Creativity: Theory and Practice

When nature finds itself in need of new ideas, it strives to connect, not protect.

Curiosity is voracious–the more you know the more you want to know; the more connections you make between the different bits of knowledge; the more ideas you have. Which is why curiosity is really the wellspring of creativity.

This gives us a roadmap to doing more creative work. What we need to do is, in the exploration phase, raise the perceived value of doing the work, raise the perceived costs of not doing the work, and lower the perceived value of doing other things.

Obviously, collaborations can work with idea generation too, but I think the most important part of idea generation is getting ideas yourself, then talking to people, customers, users to evolve them. Not talking to your teammates how great your team's idea is.