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Great quotes from brilliant innovators on creativity, the creative process, innovation, risktaking, genius, and making stuff happen.

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"12 most inspired online resources to spark creativity"

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"12 most inspired online resources to spark creativity"

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Creativity inspires innovation.

In today's competitive business landscape, it is widely agreed that an innovative mindset is paramount to surviving and prospering in the global economy. Laggards will die.

"Design thinking" is also important. The practice has propelled some of the most successful business stories of the last couple of decades, yet few people understand or appreciate its significance.

With today's tight education budgets, art and other creative programs are usually the first to go in our schools. MBA programs have the means but don't teach it. Rather than working together as a society to develop our abilities in this area, we are diminishing the very skills that are essential for sustainable success in a future that is only becoming more competitive.

So nurturing your creative spirit only makes sense. It is pleasurable, fulfilling, and business smart. As a creative director, I use several resources to help fuel my passion; I believe others can benefit from them, too-no matter your profession. To make a mark in today's world, we should all start thinking of ourselves as working in creative fields.

Following, in no particular order, are some of my go-to online resources for creative inspiration:

This website features lots of big ideas on science and technology, arts and culture, business and economics, beliefs, the future-you name it.

2. My Modern Met

Great creative juices here-stunning photographs that will take you to new places, amazing art that will challenge your point of view, and wonderful design that will make you see things in a new light.

This site discusses everything "design," including discussions on positive and negative space, typography, color, and the latest, greatest Web themes.

So much good stuff here about design, business, and architecture, not to mention stories on everything from farming to sustainable flip-flops. This site has it all.

Cool stuff on today's hot media projects from the hottest brands, such as posters, packaging, interactive, and more.

" Insights on making ideas happen." As its slogan says, 99U offers a behind the scenes peek at how creative people and businesses of all types do what they do.

These three sites, all from the magazine FastCompany, featured a wide variety of interesting post on creativity of all types, including technology and product design.

The tagline for this magazine says, " The online journal of business and design," and I've been reading the print version for years. The website is an excellent online resource on the ways in which design contributes directly to business success. Interviews with top executives and case histories convincingly bring the message home.

There are a number of topics on this site that will get ideas bouncing out of your head-food, fashion, art, books, technology, you name it.

This site will keep you ahead of the curve on the newest typefaces; you'll appreciate the art of typography in no time.

PSFK, which carries the tagline " Inspiring creative business," offers a fascinating selection of articles on design, media, and technology, and how businesses use them.

There are sections dedicated to architecture, painting, cinema, music, photography, sculpting, and design. What more do you need? Get over to this site now, and share your best finds so the rest of us can enjoy them.

This site has in-depth features of some of the leading creative thinkers working today. Learn from the best, and be inspired.

What are your favorite online resources for creativity? Please let us know in the comments section below. I know there are plenty of others, and I can't wait to check out your best finds.

Paul Biedermann is a managing partner of the website 12 Most and creative director/owner of re:DESIGN, specializing in strategic design, branding, social media, and Communications.

Republished with permission, courtesy of 12 Most.

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12 most inspired online resources to spark creativity

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Creativity inspires innovation. In today's competitive business landscape, it is widely agreed that an innovative mindset is paramount to surviving and prospering in the global economy. Laggards will die. "Design thinking" is also important. The practice has propelled some of the most successful business stories of the last couple of decades, yet few people understand or appreciate its significance.

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“Soon the child’s clear eye is clouded over by ideas and opinions, preconceptions, and abstractions.

...

Not until years later does an instinct come that a vital sense of mystery has been withdrawn.

The sun glints through the pines and the heart is pierced in a moment of beauty and strange pain, like a memory of paradise.

After that day, we become seekers.” ― Peter Matthiessen

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That only which I have within can I see without.

If I meet no Gods, it is because I harbor none.

If there is grandeur in me, I will find grandeur in all.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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For many people today, there is no vista, nothing flows. There is only interrupt.

From the media comes a kaleidoscope of images and incoherence. In addition, there is a growing sense of redundancy, a lack of connection between the individual and their interaction with the global world forces. Without a horizon a person can only concentrate on their own immediate need and survival. It is all too easy to be drawn into an existence of claustrophobia, where there is no continuity between actions and experiences.

There is a desperate need to offer an alternative view, to discover a horizon, to rediscover hope. Hope is an act of faith, and has to be sustained by other concrete actions.

However, the first step is to engender an approach, enable the measurement of distances and walking toward. It is show the possible and potential.

- Extract from article in The Guardian (1997?)

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@wired (Feb 2012): We are more creative when we are tired and drunk. The inability to focus helps us consider a wider range of possible solutions.

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Chance favours the connected mind.

- Steven Johnson

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"Ideas are the only things that survive.  Execution is important too; a good idea poorly executed probably won’t go anywhere.  But if something is going to last, it’s because there’s a good idea at its core.  It’s got to start with the idea."

Jonathan Harris

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Social evolution:

· copy

· transform

·  combine

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Kirby Ferguson

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My new series, This is Not a Conspiracy Theory, is now live: http://www.thisisnotaconspiracytheory.com *** Creativity isn't magic. Part three of this four-part series explores how innovations truly happen.

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Blend entrepreneurial behaviors and big-company capabilities.

Create your own “upstart” company, developing asymmetrical skills under the radar, inside your organization.

- Harald Jarche

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Imagine you are a mother in rural India, caring for your three children and keeping busy with chores. The water source is unclean, but you're too busy to prioritize boiling water for cooking and bathing. Such was the case for Nagammal in the village of Vadugapatti.

Today, Nagammal still doesn't boil water, yet she's able to provide clean water to her kids. The innovation that delivers water to Nagammal and more than 35 million people in emerging markets didn't come from the government, an NGO or a venture capitalist-backed startup. It came from Unilever. The consumer packaged goods giant has created a booming business bringing affordable clean water to consumers in developing countries through its Pureit brand.

Corporate innovation is driven by a blend of entrepreneurial behaviors and big company capabilities.

Unilever's Pureit story is no anomaly; it points to a seminal shift in the world of innovation where a big company's scale can shift from shackling innovation to enabling it. In my Harvard Business Review article " The New Corporate Garage " out this month, I make the case that we are entering "the fourth era of innovation," in which global giants are leading the way in solving global challenges. Taking advantage of the narrowing focus and increasing pressures on the venture capitalists and startups that defined the last era, these global giants are better equipped to launch transformational, difficult-to-replicate innovations.

Corporate innovation success stories aren't driven by faceless committees or charismatic CEOs. Rather, they rely on "corporate catalysts" that blend entrepreneurial behaviors and big-company capabilities. Pureit's catalyst is Yuri Jain, a vice president who leads the company's global water initiatives. A few years into development, Jain's team arrived at a viable solution, but it cost four times as much as Unilever's target. Faced with the choice between a high-priced, niche solution and a stripped-down affordable product, the team rejected both. Unilever's 100 scientists rose to the challenge, creating an elegantly affordable solution that makes safe drinking water more accessible.

Jain's work draws appropriate comparisons to the work historically done by individual innovators toiling away in their garages. In Jain's case, his "corporate garage" teems with amazing tools. Like other "fourth era" innovators we have studied, Unilever's success traces back to core behaviors that include leveraging an organization's unique capabilities, approaching innovation holistically, and building an ecosystem that involves external parties.

Corporate leaders looking to create their own 21st-century corporate garages should ask the following five questions:

Who will staff our garage?
Not everyone is cut out for corporate catalyst work. Many companies fall prey to what I call the "Michael Jordan fallacy." When Michael Jordan-arguably the best basketball star in history-briefly retired to pursue his dream of being a baseball player, he faltered. Companies that ask their best operators to switch gears to serve as corporate catalysts run the same risk. They need to look for what software entrepreneur Donna Auguste calls "aliens." In the corporate garage, "aliens" who might formerly have been relegated to the fringe of the organization because of their entrepreneurial behaviors can become superstars.

To create a solid culture of innovation, treat innovation as a strategic imperative.

What will we stock in our garage?
The essence of a fourth-era innovation is a big company doing what few people in the world could match. Few could match Unilever's knowledge of India, distribution acumen, technological prowess, and brand-building capabilities. To identify what makes your company special, identify what capabilities competitors or startups would struggle to replicate. A medical device company might have unique relationships with doctors. A bank might have in-depth knowledge of a customer's transaction history. Determine no more than five capabilities and ensure that corporate catalysts have the ability to access them without dealing with layers of bureaucracy.

How will we connect our garage both internally and externally?
Companies that set up incubators often create substantial space from the core business. While some space is important to allow for testing approaches and developing a unique culture, too much space can be dangerous. Separation can block access to critical capabilities and lead to the "not invented here" syndrome, inhibiting the ultimate scaling of the new venture. External connections enable companies to combine corporate capabilities with third parties to create impact that no ecosystem participant could achieve individually.

How solid is the foundation?
Most companies are built to execute, but building a culture of innovation will allow catalysts to innovate naturally. To create a solid culture of innovation: treat innovation as a strategic imperative; provide incentives to prudent risk-taking; and chose leaders who model desired innovation behaviors.

Does our garage have a clear and compelling purpose?
Unilever Chief Marketing & Communications Officer Keith Weed highlights this by describing his interactions with the Pureit team: "When I go visit countries around the world I see sales numbers flashed on the walls. When I see the Pureit team I see the number of lives protected." Finding purpose in the work of a corporate garage should not be difficult. Bringing clean water to millions of lower-income Indians. Providing a lifeline to people in a struggling industry. Giving birth to a new business. Who wouldn't be motivated to work on these problems?

Transformational innovation isn't easy. But burgeoning success stories at companies as diverse as Apple, Nestle, Unilever, Medtronic, Syngenta, and IBM demonstrate that success is possible. The thoughtful creation of a corporate garage stocked with powerful capabilities, staffed by catalysts, and connected internally and externally can unleash tremendous innovation energy.

[ Image: sahua d, Zurijeta, and Gemenacom via Shutterstock]

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How To Prepare For The 4th Era of Innovation

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Imagine you are a mother in rural India, caring for your three children and keeping busy with chores. The water source is unclean, but you're too busy to prioritize boiling water for cooking and bathing. Such was the case for Nagammal in the village of Vadugapatti.

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“People should lead their lives as entrepreneurs -- not necessarily starting companies, but investing in themselves, adapting to the fast changing future, and creating breakout opportunities. Adaptability is the new stability for modern careers.”

The start up of you – Reid Hoffman

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The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.

-- Ellen Parr

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The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.

-- Alvin Toffler

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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. 

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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. 

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- Harry S. Truman

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@brainpickings

"We take information, from it synthesize insight, which in turn germinates ideas."

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Analogy between neurons and ideas:

"Ideas cause ideas and help evolve new ideas. They interact with each other and with other mental forces in the same brain, in neighboring
brains, and thanks to global communication, in far distant, foreign brains.”

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"Look At More Stuff, Think About It Harder."

- Andy Stefanovich

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“In times of rapid change, experience could be your worst enemy.”

- J. Paul Getty

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Innovative thinkers have “the capacity to hold two diametrically opposing ideas in their heads. Without panicking or simply settling for one alternative or the other, they’re able to produce a synthesis that is superior to either opposing idea.”

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What defines GenFlux is a mind-set that embraces instability, that tolerates--and even enjoys--recalibrating careers, business models, and assumptions.

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There is always a Darwin (paraphrased) quote...

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There is always a Darwin (paraphrased) quote...

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"It is not the strongest of the species that survives; nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change."

- Charles Darwin

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Our number one value isn’t in any of the skills we have.
It’s that we’re essentially curious.”

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Our number one value isn’t in any of the skills we have.
It’s that we’re essentially curious.”

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- Jim Coudal

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“Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.”

- Susan Sontag

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“You have to have an idea of what you are going to do, but
it should be a vague idea.”

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“You have to have an idea of what you are going to do, but
it should be a vague idea.”

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Pablo Picasso