"Creativity in Management"

once we've taken a decision we should narrow our focus while we're implementing it, and then after it's been carried out we should once again switch back to the open mode to review the feedback rising from our action, in order to decide whether the course that we have taken is successful, or whether we should continue with the next stage of our pla... See more

As we all know, it's easier to do trivial things that are urgent than it is to do important things that are not urgent, like thinking.

The most creative had simply acquired a facility for getting themselves into a particular mood — “a way of operating” — which allowed their natural creativity to function.

To play is experiment: “What happens if I do this? What would happen if we did that? What if…?”

We need to be in the open mode when we're pondering a problem but once we come up with a solution, we must then switch to the closed mode to implement it. Because once we've made a decision, we are efficient only if we go through with it decisively, undistracted by doubts about its correctness.

You can't become playful and therefore creative if you're under your usual pressures, because to cope with them you've got to be in the closed mode...You must make a quiet space for yourself where you will be undisturbed.

Well, look, the very last thing that I can say about creativity is this: it's like humor. In a joke, the laugh comes at a moment when you connect two different frameworks of reference in a new way.

The reason why it is futile for me to talk about creativity is that it simply cannot be explained...It is literally inexplicable.

the “closed mode”... It's a mode in which we're very purposeful, and it's a mode in which we can get very stressed and even a bit manic, but not creative.