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Good strategies from Ben Keenan for tapping into your creativity:
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SP: Do you have any strategies or tips on how we can be more creative?

BK: Sure, here are five:

1. Get the question right.

Before you consider the possibilities, you need to knuckle down and articulate the problem you are trying to solve in a single sentence. A problem well stated is a problem half solved.

2. Stop yourself from trying to solve things right away.

Years of rote education has drilled the question answer response into all of us.

You need to suppress that part of you that wants recognition and reward, and consider all the ways into the problem. Fill a page full of little boxes and try and put a thought in every box. Not an idea, but a thought, anything and everything that might solve the problem. Your goal is to fill the page, not answer the question.

3. Things won’t make sense after a while and that is normal.

We are not wired to consider possibilities when confronted with a problem, we are wired to jump out of harms way, that’s why the creative process makes you feel flustered, and like you aren’t getting anywhere. Understanding this helps you push through it and just keep going, it’s only after things stop making sense that the really interesting thoughts arrive.

4. Go do something else.

After you’ve a had a burst for an hour or two, go do an expense report, your time sheets, something that requires your full concentration. While you are applying conscious thought to this task, your subconscious will be sifting through all knowledge you’ve offloaded about the problem.

5. Keep a pen and paper handy.

Once your subconscious has done its job, the answers will come to you thick and fast. Usually, if we are not having any luck on a solution, I’ll just go at it for an hour or so at night, sleep on it, and an idea will come to me while I’m on my way into work the next morning. We all do this without realizing we do it, it’s why your best ideas often happen in the shower.

SP: Lastly, are there any resources / training links for people who are interested in exercising their creative muscle?

BK: There are many, I am a hoarder of them at my Thought Police site and I regularly tweet about them on @warmcola.
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smartplanet ben_keenan creativity reference how_to

John Maeda on Twitter.
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Q: You’re very active on Twitter. In fact, you’ve said that your new book, Redesigning Leadership, is based on some of the “micro-posts” you’ve Tweeted about leadership and innovation. Why did you decide to start using Twitter?

A: First and foremost, I think of myself as an artist and designer, and I’m also the president of a college. Being the president of a college, your role is to be the authoritative leader. I own that and I embrace that fully, but at the same time, as an artist, I want to express my creativity in some shape or form. I can have a show once a year somewhere in the world and that’s okay, but every day I have to make art somehow, and making art is about taking emotion and making it into something. I found that using Twitter gives me the chance to have a gallery online where I can share different thoughts that I’m forming and thinking and struggling with. Also, I have very little time, so I use little micro-minutes to just summarize something and put it out there.
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john_maeda risd creativity smartplanet interview

Really like this, have experienced it myself.
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Part of your mission is teaching “creative confidence.” What does that mean and how do you do that?

It’s pretty amazing to watch. Students come in and say, “Oh I’m not creative.” That just makes my skin crawl. I really think everybody is creative. There are just some blocks in the way. Lots of CEOs, when I go in their office they say, “Geez, you’re so creative and I’m not a creative person.” It’s not that I’m creative and they’re not. I need to unlock that. The best way to unlock that is to give them creative confidence. Sometimes it’s getting them to be able to stand up and draw stick figures. Sometimes it has to do with getting them to make their strategic plan visual. But the main thing is you have to give them an experience. Creative confidence comes from us teaching organizations, individuals, CEOs, students, or whoever, a methodology. We call it “design thinking” but it’s really an innovation methodology. It’s a little prescribed, but that makes them feel more comfortable because they have this kind of step-by-step approach. It takes them down the path of doing a project and then there’s this moment where they realize that they’ve come up with ideas a lot better than what they would have come up with using their normal method. All they have to do is be mindful of that methodology and continually improve it.
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ideo david_kelley creativity ideas design_thinking

Self-explanatory; great resource.
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In this post, we’ve compiled a list of businesses that have shared a peek inside their fascinating logo design process with the public. We hope it will get you started on your own.
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design logos creativity brainstorming reference

Do you have a (personal) manifesto?
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Manifestos are a powerful catalyst. By publicly stating your views and intentions, you create a pact for taking action. (Movements from the American Revolution to Dogme 95 film to the Firefox web browser were all launched by manifestos.) If you want to change the world, even in just a small way, creating a personal or business manifesto is a great place to start.
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99_percent behance reference manifestos creativity art

Cute reference page for "Tips":
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At 99%, Behance's think tank, we focus on what happens after inspiration — researching the forces that truly push ideas to fruition. Our profiles of proven idea makers, action-oriented tips, best-practices sessions, and annual conference are all designed to help you transform ideas from vision to reality.
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99_percent behance reference tips creativity

1996 article by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on creativity.
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When we're creative, we feel we are living more fully than during the rest of life. The excitement of the artist at the easel or the scientist in the lab comes close to the ideal fulfillment we all hope to get from life, and so rarely do. Perhaps only sex, sports, music, and religious ecstasy—even when these experiences remain fleeting and leave no trace—provide a profound sense of being part of an entity greater than ourselves. But creativity also leaves an outcome that adds to the richness and complexity of the future.
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mihaly_csikszentmihalyi creativity personality psychology psychology_today

Video of a presentation by John Cleese on the role of one's subconscious mind in creativity, and the importance of being able to structure boundaries of time and space in order to tap into creative imagination.

john_cleese video creativity imagination

On Aviary, by Avi:
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At his startup’s headquarters in New York, Avi Muchnick, a 2010 TR35 member, explains where the inspiration for his online multimedia editing suite, Aviary, came from, and how people can use it to share work.
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creativity mit_techreview video avi_muchnick

Beautiful 5 minute Vimeo (video) presentation, tongue-in-cheek, of 14 things to remember to do if you want to kill creativity.

youngme_moon creativity lists reference video

Really interesting, and borderline kooky (but therefore refreshing), talk on creativity/ the muse/ Genius, and strategies for dealing with same. Key: think of it as residing outside of yourself, as a "visitation," and in this way take the heat off yourself when you "fail" to deliver. But don't forget to show up - old-fashioned ideas about genius aren't an excuse for slacking off!
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Elizabeth Gilbert muses on the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses -- and shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person "being" a genius, all of us "have" a genius. It's a funny, personal and surprisingly moving talk.
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video elizabeth_gilbert creativity genius ted_conference inspiration

Info page for an upcoming June 2009 UK conference I would love to attend: "a place for creativity? unlocking the original in urban design and development"

rudi creativity urban_design manchester conference

Maria wrote a really good post about creativity and depression - whether alleviating depressions (say, through medication) nixes the creative impetus - and I left a long(ish) comment, with references to Twyla Tharp's notion of the creative *habit*.

maria_benet depression creativity twyla_tharp habits comments

Older entry, from 2004. Fun stuff.

creativity howto inspiration design writing gaping_void