david burkus tagged posts

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...

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...

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...