-Adrian Caddy , Creative Director, Imagination Ltd.

Ex-IDEO lectures on creativity and
management

online creativity self-assessment test

Computer Creativity Machine Stimulates
the Brain

Coloring books stifle kids' creativity?

At a dinner party last night hosted by an artist her daughters shared tales of the severity of their upbringing.  No sugared cereal.  No gun toys.  No coloring books because they stifle creativity; kids should draw freehand.  It was just like our family, I responded!  We were always envious of our cousins who got to eat Fruit Loops and enjoyed coloring books to their hearts' content.

How did the experiment work out in our family?  My cousin Douglas, raised on a steady diet of coloring books, got his first full-time job at Walt Disney as a character animator.  His credits include Scar in the Lion King, the Hunchback in Hunchback of Notre Dame, etc.  I, by contrast, used the superior drawing skills and creativity acquired in a coloring book-free childhood to become... a computer programmer.

[Where is Doug now you might ask?  He would be working at Disney still if the executives had not looted $2 billion from the company into their personal checking accounts when the economy was booming.  As soon as the economy stopped booming, however, the executives were shocked--shocked!--to discover how depleted the corporate checking account was.  So they said "We can't afford to do animation in Los Angeles anymore" and shut down the studio founded by Walt Disney himself in 1923.  Doug moved up north to Pixar.]

MIT hopes imaginative new building
sparks creativity

Creativity techniques and creative tools
for problem solving

mycoted.com/creativity/techniques
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"CNN.com - Study confirms sleep
essential for creativity - Jan. 21,
2004"

CNN.com - Study confirms sleep essential
for creativity - Jan. 21, 2004

cnn.com/2004/HEALTH/01/21/sleep.creativity.ap/index.html
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Copyright and creativity issues raised
by Grey Tuesday event

A Web-based controversy this week over a mix album highlighted divisions over copyright policy. The Grey Album , recently published by DJ Danger Mouse , combines and adds to music from the Beatles' White Album . Since Danger Mouse did not obtain permission to use the older content, its owners, the EMI Group, asked the artist to cease and desist.

In response, a Web-based firestorm of opposition has arisen . Copyright critics , such as Lawrence Lessig , have called this a suppression of creativity and speech, rendering some art illegal . Numerous Web sites collaborated to publicly host copies of the album.

The copyright holders, in contrast, see this as a basic copyright infringement case:

EMI views any distribution, reproduction or public performance of "The Grey Album" to be a copyright violation. "They may say EMI is trying to stop an artwork," said Jeanne Meyer, an EMI spokeswoman, referring to the Web sites, "but they neglect to understand that there is a well-established market for licensing samples, and Mr. Burton didn't participate in it."

(via CNI )

Telecommunications industry experiencing
renewed anticipation, enthusiasm and
creativity

Apple Prides Itself On Innovation.
Creativity. Right. So What's With The
Heavy Steel Box Downtown?

News: Power Game Factory maker hopes to
inspire creativity

Brand New BIMA Awards Celebrate 21 Years
of Creativity in Interactive Media

Zero to Genius in Sixty Minutes?
RichContent Makes it Possible with
eXpertSystem and eXpertLingo Creativity
Software

Weinberger: "free access to every work
of creativity in the world is a better
world"

[F]or one moment, I'd like you to perform an exercise in selective attention. Forget every other consideration — even though they're fair and important considerations — and see if you can acknowledge that a world in which everyone has free access to every work of creativity in the world is a better world. Imagine your children could listen to any song ever created anywhere. What a blessing that would be!

...We publish stuff that gets its meaning and its reality by being read, viewed or heard. An unpublished novel is about as meaningful and real as an imaginary novel. It needs its readers to be. But readers aren't passive consumers. We reimagine the book, we complete the vision of the book. Readers appropriate works, make them their own. Listeners and viewers, too. In making a work public, artists enter into partnership with their audience. The work succeeds insofar as the audience makes it their own, takes it up, understands it within their own unpredictable circumstances. It leaves the artist's hands and enters our lives. And that's not a betrayal of the work. That's its success. It succeeds insofar as we hum it, quote it, appropriate it so thoroughly that we no longer remember where the phrase came from. That's artistic success, although it's a branding failure.

Media Professionals: "The Business of
Creativity Media Conference" on 4/26

Is the Aids crisis being taken
seriously?

Feeding a Crisis

A Crisis for Web Preservation

Communicating Through a Crisis

Identity crisis (XML.com)

Is there a countryside crisis?

Identity Crisis

Creativity from crisis