I’ve written a lot on creativity and when I do I often mention the professor whose class on creativity I took, Jacob Goldenberg. He recently gave an online talk with Columbia Business School about his research. If you like creativity, learning some unexpected properties of it, and improving your creativity, I recommend it. It’s not as polished as a TED talk, but as informative. Here it is: video platformvideo managementvideo[…] Keep reading →

[This post is part of a series on “Mental models and beliefs: an exercise to identify yours.” If you don’t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you’ll get more value than reading just this post.] Storytelling seems so common to all cultures it’s probably in our genes to like a good story. We love hearing messages in the format of a[…] Keep reading →

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Flavorpill — the social discovery engine and curated event marketplace that keeps you tapped into the cultural happenings around you and lets you find and follow things you like, see what your friends are into, and, if so inspired, get off the computer and go out — posted my creativity seminar next Wednesday, April 24, 6pm-9pm. Very prestigious. Check it out. Then sign up! I look forward to seeing you[…] Keep reading →

Next Wednesday, 6pm-9pm I’m giving my first seminar through Skillshare, a company that organizes classes. If you’re near Manhattan and you want to become more creative, you should come. The class is called Systematic Creativity. When I say it teaches proven ways to increase your creativity, I mean it. It comes from one of the best courses I took at Columbia Business School by one of the top creativity researchers,[…] Keep reading →

If you haven’t heard of the Barnes Foundation and you like art, find out about it. If you’re anywhere near Philadelphia, go there. Albert Barnes was a successful entrepreneur who lived in and near Philadelphia (and went to my High School) from 1842 to 1951. According to Wikipedia, “in his 30s Barnes began to study and collect art. He acquired his first 20 pieces by commissioning his friend, the artist[…] Keep reading →

Our guides took us to see the children’s performance palace (I forget its official title), where they put on display groups of children whose performances were incredible. I wrote and posted images of them before. Who knows what training they’ve had or what motivates them to get to this level. I think the usual first guess of people who are critical of North Korea is that the government coerces them[…] Keep reading →

I came across a great quote in a Sundance Grand Jury Prize movie called American Splendor about  comic book writer Harvey Pekar. If you don’t know about Harvey Pekar or his comic book series, American Splendor (they named the movie after it), he was a mostly regular guy with a regular job as a file clerk in a hospital in Cleveland. He saw comic books with super-heroes in tights as[…] Keep reading →

Do you like music, art, literature, innovation, invention, creativity, entrepreneurship, and things like that? Then you probably liked the document I mentioned a few weeks ago about problems with copyright and how to fix them. I considered it well thought-out and felt it proposed ideas that would improve the country. I was surprised to see it coming from the type of hard-core conservative that supports corporate welfare. Until the group[…] Keep reading →