(Note: this article appeared first in Fast Company Design.) What do the Mona Lisa smile and the Wall Street Journal have in common? They both employ a design principle related to subtraction and minimalism. By limiting information, they engage the imagination. In the case of the Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci purposefully blurred smile lines around the corners of Lisa’s mouth and eyes, the two most expressive parts of the human facial anatomy. The artist …
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I read, write, and talk about creativity and innovation ALOT–what it is, why it matters, how to pursue it. So it’s time to talk a bit about what innovation isn’t, and introduce a concept admittedly nuanced but that may fit a better in the business world than creativity. Not Innovation Innovation is NOT sitting around dreaming up earth-shattering ideas behind closed doors, trying to be clever and creative in concocting a new secret sauce that …
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Innovative thinking. Human power. Sustainable energy. Endless possibility. Bicycles. These are a few of my favorite things. I have that in common with the folks at Toyota’s Prius Projects. There’s no question that Prius is an innovation that changed the world. A short digression by way of backstory that some may not be aware of. When Toyota debuted the Prius at the Kyoto Conference on global warming in December 1997, Detroit carmakers were taken by …
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Think a small startup can’t disrupt a deep-seated, regulation-protected, mammoth industry? Think again. The New York Times recently featured a small financial startup called Simple, which bills itself as “A Worry-Free Alternative to Traditional Banking.” (I’d love to know how much they paid to secure Simple.com!) Who hasn’t cursed their bank multiple times? Who hasn’t worried over this, that, or the other penalty, fee, or ridiculous hoop your bank makes you jump through? Praise Simple …
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In what may be a shot heard around the publishing world, Guy Kawasaki has just self-published a new book, entitled APE: How to Publish a Book. APE is the acronym for the three roles anyone wishing to self-publish a book must play: Author, Publisher, and Entrepreneur. I repeat: self-published. Between folks like Tim Ferriss rejecting traditional publishing to go with Kindle Publishing, and now Guy subtracting the publisher entirely from the equation, we may be seeing …
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For decades we’ve been told to “follow your passion” to “find the career meant for you.” “Do what you love and the money will follow.” Such clichés have become a staple of commencement speeches, such as Steve Jobs’ famed 2005 address at Stanford in which he said: “There is no reason not to follow your heart.” But what if the evidence showed that this advice will do your career more harm than good? In his …
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If you haven’t been watching HBO’s series, The Newsroom, you may want to skip over this post. I watched the series premiere back in June, spellbound by actor Jeff Daniels and his monologue in response to a coed asking him what made America great. He blasted her, the net of his takedown being “it isn’t (great)…but it could be.” The Newsroom is writer Aaron Sorkin’s foray into cable television dramedy. I won’t bore you with …
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George Bernard Shaw once wrote, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends upon the unreasonable man.” New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has it write when he adds to this thought by writing, “We have all met unreasonable people in our lives. Some of us have even been called unreasonable—or worse. But if ever there’s been someone qualified …
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What is innovation really about? Some believe it is distinct from creativity. Some believe it must go beyond small improvement. Many believe you need deep pockets, because innovation entails seeking and taking big risks with big ideas and radical departures from convention. Others believe it’s the bailiwick of right-brainers only, and “suits” need not apply. Those biases are limiting at best, and only serve to exclude the everyman from innovating. One of the best and simplest …
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