Edge/Creative Leadership/Blog

A blog on creative leadership, innovation, disruption and all that inspires, creates and sells great ideas.

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The Icebreaker Kit

Looking for a way to loosen everyone up before a workshop or brainstorming session. Check out our icebreaker kit that we use to kick off our creativity workshop sessions.

This is a great way to get people to relax and get to know each other a little bit better. Beyond the basic introduction of name and job title, we've incorporated a fun fact so you can learn something interesting and unique, and potentially a point to connect on with group for the working session.

Would this be useful to you at your next workshop? What sort of questions would you ask? Try it at your next work event! 

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Transform your creativity in 5 minutes

What can you get done in 5 minutes?

Not much is usually the answer, especially when it comes to creative work. However, taking 5 minutes in a day to focus on a creative task can go a long way. After all, the hardest part is getting started but if you take those 5 minutes to do something creative, the task seems less daunting. Especially when it's one that could take hours or days. Breaking it up into 5-minute intervals means that it's easier to get started and put that time aside for your mind to focus only on the creative task at hand. And those intervals add up.

So back to the question at hand, what can you get done in 5 minutes? As this article by Fast Company and psychologist Andrea Bonior point out, "Five minutes more work than you would have done otherwise." 

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6 ways your brain tries to kill your ideas

I think we all do at least one of these 6 things to sabotage ourselves and our ideas. Courtney Seiter really hit the nail on the head with this article on how we stay stuck in one place instead of taking things forward. Make all the excuses you want, now you have an answer for each one. Stop the self-sabotage and, in the words of every Nike ad since 1988, just do it! 

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How To Get Good At Things By Being Bad First

Having a hard time learning new things? Try this.

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Another tip from our creativity cards! This is one of my favourite things to do, especially considering how much I love food. Go out, explore your city, try new things and indulge in that dessert you seldom let yourself have. You've been working hard. You deserve it! 

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Everyone's been talking about 3D printing these days but how many people actually know the technology behind it. I know I didn't really understand it until I saw this. Mashable breaks it down in the simplest way in this short yet interesting video. 

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The Ideal Creativity Tool

Playmais is a material made of corn that sticks together with a tiny dab of water and can be easily shaped with your hands. It's made to help children get creative but why not use it yourself?  You can build and make things, prototype and bring your ideas to life. Next time you have a brainstorming session, or just want to have some fun and get creative, try to add some Playmais to the mix. 

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The team is at C2MTL this week. If you haven't heard of C2MTL, it's a three-day event in Montreal that brings together Creativity and Commerce.

This interview with Welby Altidor, Executive Director of Creations - Creative Content at Cirque du Soleil, on their blog, gives us a view into his thoughts on business, creativity and life in general.

And for those at C2MTL this week, have fun and don't forget to share your stories of the event with us! 

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This article discusses the exactly what is the right amount of background noise to help you be more creative. Researchers found that the right amount of background noise can break people out of their patterns of thinking and let their imagination wander, while still keeping them from losing focus on the task at hand. 

I use Coffitivity to help me get creative but the article goes through a few more options if you're looking for something else. Is there anything you already use? What do you listen to to help you get creative? 

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For those who are still familiarizing themselves with Design Thinking, this infographic from homegrown breaks it down fairly simply. It's a great introduction to the concept that was adapted for business purposes by IDEO's David Kelley.

As Tim Brown, CEO and president of IDEO said, Design Thinking is a "human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer's toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success." By doing this, businesses and individuals will improve their own problem-solving processes and take innovation to the next level. 

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I always get asked what the difference is between creativity and innovation. Theodore Levitt said it best. Creativity and innovation defined! 

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This interesting short by the RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) questions whether or not brainstorming works. 

In this video, Jonah Lehrer argues that brainstorming actually produces less original ideas than when people work on their own. This is based on the notion that to produce better ideas, we need to be critical; but brainstorming is ruled by the premise "Don't criticize". Put two and two together and you'll find yourself coming to the conclusion that brainstorming doesn't produce better ideas. 

The video is very nicely illustrated and the topic is one that will spark many interesting debates. What do you guys think? 

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This is our create lab. 

These are our creativity cards.

Our task for the day is to take something apart and learn how its made. 

We found a couple of old electronics and went to work. Here's what we eventually did with them. We had some fun and tried to create something new out of something old. Can you guess what we took apart? 

Now it's your turn. Go have some fun. Take apart your childhood Game Boy or Atari. What can you make out of it? 

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10 Strategies Quick Learners Use To Pick Up Anything

The ability to learn quickly and efficiently is minimal energy outputting maximum results. Whether it’s learning a new skill, challenging an idea or simply contributing to a conversation, being able to synthesize information and understand it in one’s own terms as fast as possible, proves to be a valuable tool. 

In Drake Baer’s article for Business Insider, ’10 Strategies Quick Learners Use to Pick Up Anything’, Baer suggests applying critical steps in order to help us process unfamiliar realms of information and make them more easily digestible. 

These steps are insightful, motivational, painfully obvious (as in, you’ll ask yourself “why didn’t I see that before?!”) and can be implemented to any situation that needs dissecting; anywhere from technical strategies to choosing what to wear in the morning.

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The 6 Best Tools For Creative Work, According To Science

Creativity is a beautiful, fickle creature and harnessing it’s powers can be daunting at times. Blockages and lack of creative juices naturally happen to everyone, and although there are no hard and fast rules to lure creativity, there are ways to be receptive to the flow.

Belle Beth Cooper’s article,’ The 6 Best Tools fro Creative Work, According to Science’ breaks down some easy and attainable ideas to help push through for better work and more creative thinking. Her intuitive and emotional approaches are based on cold facts, giving the reader a vision of light at the end of the tunnel.

If you’re stuck in a rut or curious about carrying out new ways to facilitate better creation, this article might just be the push you need to get enlightened and find that eureka moment. 

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Whenever we need to tackle a big challenge, we set up a war room to help us brainstorm better. We get everyone into one room with a ton of paper and writing space and let the ideas flow. Google Ventures also uses a war room to help them do better work.

Jake Knapp, a design partner at Google Ventures, talks about why war rooms work so well and how you can set up your own war room in this article on Fast Company. 

It's definitely worth looking into how you can create your own war room to help foster creativity. 

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This cool infographic from Entrepreneur does a great job of clearly outlining the importance of innovation for corporations. It also takes it a step further going through all the necessary ingredients to foster innovation within a company. The data shows that a holistic, structured approach is what works and yields real business results.

Check out the infographic for more details on what really fosters innovation.