Your first idea is rarely your best. Exploring multiple possibilities, even "dummy" options, is the key to unlocking innovation. Here’s how to maximize your creativity and elevate your problem-solving skills: reject the trap of settling for your initial thoughts.

To become a professional in any field takes an enormous amount of skill, and hard work. Routine practice is a hallmark of the “professional” in any context. Here’s how to take a professional mentality into the innovation arena.

The most exceptional innovators are just as diligent about their inputs as they are their outputs. Academy Award-winning producer Brian Grazer has kept up a rigorous input practice for thirty five years.

Spectacular entrepreneurs craft clever experiments. And a robust experimentation practice demands a rigorous ideation ritual. At Stanford, this is how folks build the muscle.

I’ll never forget the first time I caught a glimpse of my own dormant creative potential. It’s like a whole new world of possibility opened up to me. Ever since then, it’s a gift I’ve wanted to give others.

What if one reason we aren’t all a little more like Einstein is a simple cognitive bias? What if we could short circuit that bias with practice?

Good news: we can!

Pianists play the piano. Swimmers do laps. But what about innovators? What do they do? Innovators generate abundant options. Try this.

One of the simplest ways to measure your creative capacity is to count how many solutions you can imagine for any given problem. World-class creators actually, literally, count their ideas.