“Why do fashion, film, and music - the sultans of cool in our culture, the shapers of our consciousness - take such radically different approaches to the control ofcreativity?”

Randomness can be inspiring. Leonardo Da Vinci used to find inspiration by looking at stains on the wall… Here’s an exercise that will help you use random patterns for inspiration and hone your visual thinking skills. You’ll need a deck of index cards and a cup of tea.”

“It’s been said that art, creativity, and innovation are about the recognition and mastery of constraints… One of the best ways to be truly creative–breakthrough creative–is to be forced to go fast. Really, really, really fast. From the brain’s perspective, it makes sense that extreme speed can unlock creativity. When forced to come up with something under extreme time constraints, we’re forced to rely on the more intuitive, subconscious parts of our brain.”

“I recently ran across a 1997 journal entry that read, ‘If you think you have an original idea, stop reading or risk discovering otherwise.’ Now, it appears, there is more we should avoid.”

“There’s no doubt about it — maintaining a day job while all your instincts are roaring in another direction is one of the toughest things a creative soul can endure. If you’re keeping body and soul together for hourly wages and then find yourself too tired or distracted or frustrated to be creative after work, you’re not alone. It’s sometimes a superhuman challenge to sustain creative energy so that the switch to art or writing is as easy as possible once you get home.”

“This website lists and explains every idea generation method I’ve encountered during the past 15 years. It is the result of extensive research; my many sources include books, management journals, websites, academics, consultants and colleagues. The methods have been drawn not just from the worlds of creative problem solving and innovation, but also from other worlds such as organisational change, strategic planning, psychotherapy, the new sciences and the creative arts.”

“I first learned about TRIZ and its approach to creative problem solving last June. Thanks to a recent blog post by Kevin Kelly, I’m revisiting Genrich Altshuler’s design strategies for inventing — a summary of engineering design principles extracted from a study of 200,000 patents by a Soviet patent examiner in the 1960s.”

“Sometimes rules should be thrown out the window. Often the most valuable lesson in art and design schools is ignored. For a visual communicator to grow and improve, you must be prepared to throw everything you just learned out the window.”

“Creativity and innovation thinking are topics that I have been searching recently. Below are those couple of sites’ resource links + some related recommended books that related to creativity and innovation. Techniques (163 of them!) by Mycoted should help you with creative thinking - those are the toolbox for you when you get stuck on developing your ideas.”

“Good criticism serves one purpose: to give the creator of the work more perspective and help them make their next set of choices. Bad criticism uses the opportunity provided by someone else‚Äôs work to make the critic feel smart, superior or better about themselves: things that have nothing to do with helping the recipient of the critique…”

“It’s next to impossible to have a completely original idea on the Web and when you’ve got a knowledgeable and engaged audience (a very good thing to have) they’ll be able to tell where you draw your inspirations.”

“Here’s a neat way to invent a new Purple Cow. Figure what the always is. Then do something else. Toothpaste always comes in a squeezable tube. Business travelers always use a travel agent. Politicians always have their staff screen their calls. Figure out what the always is, then do exactly the opposite. Do the never.”

“A new study will change how you generate ideas and decide who’s really creative in your company.”

“A new book looks at creativity at the intersections of fields, disciplines, and cultures. An excerpt from The Medici Effect explores the far-flung food ideas of chef Marcus Samuelsson.”

“Below are listed a number of creativity techniques to help with creative thinking. Like most tools these creativity techniques all have their good and bad points. I like to think of these creativity techniques as tools in a toolbox in much the same way as my toolbox at home for DIY. It has a saw, spanner, hammer, knife and all sorts of other things in it, they are all very useful, but you have to pick the right tool (creativity technique) for each job. We will try and provide a little guidance along with each tool to let you know whether it’s best used for cutting paper or putting in nails. There are at least 200 different creativity techniques and tools available, listed below are some of these.”