Quotes About Creativity

that enjoyment-based intrinsic motivation, namely how creative a person feels when working on the project, is the strongest and most pervasive driver.

Today, the defining skills of the previous era—the "left brain" capabilities that powered the Information Age—are necessary but no longer sufficient. And the capabilities we once disdained or thought frivolous—the "right-brain" qualities of inventiveness, empathy, joyfulness, and meaning—increasingly will determine who flourishes and who flounders.

This era doesn't call for better management. It calls for a renaissance of self-direction.

innovation and creativity are greatest when we are not at our best

they found "that enjoyment-based intrinsic motivation, namely how creative a person feels when working on the project, is the strongest and most pervasive driver.

The desire to do something because you find it deeply satisfying and personally challenging inspires the highest levels of creativity, whether it's in the arts, sciences, or business." TERESA AMABILE Professor, Harvard

Now, once a quarter, the company sets aside an entire day when its engineers can work on any software problem they want—only this time, "to get them out of the day to day," it must be something that's not part of their regular job.

Design—that is, utility enhanced by significance—has become an essential aptitude for personal fulfillment and professional success

Buy a small notebook and begin carrying it with you wherever you go. When you see great design, make a note of it.

IDEO is one of the world's most respected design firms—the creator of everything from those fat-handled toothbrushes for kids to Apple Computer's first mouse to the Palm V. How do they do it? The secret would make an MBA squirm: Empathy. In the IDEO universe, great design doesn't begin with a cool drawing or a nifty gadget. It begins with a deep and empathic understanding of people.

Story represents a pathway to understanding that doesn't run through the left side of the brain.

Mini-sagas are extremely short stories—just fifty words long…no more, no less.

Amabile and others have found that extrinsic rewards can be effective for algorithmic tasks—those that depend on following an existing formula to its logical conclusion. But for more right-brain undertakings—those that demand flexible problem-solving, inventiveness, or conceptual understanding—contingent rewards can be dangerous.

In those situations, the ability to move others hinges less on problem solving than on problem finding.

In the mid-1960s, two soon-to-be-legendary University of Chicago social scientists—Jacob Getzels and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi—began studying the elusive subject of creativity.

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Instead of swirling downward into frustration, "Yes and" spirals upward toward possibility. When you stop you've got a set of options, not a sense of futility.

was trying to solve a problem: How can I produce a good drawing? The second was trying to find a problem: What good drawing can I produce

the R-Directed aptitudes so often disdained and dismissed—artistry, empathy, taking the long view, pursuing the transcendent—will increasingly determine who soars and who stumbles. It's a dizzying—but ultimately inspiring—change.

generally involves crossing the boundaries of domains."2 The most creative among us see relationships the rest of us never notice.

Sudbury Valley School. Take a look at this independent school in Framingham, Massachusetts

They have an intuitive sense of what I call the "Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Theory of Innovation": sometimes the most powerful ideas come from simply combining two existing ideas nobody else ever thought to unite.

There is no reason to believe any longer that only irrelevant 'play' can be enjoyed, while the serious business of life must be borne as a burdensome cross. Once we realize that the boundaries between work and play are artificial, we can take matters in hand and begin the difficult task of making life more livable.

The Tinkering School. More of a lab than a school, this summer program, created by computer scientist Gever Tulley, lets children from seven to seventeen play around with interesting stuff and build cool things.