Farnam Street
Mastering the best of what other people have already figured out
In The Innovator’s DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators, authors Jeffrey Dyer, Hal Gregersen, and Clayton Christensen uncover the origins of “innovative-and often disruptive-business ideas.” Five primary …
It’s easy to make your organization more innovative if you stop trying to show everyone how innovative you are. What can you do to add more innovation to your organization? A question, no doubt, asked in every organization. There are …
“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” — Seneca *** We’ve entered a new phase of self-invention. Thanks in large part to technology and the pace of the modern world, finding your way through the …
All of the work I’ve been doing looking at how creativity and insight emerge—from Graham Wallas Stages of Control to a technique for producing ideas and Gary Klein’s triple path—focuses on individual creativity. That …
“If your fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do anything.” — David Foster Wallace *** Conversations with David Foster Wallace is an essential look into the thinking of one of the great minds. It doesn’t however, offer …
In 1936 Graham Wallas, co-founder of the London School of Economics, published The Art of Thought, outlining the four stages of the creative process. This pre-dates, by at least a decade, James Webb’s A Technique for Producing Ideas. …
In the foreword to James Webb Young’s book, A Technique for Producing Ideas, Keith Reinhard asks, “How can a book first published in the 1940s be important to today’s creative people on the cutting edge?” The answer …
Tina Rosenberg with a thoughtful op-ed in the NYT on the influence people around us have on our decisions, even, oddly, when they are imaginary. Bad behavior is usually more visible than good. It’s what people talk about, it’s what the news …
“Most innovation comes from combining well-known, well-established, building blocks in new ways.” *** John Holland, a professor of two vastly different fields—psychology and engineering—at the University of Michigan, frequently …
Jane Jacobs in The Death and Life of Great American Cities: “The larger a city, the greater the variety of its manufacturing, and also the greater both the number and the proportion of its small manufacturers.” The benefits that …
Professor Sanjay Bakshi teaches MBA students “Behavioral Finance & Business Valuation (BFBV)” and “Financial Shenanigans & Governance” at MDI, Gurgaon. He was kind enough to put together a list of reference material for Farnam …
You’d be hard-pressed to find a person or organization who says they’re opposed to creativity. It’s seen as an unequivocally good thing. Everyone wants to have creative ideas. But we don’t always behave in a way that indicates we value …