
Methods of the Masters
A blog on the art & science of creative action.
Kill Ideas
What do you do when you realize the sheer volume of ideas required for a breakthrough? Steve Jobs advocated one unexpected tactic…
Spark A Movement
The holy grail of venture building is to create “network effects” through “demand-side increasing returns.” You’ll be surprised that some consider a network to be the second-best form…
Encourage Theft
Innovation is all about recombining existing elements in unexpected ways. Sometimes, that seems like theft. My belief is we need to normalize such acts of recombination by sharing our own!
Disrupt Bias
How can a leader create an environment that’s hostile to bias, and one that cultivates the emergence of new ideas? Trier Bryant provides a simple framework to answer this very question.
Permission to be Curious
One of Google’s stratospheric successes might never have reached escape velocity if folks weren’t allowed to indulge pet projects. Here’s the inside scoop.
Watch the Corners
Jon Beekman, Founder and CEO of ManCrates, shares an enlightened tactic for helping innovators find the breakthroughs they aren’t even looking for.
Welcome Midnight Intrusions
An eccentric habit may shed light on how Harvard’s B.F. Skinner became one of the most influential psychologists of all time. He learned to value his midnight thoughts so much, he set a nightly alarm!
Singletask
Stanford Professor Clifford Nass studied hundreds of students, to explore what distinguished self-proclaimed “multitaskers” from the rest of us. His conclusions, and their implications, won’t surprise you.
Turn Info Into Knowledge
Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Charles Duhigg explains how inefficient-seeming activities can alter how we make sense of information, and turn it into valuable knowledge.
Admit You Don’t Know
“I don’t know,” might be three of the hardest words to say, especially for a teacher. The teacher is the one who’s supposed to know. And yet, not knowing creates space for the unexpected to emerge…
Learn for Yourself
The best creators are constantly learning. There’s immense value in doing something you’re not good at, specifically for the sake of seeing from a fresh perspective.
Keep A Bug List
Legendary Stanford professor Bob McKim used to give design students a simple assignment: keep a bug list. This was decades before computer programming gave the term the meaning it has today.
Endure the Pain of Becoming
It’s a grave mistake to assume that a spectacular outcome started out spectacularly. As Ed Catmull, Founder and CEO of Pixar says, “Our job is to take movies from suck to not suck.”
Make Leaps Happen
Author, teacher, and artist Gary Zamchick writes, “In a time of rapid disruption, it’s more important than ever to live in the liquid space between building and dreaming — a place where conceptual, innovative, and transformational leaps drive innovation and change.”
Community Relevance is the New Cultural Relevance
Gavin Guidry, Creative Director at R/GA, says, “If my experience has taught me one thing, it’s this: to get the results clients are looking for, they need to forget about cultural relevance, and focus on community relevance.”
Imagine Alternatives
Whenever a student asked legendary Stanford Professor Bob McKim for feedback on a new design concept, he consistently gave the same response: “Show me three.” Those three words contain a remarkable depth of wisdom.
Reach Outside Your Team
“Would anyone be interested in staying after class tomorrow to brainstorm experiments?” This simple post is one of the most-engaged-with in all of LaunchPad12’s Slack messages. It illustrates a profound source of wisdom.