Category: Creativity

Creativity, Innovation

Wishing you a very happy “World Creativity and Innovation Day” #WCID

Today, April 21st is celebrated as the “World Creativity and Innovation Day“. Do we really need a creativity and innovation day? Shouldn’t every day be about creativity and innovation? I think this is a discussion for another day. For now, lets stick with celebrating the day (recently, any excuse to celebrate is a good excuse, if we need one at all). Here is a short video of how and why the UN announced April 21 as the World Creativity and Innovation Day. Over the past decade, I have written many blog posts that talk about different perspectives on creativity, creative […]

Creativity, Innovation, Inspiration, Leadership

Lessons in Leading Product Designers or Innovators from James Dyson’s AMA

If you are leading product development or any form of design teams or creative professionals or leading an innovation effort, I think you will find the short video very insightful. In the video, James Dyson answers questions on product design curated from twitter. I think that the selection of questions and the answers given by James Dyson as part of this AMA are really worth listening multiple times. You can watch the entire video here. One fundamental learning for us as leaders from his response and from his journey as an inventor / innovator is that, a truly innovative product […]

Creativity, Innovation, Leadership

Leading for Creativity and Innovation

One of the primary responsibilities of a leader is our ability to enable our teams to fuel their creativity and drive innovation. Kevin Roberts (who used to be the CEO and later went on to become the Executive Chairman of one of the most creative organisation – Saatchi & Saatchi) delivered a keynote on creativity and innovation and I think there is a lot that we can learn from the keynote. You can watch the entire keynote here. If you are tasked with coming up with innovation in your organisation, which typically, starts with coming up with creative ideas, I […]

Creativity, Leadership

What can Leaders Learn from the “Introduction of the Icelandverse”

There has been a lot of talk about Facebook’s rebrand as Meta and introduction of Metaverse. So, I will not add to that discussion. However, I do want to talk about what Iceland tourism department has done with the same. In their most recent advertisement, they have spoofed Mark’s vision of the Metaverse and introduced what they called Icelandverse. Before I can go on any further, I highly recommend that you watch this commercial here. Whether you are amused, angry or irreverent to this attempt by the Iceland tourism, as leaders, there are a few things that we can learn […]

Creativity, Innovation, Leadership

To me more Creative, Be open to being Bored!

This is probably the best explanation that I have come across in a long time for the power of boredom. The current zeitgeist is all about shunning boredom. People do not want to feel the boredom. The moment they are alone with their thoughts, out comes the phone or the tablet and we get lost in the world of social media or the imaginary world of audio/video content. I am as guilty of this as anyone else. However, everyday, I slow down and observe what is around me, look for beauty in the surroundings and try to enjoy it. Sometimes, […]