Creativity

Ron Howard achieved early fame as a child actor on The Andy Griffith Show. Then came a long stint as Richie Cunningham on Happy Days. But from an early...

When times are good, businesses tend to stick with what’s working. “It’s served us well so far,” goes the reasoning, “so why mess with success?” We fall into ruts where we don’t question whether the approach we’re using is truly the best one—we just work to push it further. It’s during these periods that needless […]

A company's most important asset isn't raw materials, transportation systems, or political influence. It's creative capital--simply put, an arsenal of...

Po Bronson is the author of two acclaimed novels, a book of short stories and four best-selling non-fiction books including his 2005 bestselling What Should I Do With My Life which was on the New York Times bestselling list for 10 months. Bronson’s work is extremely varied. Not only has he written about Silicon Valley […]

Photography: Magali Delporte/Eyevine/Redux Ian McEwan says he became a writer by “being a reader.” His parents, who both left school at 14, insisted on weekly family visits to the library when he was a child and sent him to boarding school, where he discovered Iris Murdoch and Graham Greene. His 15 works of fiction include […]

What holacracies have in common with 18th-century pirates.

Managers must build change into their organization's structure. This means being prepared to abandon everything that the organization does as well as...

I gave a talk at the Canadian Marketing Association in Toronto last week. Leaving the hall, I fell into step with a young marketer. She seemed stressed. “How are you doing?” I asked. “I liked your talk,” she said, “but it’s hard. Everyone wants to be innovative but no one wants to make a mistake.” […]

Successful brands are a paradox: always consistent yet always mutable. One of the best models for that elusive balance is the artisan brand. Artisan brands possess a signature look and feel that seems to be the creation of an individual sensibility yet also permits variations on form and execution within a set of consistent design […]

Wynton Marsalis grew up in a family of New Orleans jazz musicians and received his first trumpet as a sixth birthday present from bandleader Al Hirt. At 14 he debuted with the Louisiana Philharmonic; at 17 he moved to New York, where he attended Juilliard, joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, assembled his own band, and […]

Sometimes the best innovations are intuitive.

The inventor of the Rubik's Cube on creativity and innovation.

The acclaimed novelist discusses his creative process, the appeal of social media, and the unique truths found in fiction.

Ben Huh, CEO of Cheezburger Network, explains how his crowd-sourced websites stay agile and creative.

Most people are born creative. But over time, a lot of us learn to stifle those impulses. We become warier of judgment, more cautious, more analytical....

Big companies should keep their eyes on start-ups, and not only because of the disruptive innovations they unleash. It also pays to learn from how they work. For example, at GE our new-product development efforts got a fresh infusion of energy this year from the lean start-up methods that serial tech entrepreneur Eric Ries advocates. […]

Regions where social ties are tight may be the worst places for creative operations.

High-profile, emotionally charged projects--from the Jewish Museum in Berlin to the Ground Zero reconstruction--have made Libeskind's reputation. In this...

Numbers are the universal language of business. We use them to attract investors for our startup ideas, to win approval for product introductions, to make the case for expanding into new markets or entering new categories. In other words, numbers, when used well, tell a compelling story. So why is it that so many of […]

In Silicon Valley, exciting new business ideas rapidly attract capital and talent away from less worthy ventures. But in big companies, ideas, capital, and talent are stagnant—prisoners of traditional bureaucratic ways of allocating resources. To capture the Valley’s entrepreneurial magic, your company needs to move from resource allocation to resource attraction.