elisabeth's blog

Creative workouts for your brain

As Daniel Pink says, The MFA is the new MBA. He discusses this in his article, Revenge of the Right Brain, about how creativity and the ability to see the big picture and synthesize ideas are our future.

So we know we need to be more creative (and anyway, who doesn't want to be more creative) and for those who need a little inspiration, I thought I'd gather up some of my favorite creativity web links and post them here. There's some really good stuff on the web to get you inspired and thinking creatively.

Perhaps one of the easiest ways to start getting creative is to look at other people's blogs and then, start your own. Forcing yourself to think about and write about a topic every day (or, at least, pretty often) is a good habit to get into. It's that whole practice thing: to get good at something, you need to practice a lot. And that includes thinking creatively. There are people who post creatively about everything from notebooks to babies. And it doesn't have to be writing - you can draw your blog too. At the risk of distracting all our Creating Passionate Users readers permanently, check out a few of these illustrated blogs at the Blogs Illustrated Net Ring. There are some amazingly creative people out their posting their ideas and their art online for your inspiration.

It's interesting to think about how ideas about the new economy - a creative-thinking based economy - and new ideas about marketing (see, for example, cluetrain and gaping void) are converging with the internet. Now some would argue that new ideas in economy and marketing are being driven in part by the internet, while others would say the internet is a reflection of cultural trends. But no matter how you look at it, the internet is playing a big part. Whether it's companies starting to be more transparent, forums where people share product reviews, or the amazing number of creative bloggers out there writing about everything and anything under the sun (including breaking news first), people thinking creatively online are having a big impact on our lives.

If you're not up for starting your own blog, or you are, but you need some creative inspiration, check out a few of these web sites:

• CreativeThink.com
  


• Right Brain Workouts
  


• 16 Ways to Jump-Start your Company's Creativity
  


• Enchanted Mind
  


• You Can Learn How to Think Creatively, an article by Jacci Howard Bear
  


• CreativeQuotations.com has some great quotes about the creative process
  


• More great quotes about creativity
  
• Flickr. I love this site; looking through people's photos always inspires me to think about taking photographs in new ways
  


• What
  a great idea has some ideas to help you get unstuck if you're stuck
  


• Pick any random website and follow some links until you get to a web page that sparks an idea. Think about it, write about it, draw it, play it.
  

Labels: brain, creativity, learning