A lot of times when people claim they’re not creative, what they’re really suggesting is that they lack an innate ability to generate creative ideas. While it is true that this skill can be taught, a new study (PDF) from Cornell University suggests that coming up with ideas may not be where we actually face the most [...]

Why are some organizations consistently good at innovating and/or adapting while others seem to be blindsided by change? Is it because of their disciplined innovation process or the knowledge and skills of their people? Or is it their determination to build a culture where challenging assumptions is not only encouraged, but expected? Our IBM Creative [...]

Arthur Koestler, the author of The Act of Creation, concluded that creativity happens at boundaries.  These boundaries come in all shapes and sizes.  In my case, it was the boundaries between disciplines that led me into a new field of creative leadership inquiry. My journey started many years ago working in the IT industry when [...]

Imagine a group of executives huddled around a board room table. They are staring so intensely at their annual sales figures that they could burn a hole through the chart. Their flagship product – one that had carried the company for over 50 years – was tanking! What happened next transformed the company into a [...]

Starting about 60 years ago, a study of the world’s patent literature (which is where we document breakthrough innovation and creativity, right?), which continues to this day, has determined that there a limited number of “inventive principles” or ways that we solve difficult problems. This analysis of 8 million patents has identified only 40 inventive [...]