Archive for: April, 2017

How To Shape An Innovative Mindset

hungry minds

What do innovators do that imitators don’t? Innovators are alike in many ways, they ask more questions, observe deeper, cultivate a diverse network and experiment more.

Simply put: innovators are Hungry Minds; they have insatiable curiosity and a bias for action. . 

Learning is Different From Education

learning is different from education

Illustration by Christian Laborin

While in college I was the guy that jumped from one topic to another. I wanted to learn what I wanted, when I wanted at my own pace. So, if I wanted to jump into a class from the electronics major, that’s what I did.

Why?

Because the way education was and is designed didn’t work for me; it moves too slow, I felt constrained and categorized. If the point of education is to give you facts to memorize by a teacher in front of a blackboard, there has to be a better way and I believed I could learn better and faster on my own. Sure you’d definitely need the help of clep study guides if you were to pass, but you simply cannot depend on one book to guide you.

Daydreaming: Imagining Creates Reality

Imagining creates reality

Ilustration by Christian Laborin

We live in a society that values and rewards efficiency over creativity. Yet, the tasks that lead to efficiency are slowly being taken over by robots and bots leaving us humans to do things that are not repetitive in nature. As this happens, we’ll have more time to do what leads to creativity: daydreaming.

And while this may sound like fun, in this day in age, daydreaming gets a bad rap; often seen as frivolous and waste of time. Those of us who are called dreamers get criticized for spending too much time in our heads and not a lot on actually doing. And while some of it might be true, we’re simply misunderstood for daydreaming holds great power and benefits over the long run for both people and the organizations they work for.

If You Can’t Outsmart, You Must Outbehave

If you can't outsmart outbehave

Illustration by Christian Laborin

Follow through, follow up, being considerate and thoughtful; these are the basics of relationships and business. Across the world there is a chronic problem with all of these critical relationship and business building activities, there isn’t a day that goes by where someone is not complaining about being ignored, treated like a commodity and just not having a pleasant experience with other people.

Subtraction: The Simplest, Most Common Path to Innovation There Is

creativity is subtraction

Waiting…

It’s something we all do on a daily basis and have accepted as a given in most situations. Mostly, waiting is a hassle and inconvenience when our expectations of “waiting” are not met, and a pleasant surprise when they are exceeded.

Waiting should be eliminated if it were up to us, but that is wishful thinking. Still, we can do things to make waiting less of a hassle and more of surprise.