Combinatorial Creativity

Danny Meyer the restaurateur has called ABCD: “always be collecting dots, so that you can always be connecting dots.” Dots or breadcrumbs, if your whole life is oriented around that collection, which mine is, then you're always preparing.

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... See more

It 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.

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

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