The Six Myths of Creativity

According to this Article in Fast Company, these are the six myths of creativity in business:

1. Creativity Comes From Creative Types
As a leader, you don't want to ghettoize creativity; you want everyone in your organization producing novel and useful ideas, including your financial people.

2. Money Is a Creativity Motivator
People put far more value on a work environment where creativity is supported, valued, and recognized.

3. Time Pressure Fuels Creativity
Time pressure stifles creativity because people can't deeply engage with the problem.

4. Fear Forces Breakthroughs
Creativity is positively associated with joy and love and negatively associated with anger, fear, and anxiety.

5. Competition Beats Collaboration
When people compete for recognition, they stop sharing information.

6. A Streamlined Organization Is a Creative Organization Creativity suffers greatly during a downsizing.

Move Over, Diploma-Brandishers, Make Way for the Pro-Am

The Pro-Am Revolution: How enthusiasts are changing our economy and society

From astronomy to activism, from surfing to saving lives, Pro-Ams - people pursuing amateur activities to professional standards - are an increasingly important part of our society and economy.

For Pro-Ams, leisure is not passive consumerism but active and participatory, it involves the deployment of publicly accredited knowledge and skills, often built up over a long career, which has involved sacrifices and frustrations.

The 20th century witnessed the rise of professionals in medicine, science, education, and politics. In one field after another, amateurs and their ramshackle organisations were driven out by people who knew what they were doing and had certificates to prove it.

The Pro-Am Revolution argues this historic shift is reversing. We're witnessing the flowering of Pro-Am, bottom-up self-organisation and the crude, all or nothing, categories of professional or amateur will need to be rethought.

Long, but worth the read. (via Future Now)

Quote of the Month

"If people are going to be stealing software, we want them stealing our software."

-- Exec at large unnamed software company