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Lose Followers to Gain Fanatics

I read the following quote today in Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson.

rework“We design [products] to be simple because we believe most software is too complex: too many features, too many buttons, too much confusion.  So we build software that’s the opposite of that.  If what we make isn’t right for everyone, that’s OK.  We’re willing to lose some customers if it means that others love our products intensely.”

Let me tell you a story about Gary Vaynerchuk to help you understand why this quote from Rework is so valuable.  I’ve been following Gary and his work a lot lately.  I hadn’t heard about him until maybe a few months ago when a friend sent me a link to a YouTube video.  If you haven’t heard of him or followed his work, start with this video immediat...

November 8, 2013 Books, Rework No comments
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Making Connections Produces Creative Solutions

I’m in the middle of reading The Myths of Creativity by David Burkus and I’ve just read a section that has hit me like a sucker punch to the gut and left me in a stupor of deep thought.  I’m compelled to write.  The portion of the book that I just read has a profound connection to one of the underlying reasons I write this blog, an experience I had with my Dad a few years ago.

You can read about what my Dad said about making connections in an older post, but I’ll summarize that story for the newcomers.  My Dad used to be a college professor, author, and lecturer.  While he was in the hospital a few years ago for a broken leg I found myself thinking a lot about an idea he would often teach his students about “making connections...

October 30, 2013 making connections, The Myths of Creativity 2 comments
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DRiVE by Dan Pink: Video Summary

Next Weeks Post: Hoping to start sharing posts on the book How to Win and Influence People in the Digital Age by the Dale Carnegie group. Thought that’d be a perfect piece to show ways to transfer making and keeping friends in real life to the digital world.


October 10, 2013 Books, Drive No comments
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