Maya Angelou and Thomas Edison have given me unexpected permission. One of their secrets — quickly becoming mine — is to not tidy up so much.

It is profoundly uncomfortable to choose to work differently. But sometimes, the best way forward is to allow yourself to retreat. Work different.

Jake Karls, co-founder of Mid Day Squares, flips the “perfectionist” script. Here he shares his unexpected formula for crafting deeply engaged fans.

The single-most important decision I make weekly is to shed the “teacher’s cap” and put on the student’s. The only way to continue to inspire is to seek inspiration, myself.

Innovation is a numbers game, which is music to my ears since I’m a statistics nerd. One of my favorite counterintuitive statistical truths is Bayes’ Theorem. Study it to beat the entrepreneurial odds.

LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman and John Steinbeck might be wildly different characters, yet when it comes to sparking creativity, they both employ an unexpected hack.

The evidence is clear: back-to-back meetings strain our brains! One innovation leader gives “corporate athletes” a simple rule to make sure they show up ready to sprint.

To trigger the light bulb moment, you’ve got to summon your subconscious. And the best way to do that, is to care. Y Combinator’s Paul Graham explains…

Ever wonder where Amazon’s famous flywheel-spinning organizational innovation, the “two pizza team,” came from? Hint: it didn’t come from a brainstorm…

Innovators ranging from Lin-Manuel Miranda to Jeff Bezos wielded down time as a deliberate strategy. For all our connectedness, being unplugged has never been more important.

We shouldn’t see sick days as days we can’t work. A few of my favorite breakthroughs prove, perhaps we should see them as a gift — an opportunity to receive a new vision of the future.

For breakthroughs to happen, we need to make new connections. These connections aren’t just the function of new input, though; we’ve got to create space to realize them, too.

Frustrated by bad design, Steve Jobs left his desk. He didn’t do it absent-mindedly; he did it deliberately: looking for something that would unlock the riddle.

To arrive at a breakthrough, you have to take a break from the breakneck pace. Without reflection, important insights get missed. Just ask Steve Martin…

Volume and velocity are essential to breaking through. How do you increase both? Steve Jobs advocated an unexpected tactic…

Peter Sims, author of Little Bets and founder of BLKSHP suggests that a movement is superior to a network in a few distinct ways.

Innovation is all about unexpected recombinations. Sometimes, it seems like theft. My belief is we need to normalize such acts of recombination by sharing our own!

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 equip leaders with a plan of attack.

A stratospheric success at Google might never have reached escape velocity if folks weren’t allowed to indulge pet projects. Here’s the inside scoop.

Jon Beekman, Founder and CEO of ManCrates, shares an enlightened tactic for helping innovators find breakthroughs they aren’t even looking for.