Combinatorial Creativity
everything is a remix of what came before
sari and
Combinatorial Creativity
In 1985, Nike held a 24-hour shoe design contest. Nike was struggling. Their stock dropped 50%. They had to lay off people. Adidas, Converse, and Reebok were all selling more shoes. So in a panicked attempt to find creative talent, Nike held a shoe design contest. The winner was a corporate architect named Tinker Hatfield. “Two days after the compe... See more
what a great little story
"the things that inspire me the most are the intersection points, kind of intersections between two things that were never intersected before... Steve Jobs did this fantastically with calligraphy and computers, James Terrell with astronomy and web architecture..."
Josh at the Browser Company on the Moth Minds podcast
Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that... See more
Steve Jobs • Steve Jobs on Creativity
Everything is a Remix Remastered (2015 HD)
youtube.comIt also helps to travel in topic space. You'll have more new ideas if you explore lots of different topics, partly because it gives the angle grinder more surface area to work on, and partly because analogies are an especially fruitful source of new ideas.
How to Do Great Work
James Turrell took inspiration from astronomy and perceptual psychology. Coco Chanel was most influenced by nuns and religious symbols. David Adjaye drew from Yoruban sculpture, and Steve Jobs from Zen Buddhism and calligraphy. We could continue this list forever, but that’s not the point. The point is to look outside the confines of our industry t... See more