DESIGN, BUSINESS & INNOVATION

Illustration via The Economist.

The Economist in its print edition focus its attention to the new GE: Google, everywhere. Highlighting how after a string of deals (that includes purchasing the robotic firm Boston Dynamics and more recently Nest Labs, a maker of sophisticated thermostats and smoke detectors), the Internet giant has positioned itself to become a big inventor, and reinventor of hardware. Read full article in The Economist. E.T.P. 7'

Photo: Björk in her lovely swan dress via Fast Company.

Drake Baer explains in his Fast Company article the reason why genius and madness are basically best friends. Clue: cognitive disinhibition. The potential outputs: gorgeous paintings, masterful novels, or  "disruptive" business. Intrigued? Read full article for some useful explanations that might or might not include Bob Squarepants and bananas. E.T.P. 4'

Artwork: Freegums, Celestial Plane, 2010. Via HBR Blog.

One of our personal favorite creativity gurus, Teresa Amabile, writes with Colin M. Fisher, and Julianna Pillemer an interesting piece titled: IDEO's Culture of Helping: "Few things leaders can do are more important than encouraging helping behavior within their organizations. In the top-performing companies it is a norm that colleagues support one another’s efforts to do the best work possible. That has always been true for pragmatic reasons: If companies were to operate at peak efficiency without what organizational scholars call “citizenship behavior,” tasks would have to be optimally assigned 100% of the time, projects could not take any unexpected turns, and no part of any project could go faster or slower than anticipated. But mutual helping is even more vital in an era of knowledge work, when positive business outcomes depend on creativity in often very complex projects. Beyond simple workload sharing, collaborative help comes to the fore—lending perspective, experience, and expertise that improve the quality and execution of ideas." Read an extract of the full article in Harvard Business Review Blog. E.T.P. 9'