"Great Artists Steal" Check out the Cool Steve Jobs Video Over at Metacool

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1. Sometimes the best management is no management at all -- first do no harm!
2. Indifference is as important as passion.
3. Saying smart things and giving smart answers are important. Learning to listen to others and to ask smart questions is more important.
4. You get what you expect from people. This is especially true when it comes to selfish behavior; unvarnished self-interest is a learned social norm, not an unwavering feature of human behavior.
5. Avoid pompous jerks whenever possible. They not only can make you feel bad about yourself, chances are that you will eventually start acting like them.
6. Anyone can learn to be creative, it just takes a lot of practice and little confidence
7. "Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong."
8. Sutton's Law: “If you think that you have a new idea, you are wrong. Someone else probably already had it. This idea isn’t original either; I stole it from someone else”
9. "Am I a success or a failure?" is not a very useful question
10. The world would be a better place if people slept more and took more naps
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12. Jimmy Maloney is right, work is an overrated activity.

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Catmull, Ed: Creativity, Inc. (The Expanded Edition): Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration
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Robert Sutton and Huggy Rao: The Friction Project
Robert Sutton and Huggy Rao: The Friction Project
Robert Sutton and Huggy Rao: The Friction Project

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"Great Artists Steal" Check out the Cool Steve Jobs Video Over at Metacool

Diego has posted this cool Steve Jobs video. It fits a perspective that Andy Hargadon and I worked on years ago on knowledge brokering (notably in this HBR article) and he developed in his book How Breakthroughs Happen. Essentially, Andy had done over a decade of research showing creativity is mostly about combining old things in new ways and/or doing new things with old things. Of course, it isn't our idea, we moved it to some new places and recombined with ideas that we borrowed from others!

May 16, 2009 in Innovation | Permalink

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Gerald M. Weinberg wrote years ago that ideas come from three sources:
(1) mistakes, (2) borrowing, and (3) mixing. He didn't use those exact terms. Your post highlights the mixing component. I have been called a "creative" person because I follow Weinberg's advice. I sit around and think of ways to mix old ideas and new situations. I make lots of mistakes (the easy one). I do extensive research (a kind way of saying I borrow a lot).