Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration

Over the course of a decade, we held countless meetings around this table in this way—completely unaware of how doing so undermined our own core principles. Why were we blind to this? Because the seating arrangements and place cards were designed for the convenience of the leaders, including me. Sincerely believing that we were in an inclusive meet

They couldn’t have been less interested in making changes that would slow them down in the short term. They took comfort in their familiar ways, and change meant being uncomfortable.

This was a revelation to me: The good stuff was hiding the bad stuff.

While the allure of safety and predictability is strong, achieving true balance means engaging in activities whose outcomes and payoffs are not yet apparent. The most creative people are willing to work in the shadow of uncertainty.

Candor is forthrightness or frankness—not so different from honesty,

What interested me was not that companies rose and fell or that the landscape continually shifted as technology changed but that the leaders of these companies seemed so focused on the competition that they never developed any deep introspection about other destructive forces that were at work.

We need to think about failure differently.

When experimentation is seen as necessary and productive, not as a frustrating waste of time, people will enjoy their work—even when it is confounding them.

You’ll never stumble upon the unexpected if you stick only to the familiar.