Three Reasons People Reject Creative Ideas… and Three Things You Can Do About It

We have all experienced it. You have a great idea but it’s rejected by your colleagues, your boss or your CEO. Rejection is common. While most people admire creative individuals, entrepreneurs or writers they can find it difficult to back a creative idea. Why is that? Here are three reasons why people reject novel ideasContinue reading “Three Reasons People Reject Creative Ideas… and Three Things You Can Do About It”

Invention is Reinvention

So, you don’t have a new idea for a wonderful product. Not a problem. Sometimes invention is reinvention. Many successful ideas are new ways of reusing existing ideas or new combinations of existing things. Here are three examples:

Tablecloths for Idea Generation

I recently organised a workshop with Sara Jones of City University, London. Sara wanted to use the Digital Shoreditch Festival as an opportunity to generate new and useful ideas on ‘How to foster a culture of collaboration between universities and industry’. The festival brings together diverse participants from start-ups, SMEs, large companies and academia forContinue reading “Tablecloths for Idea Generation”

Social Creativity = People + Appropriate Technology

Crowdsourcing, collaboration, co-creation – there’s a lot of interest in how to involve more people in creative processes. It is often referred to as ‘social creativity’. But do we really understand how to combine people, technology and creativity to generate new solutions? Here’s a simple four step model that can help commercial organisations, not-for-profits and social enterprises:

Creativity – Making Sense of the Mystery

Creativity is rather mysterious. What is creativity? How are people creative? Are some ideas more creative than others? I thought I’d share some of the concepts that have helped my understanding of creativity. Hopefully they’ll be of use to you too.