The growing focus on creativity

Fast Company is terrific – inspired by Tom Peters it contains nuggets of news and opinion that keep you on your toes. Have a look at this http://www.fastcompany.com/pics/most-creative-people-business-top-25?which lists a bunch of the world’s most impressive creative minds.

They leave me in awe, especially Jonathan Ive who comes in at the top of a glittering bunch. He’s the man who with Steve Jobs have transformed Apple. Here’s what design creativity can do…Steve Jobs on the MAC OS X’s user interface, from Fortune January 24th 200o “We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them”

Design, inspiration, breaking rules, hypotheses and creative breakthroughs - all the geniuses in the Fast Company do these. Here’s the challenge – let’s make it impossible for them not to stop at 25 but go on to do a top 50 at the end of 2010. And here’s how – spend a lot more time running creative workshops; if you feel stuck in a same-as, same-as gloomy place short of new ideas get a group together to eat, drink and talk innovation. Creativity doesn’t stand furtively behind a lamp post waiting to mug you…you’ve got to work at it, persuade it to come out from the shadows of routine life, to feel at home with you and all your people.

Try this New Year Resolution. Be more creative by spending more time in face to face meetings and less time behind a PC. Spend more time looking around you rather than just ahead. Be more interested in asking questions than seeking answers. Happy New Year.