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Environments in Which Creativity Can Flourish

It is a truism that the one thing that doesn’t change in life is change; we are constantly dealing with the unknown. A decade immersed in the performing art and cultural studies gave me a new...

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Three Key Facts That Will Change the Way You Think About Creativity

In recent years, neuroscience research has revealed three key facts that may change forever the way we think about and approach creativity: - Instinct plays a leading role in complex decision making. -...

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Elon Musk’s Patent Decision Reflects Three Strategic Truths

Elon Musk’s surprising decision to state publicly that he would not initiate lawsuits about anyone who uses his technology in good faith is a supreme example of giving up control.   Elon Musk’s Patent...

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Dealing with Chaos and Uncertainty

In my seminars at L’Oréal, SAP, and other companies, I often recount Edgar Allan Poe’s “A Descent into the Maelstrom,” a story that beautifully illustrates this aspect of chaos theory. It describes how...

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The 4 Tenets of Intuitive Intelligence

Even thought this article was written quite a while ago we really like it because it describes all 4 tenets of Intuitive Intelligence: thinking holistically, thinking paradoxically, noticing the...

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How to be successful in chaos

We attempt to interact with one another and arrange our institutions in hierarchical pyramids, because we have been taught that the world fundamentally operates according to physical laws that believe...

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How to Navigate the Tension Between Reason and Instinct in Social Media...

This article is fantastic because it really captures the tension between reason and instinct that must be balanced in order to come up with brilliant marketing ideas. The hard core analytics are...

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What is Intuitive Intelligence?

Intuitive Intelligence is a set of skills I designed that uses intuition to get to the instinctual and nonconscious parts of our minds.  It can be learned and developed, but because instinct does not...

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The Power of Play

Play is magical.  And profound.  Not only is it essential to our growth and development when we are children and a source of joy throughout our lives, but it is also a largely untapped channel for...

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Defining Play

So what is play?  Is it the same as fun?  Sort of. The key ingredient in play is engagement: engagement within your own mind, with another person, or with an object. Play is always a dynamic...

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Metrics Vs. Intuition – Which Is Most Important In A Startup?

As Eric Basu observes, the most effective leadership style balances gut instinct with careful analysis of data points and metrics, and leaders with this balance are difficult to come by. But we would...

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A Scientific Definition of Play

According to theorist and professor Johan Huizinga, play is “free activity standing quite consciously outside ‘ordinary’ life.” He also described it as being “‘not serious” but at the same time...

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You Already Have All the Resources You Need to Innovate

Play opens us up to the possibility that we don’t need more of anything—time, money, knowledge, and so on—in order to produce more.  It is a radical idea, especially in business, where we often hear...

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Why Ritual is an Important Part of Leadership

Ritual is powerful and can be used to engage people in ways that words alone cannot.  Rituals are meant to affect the body through regular repetition and dramatic staging; as a consequence of that...

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Intuitive Intelligence Turns the Credit Card Processing Industry on Its Head

Suneera Madhani’s leadership of her game-changing credit card processing company, Fattmerchant, exemplifies three of the four tenets of Intuitive Intelligence (thinking holistically, thinking...

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Pathways Beyond Logic

Logic and reason alone can no longer guide us toward innovation or success.  They will not be enough to get us to the level of creativity and reinvention we need to address the challenges of the new...

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Get Past Inertia (Part One)

Arie de Geus, an ex-Shell executive turned consultant, has researched why certain companies over one hundred years old have been so successful. The twenty-seven companies he studied were able to...

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Get Past Inertia (Part 2)

It is relatively easy to see how play can generate fabulous new ideas, but what is less obvious is the critical role of play in giving those ideas a chance at life against some very serious odds....

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Get Past Inertia (Part 3)

In a group, because relationship add complexity, inertia grows exponentially more difficult to overcome. My inertia plus your inertia is more that 1 + 1 = 2, and when we add a half-dozen colleagues or...

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Navigating the shift to play or Get Over Inertia (Part 4)

Because creativity is such an important factor of success in business today, play should be part of every CEO’s mandate, and companies should be rated according to the level of playfulness of their...

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