The Stubborn Gladness of Elizabeth Gilbert
The bestselling memoir "Eat, Pray, Love," about losing and finding herself, was the book that shot Elizabeth Gilbert to fame. It is now both a movie and travel tour. Yet there is much more to Gilbert than this runaway success. "Her collection of short stories, 'Pilgrims,' was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, and her debut novel, 'Stern Men,' was a New York Times Notable Book. Her 2009 TED T... posted on Apr 7, 32246 reads

The Power of Creative Constraints
What if a hospital decided to serve anyone who came to its doors, regardless of whether they could pay, and still committed to providing world-class quality care? Can such a self-imposed constraint actually help drive innovation? And what if that constraint is geared toward solving a problem of global proportions, without any outside funding? An almost incomprehensibly ambitious vision to rid the ... posted on Jun 10, 47912 reads

Why Your Best Ideas Happen In The Most Unusual Places
Last month, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg shared some questionable advice on how to become successful at work: Don't go to the bathroom and keep working. But according to Harvard psychologist Shelley H. Carson, author of "Your Creative Brain," little distractions like going to the bathroom can actually be a good thing when it comes to creativity. She explains that interruptions and diversi... posted on Oct 29, 26095 reads

Overcoming the Creative Block: Advice From Artists
""Inspiration is for amateurs -- the rest of us just show up and get to work," Chuck Close scoffed. "A self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood," Tchaikovsky admonished. "Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too," Isabel Allende urged. But true as this general sentiment may be, it isn't always an easy or a livable truth --... posted on Apr 22, 26264 reads

Transforming Trauma Into Creative Energy
Shoshana had her share of trauma. As a young Jewish women, she fled Antwerp during Hitler's rise to power in Europe, and thus survived the war. Years later, the trauma was deep inside, and it began to surface mysteriously when she took to weaving. Instead of ignoring the pain she felt, she courageously decided to complete her healing by working with others experiencing trauma as a psychotherapist.... posted on Jun 15, 23254 reads

The Realness of Who We Are: Thoughts On Life & Crafting
"For a long time I hesitated to call myself an artist. I mean artist in the most playful, experimental, fearless way. I believe we are all born creative. If we weren't meant to have some creative capacities, the human race would have failed by now. Creating is innate. Handcrafts were a natural extension of the artistic interests I've cultivated and as a way of expressing two things: what it means ... posted on May 3, 14897 reads

10 Creative Rituals To Learn From
Sustained creativity doesn't just happen -- it's the result of hard work, and daily habits which help us tap into inspiration and cultivate success. But, what are those habits and, more importantly, how might they help? In this article, 99U interviews some of the most successful, creative minds to determine their wonderfully unique routines. ... posted on Aug 13, 38603 reads

The Myth Of Creative Inspiration
When we read the masterpieces of authors such as Maya Angelou, James Chabon, or Franz Kafka - we assume that it is their creative genius which helps the words to flow. But, what if creativity were more a matter of habit, than these often elusive moments of inspiration? Franz Kafka, for example, worked tirelessly through the night. While Maya Angelou rented a room to create during the day. In each ... posted on Oct 13, 21736 reads

Creative Compulsive Disorder: Remembering Zina Nicole Lahr
With goggles resting on her head and peacock feathers folded into hair, Zina Lahr viewed herself as a canvas. Self-diagnosed with "creative compulsive disorder", Zina filmed a video to share her passion for mechanics and animatronics. She reveals some of her jaw-dropping artwork: a giant puppet spider she helped create for a movie, and a wired paper crane for stop-motion animation. Zina's artwork ... posted on Sep 12, 4917 reads

How To Resist Social Distractions
"One can never be alone enough to write"... And yet despite the vast creative and psychological benefits of boredom, we have grown so afraid of it that we have unlearned -- or refused to learn altogether -- the essential art of being alone, so very necessary for contemplation and creative work." In discussing the life and work of 19th century French artist and diarist Eugene Delacroix, Maria Popov... posted on Jun 24, 13614 reads

Mary Oliver on the Third Self
"Mary Oliver sets out to excavate the building blocks of the self in order to understand its parallel capacities for focused creative flow and merciless interruption. She identifies three primary selves that she inhabits, and that inhabit her, as they do all of us: the childhood self, which we spend our lives trying to weave into the continuity of our personal identity; the social self, "fettered ... posted on Oct 23, 18907 reads

Re-Imagining the World: An Artist's Remarkable Life Journey
They say that a creative adult is the child who survived. From an early age, Slobodan Dan Paich had a powerful awareness of his inner compass. In the decades since, it has led him across the globe and against many odds, to build community through art and to leverage the creative force for re-imagining the world. Slobodan reminds us how staying true to ourselves, and working with our fears, we can ... posted on May 11, 3085 reads

Walking as Creative Fuel
Over one hundred years ago, Scottish writer Kenneth Grahame, author of The Wind in the Willows, penned an essay entitled, "The Fellow that Goes Alone" about the simplest of activities that can yield the most creative thoughts: walking. In this ode to ambulating, Maria Popova weaves together quotes and excerpts from literature's big proponents of the timeless exercise, creating a piece that celebra... posted on Jan 27, 12460 reads

The Lonely Patience of Creative Work
Poet Rainier Maria Rilke believed that patience was vital to creative work: "Being an artist means, not reckoning and counting, but ripening like the tree which does not force its sap and stands confident in the storms of spring without the fear that after them may come no summer. It does come. But it comes only to the patient, who are there as though eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly sti... posted on Jul 8, 11442 reads

In the Business of Change
An increasing number of social entrepreneurs have come to realize that moving from ideation to success often requires going beyond the usual, the traditional, the expected. They need to shake things up, turn ideas upside down and infuse their solutions to challenges with a creative twist, new technology and/or a bold rethink....For social entrepreneurs it's more than being disruptive for the sake ... posted on Aug 10, 7658 reads

How to Save Creative Culture from the Syphoning of Substance
Maria Popova reflects on the thoughts of mathematician, philosopher, and cybernetics pioneer Norbert Wiener in his book The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society. She reminds us of the danger when "creative culture is reduced to mere 'content' as the life of the mind and world of substantive ideas collapse into an abyss of marketable sensationalism and cynicism, (flattening) life's nu... posted on Oct 21, 4191 reads

How Craving Attention Makes You Less Creative
Joseph Gordon-Levitt has gotten more than his fair share of attention from his acting career. But as social media exploded over the past decade, he got addicted like the rest of us -- trying to gain followers and likes only to be left feeling inadequate and less creative. In a refreshingly honest talk, he explores how the attention-driven model of big tech companies impacts our creativity -- and s... posted on Feb 24, 5562 reads

Legendary Cellist Pablo Casals, at Age 93, on Creative Vitality
"Long before there was Yo-Yo Ma, there was Spanish Catalan cellist and conductor Pablo Casals (December 29, 1876-October 22, 1973), regarded by many as the greatest cellist of all time. The recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the U.N. Peace Medal for his unflinching dedication to justice and his lifelong stance against oppression and dictatorship, Casals was as much an extraordinary... posted on Jan 20, 4103 reads

Haben Girma: Transforming Constraints to Creative Opportunity
"As the first deafblind graduate from Harvard Law School, Haben Girma aims to help eradicate what she calls "ableism" in society, the assumption that disabled people are inferior. "We are not inferior. But society often sends this message," she says. Now a distinguished human rights lawyer advocating for disability justice, she is an internationally recognized beacon of empowerment and inclusivity... posted on Oct 17, 1163 reads

What Changed Your Mind?
What happens when leading figures are asked what has changed their minds about some of the biggest issues? The poll of Nobel laureates, scientists, futurists and creative thinkers is published by John Brockman, the New York-based literary agent and publisher of The Edge website. This year he posed the question: "What have you changed your mind about? Why?" Here are some of the thought-provoking an... posted on Aug 27, 5284 reads

Untitled
At the beginning of each year, students at Chapin High School in Chapin, S.C., chart the groups and cliques on their campus. Typically, it's a picture of divisions. Then they, "Mix It Up", create creative interactions amongst and enjoy 'Unity Day'.... posted on Apr 11, 1025 reads

Avenues of Happiness
They throw parties. But they donate all the proceeds to development projects. Couple of young entrepreneurs, relics from Silicon Valley's dot-com era, started AHIMSA Fund to raise some money to buy musical instruments for underprivileged slum children, to setup a curriculums for them to grow further and to give them an avenue for creative expression. "Some would say, why are you wasting your ti... posted on Jan 21, 3290 reads

Antiprenuer
Imagine a chain of restaurants serving only locally-sourced food. Or an artist-controlled radio network. Or a consumer co-op for organic clothing. No sweatshops. No ads. Just sustainable, accountable companies. Antiprenuer is a project to challenge the giant corporations by harnessing the entrepreneurial spirit of activists. Instead of protests and boycotts, they want to "start putting our creat... posted on Jan 21, 1759 reads

The Hunger Project
Despite a food distribution system that can put a can of soda within arms reach of every person, one-fifth of the world's population suffers from chronic hunger and 41,000 of them, mostly children, die each day. Instead of looking to just feed the one-billion hungry mouths with aid, one NGO views those one-billion mouths as hard-working creative people that are an instrumental part of the solution... posted on Apr 22, 1161 reads

Rough Seas
In life, it's the rough patches that build your strength and character. They test you. They make you dig deeper, think harder, and risk more. Use them to your advantage. Don't play the victim. Get up and get creative. It's what you do when the going gets tough that defines you.... posted on Oct 31, 1802 reads

Vogalonga
Environmental protest meets extreme sports each year at the Vogalonga (long row) in Venice, Italy. As many as 1,000 human-powered boats take part in the 18.6-mile regatta through the famously polluted waters of Venice. Motorboats, whose wakes weaken the foundation of centuries-old buildings, and industrial pollution from mainland chemical factories are the main targets of these floating activists,... posted on Dec 27, 1507 reads

Infinite Worth
On the site of an old copper paint factory and whiskey warehouse in Baltimore, stands the eclectic American Visionary Art Museum. Founded by former psychiatric nurse, Rebecca Hoffberger, on the idea that each of us has unlimited creative potential, the museum trumpets the wonders of raw human creativity by featuring art work from self-taught individuals with no formal training. ... posted on Jan 31, 1419 reads

Bus Stand Autobiographies
An incarcerated person, a bilingual 5th grader, and a former go-go dancer are among 20 people whose creative autobiographies are on display at bus shelters throughout Philadelphia! It's all part of the 'Autobiography Project' to commemorate the 300th birthday of Benjamin Franklin. After inviting residents to share their own life stories, in 300 words or less, these inspirations were plastered as... posted on Jul 21, 2241 reads

From Garbage To Gold
Two years ago, Eli Reich was a mechanical engineer consultant for a Seattle wind energy company when his messenger bag was stolen. Reich, who rode his bike to work every day, decided that instead of buying a new one, he would simply fashion another bag out of used bicycle-tire inner tubes that were lying around his house. Soon compliments on his sturdy black handmade messenger bag turned into req... posted on Sep 5, 1805 reads

Discovering Collective Wisdom
Call it collective consciousness, team synergy, co-intelligence, or group mind -- a growing number of people are discovering through their own experience that wholes are indeed far more than the sum of their parts; that when individuals come together with a shared intention, in a conducive environment, something mysterious can come into being. If you've never read a book about this "collective int... posted on Oct 8, 2947 reads

Oprah's Favorite Giveaway
Over the years, television's Oprah Winfrey has given away everything from cars and homes to cookies and sweaters on her show. But last week, she gave away a different sort of gift -- the gift of giving. Every member of Oprah's audience received $1,000 and a Sony DVD Handycam, with one catch: the more than 300 audience members were told they had to use the money for a good cause. "You're going to o... posted on Nov 6, 3660 reads

PlayStation To Help Fight Disease
Thanks to a creative usage of cutting-edge technology, anyone with a broadband-connected Sony PlayStation 3 can soon enlist in the fight against diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's and a variety of cancers. By allowing users to download optional software designed to distribute computations across many idle gaming systems, Stanford University's Folding@home project harnesses the... posted on Mar 18, 2261 reads

The Story of Johnny the Bagger
Johnny the Bagger -- an unforgettable true story about a young man with Down Syndrome who changes the culture of a grocery store by being creative and giving his customers more than they expect. When Johnny finds a way to put his own personal signature of care on every interaction, his inspired action ripples out in unexpected and inspiring ways. Watch the video here.... posted on Apr 17, 20513 reads

A Story of Healing
Interplast was the first humanitarian organization to provide free reconstructive surgery for children with clefts, disabling burns and hand injuries in developing countries. In 1997, a film crew accompanied an Interplast volunteer surgical team to Vietnam. The filmmakers donated their services to document the team’s experiences and produce “A Story of Healing,” which earned the 1997 Academy... posted on Jul 29, 2352 reads

Thinking Outside & Inside The Box
This takes a little outside-and-inside-the-box thinking. What looks like and lives like a house is actually a shipping container. "I call it my bunker," says Rosalynn Kearney of her container home. Used to import almost everything we use and wear, shipping containers are now a new concept in affordable housing. The containers are claimed to be hurricane-proof, fire-resistant. Increasingly too expe... posted on May 9, 4198 reads

How Captcha Puzzles Serve
A weapon used to fight spammers is now helping university researchers preserve old books and manuscripts. Many websites use an automated test to tell computers and humans apart when signing up for an account or logging in. Known as captcha puzzles, these tests usually contain a few random letters in an image, arranged in such a way that automated programs cannot read. Carnegie Mellon scientists h... posted on Oct 7, 1819 reads

The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits
Conventional wisdom says that scaling social innovation starts with strengthening internal management capabilities. But a recent study of 12 high-impact nonprofits including Teach for America, Habitat for Humanity and the Exploratorium shows that real social change happens when organizations go outside their own walls and find creative ways to enlist the help of others. The secret to their success... posted on Oct 8, 6021 reads

The Six Myths of Creativity
Teresa Amabile has been grappling with the question of creativity in the workplace for almost 30 years. She has collected nearly 12,000 daily journal entries from 238 people working on creative projects in seven companies in the consumer products, high-tech, and chemical industries. She didn't tell the study participants that she was focusing on creativity. She simply asked them, in a daily email,... posted on Feb 8, 5905 reads

You Gotta Have Art
As health-care costs skyrocket, a down-to-earth approach to healing is emerging, complementing high-tech medicine with high-touch arts. The approach is based on the assumption that incorporating music, visual art, writing and performance into clinical care can increase feelings of well-being and even improve health -- an assumption that medical researchers are beginning to recognize the need to te... posted on Apr 10, 1370 reads

Where Does Creativity Hide
Born in the US to immigrant parents from China, Amy Tan rejected her mother's expectations that she become a doctor and concert pianist. She chose to write fiction instead. Her much-loved, best-selling novels have been translated into 35 languages. In this TED talk Tan digs deep into the creative process, journeying through her childhood and family history and into the worlds of physics and chance... posted on May 1, 17077 reads

Peace on a Billboard
Seeing Peace: Artists Collaborate with the United Nations, is a visionary initiative that brings the imagination, through the presence of the artist, to the table of the General Assembly of the UN. The goal is to embed the creative process into the great global dialogues of the day. Former Secretary of Defense of the United States, Robert McNamara, commenting on wars of the 20th century, wrote: "... posted on Jun 23, 2509 reads

Building High-Quality Connections at Work
What is the key to transforming the workplace experience? According to this Stanford Social Innovation Review article, it is to build and nurture "high-quality connections." In a high-quality connection, people feel more open, competent, and alive, and one of the best ways to foster these connections is by encouraging respectful engagement between coworkers. When co-workers engage each other respe... posted on Jul 7, 3501 reads

An Upside to the Economic Downturn
With the global finance system imploding, maybe this time of creative destruction offers us the chance for a fresh start. What sort of society do we want to rebuild? What will expand our life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness without diminishing the chances for other people, now and in the future, to have the same? Maybe we'll learn to share the work and reclaim time for the aspects of our lives ... posted on Jan 1, 5209 reads

Six Ways to Manage Leadership Stress
Effective leaders know that stress can be a good thing. It keeps you focused. It makes you competitive. It prompts action. But stress, as many of us know, can also turn toxic. John R. Ryan, the president of the Center for Creative Leadership, maintains that managing leadership stress comes down to a handful of critical elements: maintaining perspective, exercising, opening up, welcoming feedback, ... posted on Jan 25, 7687 reads

Sand Castles in South Africa
In 2007, Cape Town's Design Indaba conference organizers decided to use that concentrated creative energy to address a problem in their own backyard: the thousands of impoverished people living in makeshift shacks in South Africa's townships. Looking to create low-cost houses that could serve as models for the future, they launched the 10x10 Housing Project, which paired 10 leading international a... posted on Feb 12, 5043 reads

If I Had Three Wishes
Hurrying to get out the door on a Monday morning, Kathy Smith started to scratch her name on her son's homework assignment when she stopped to read what he had written. The fourth-grade creative assignment was pretty straightforward: If I Had Three Wishes. Kathy smiled as she read the first item on her son's bucket list: a golden retriever. His second wish was to play professional basketball, hard... posted on Feb 19, 6863 reads

The Gift of Creative Confidence
Until about a year ago, David Kelley was on a roll. He had received a National Design Award, been inducted into the National Academy of Engineering, held an endowed chair at the Stanford School of Engineering, and even won the Sir Misha Black Medal for his "distinguished contribution to design education." He also had a loving wife, a daughter to whom he was devoted, and a vast circle of friends t... posted on Feb 28, 5434 reads

Does Art Heal?
Seven-year-old Catriona Chennell's room is filled with samples of her artwork: strings of differently-shaped beads, a painting of a rainbow blazing across a blue sky. Cat's art decorates her room in the pediatric intensive care unit at Shands at the University of Florida, the hospital in Gainesville where she has spent six months waiting for a heart-lung tensplant. Through the Arts in Medicine pro... posted on Apr 6, 4244 reads

The Art of Dialogue
What's the secret of good conversations? Bill Isaacs, the author of "Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together" and director of the Dialogue Project at MIT's Organizational Learning Center, says that people need to build specific skills and to appreciate the separate stages of a good conversation. This Fast Company article outlines a few key skills, followed by a description of those stages that a... posted on Jun 1, 5322 reads

Social Entrepreneurship Revisited
Ashoka founder and CEO Bill Drayton first used the term "social entrepreneurship" in the early 1980s, and it continues to inspire images of audacious social change -- the kind that sweeps away the old approaches to solving intractable social problems such as disease, hunger, and poverty. Like business entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship involves a wave of creative destruction that remakes so... posted on Jun 9, 3035 reads