The idea that collaborative thinking, or ‘Groupthink’, as the right way to solve problems creatively is misguided. According to author Susan Cain in the New York Times, it is often solitary thinking that leads to the biggest creative breakthroughs. She mentions Steve Wozniak who invented the first Apple computer and said in his memoir: “Most inventors and engineers I’ve met are like me … they live in their heads. They’re almost like artists. In fact, the very best of them are artists. And artists work best alone …. I’m going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone… Not on a committee. Not on a team.”

When visual artist Yoi Kasama asked children to put sticky coloured dots on a white room in an Australian gallery space the result, called ‘The Obliteration Room’, perfectly illustrates the natural creativity of children.

Domino’s Pizza in the UK have created augmented reality (AR) billboards that let passerby order pizza through their smart phones. According to Creativity Online: “Consumers can scan the posters, placed over 6,000 sites and communicating a special ’555′ deal, with their smartphone, download a mobile ordering app and become a Facebook fan, all while standing at the bus-stop or walking down the street.”

We talk in the book how giving the unconscious mind a crack at a problem often helps with creative process. New research suggests what’s might be going on. The researchers found that compared to folks who focus all their energy on solving a problem (one problem they gave was what to do while waiting in a queue for the cash register), those given a distracting task to perform did not come up with better ideas. But, they were better at selecting the best ideas, maybe as a result of some “unconscious tagging process”. They conclude that “the unconscious mind plays a vital role in creative performance.” Suggestions on some distracting activities to do while solving problems creatively can be found in our book and in our iPad CREATIVITY app, available in the iPad app store.

Pop star Cee Lo Green will make about $20 million this year. His hit single “Forget You” (actually it’s not “Forget”, but another shorter word beginning with the same letter) became the 12th most downloaded track of all time. But his music sales represent only a small proportion of his earnings. The New York Times calculates “F*** You” earned him about $700,000. The other $19 million or so come from a variety of projects and deals.  Cee Lo‘s management company, Primary Wave Music, has come up with some very creative ways to make money for Cee Lo without relying on music sales. Not so long ago sales of recorded music were the mainstay of any musician‘s earnings as a hit single would lead to big album sales and plenty of cash, but now with the demise of the album artists like Cee Lo have had to look elsewhere. Primary Wave’s CEO Larry Mestel says album sales represent the smallest slice of the revenue pie. A stream of TV appearances, endorsement deals, TV commercials have traded on and built Cee Lo‘s brand. He’s been a judge on TV talent show “The Voice”, has his own shown on cable network Fuse, appeared on Saturday Night Live and been in TV commercials for 7-Up, Absolut Vodka and M&M’s. Next year he will have his own show, “Loberace“, in Las Vegas and will star in a Mark Burnett produced TV show in the UK called “Cee Lo Takes the UK.” What Primary Wave is doing for Cee Lo is the model for the future of the music industry, and is a good lesson in creativity and innovation for many other industries that are seeing their worlds changing through technology. Necessity breeds invention, and without invention we might find ourselves being forgotten.

We have now released Creativity Lite in the iPad app store, a free version of our 5-star rated app to help unleash your creative mojo. Check out the link here.

Ever had the problem of wanting to buy someone some clothes as a gift but dont know the right size and don’t want to ask them? Yes me too. That’s why I like this handy website called Anonsize.me. Simply got to the website, enter the person’s phone number and gender and your own phone number and email. The site will send a text to them asking their size and you’ll get the info without them knowing who was asking.

Check out our ‘Creativity’ iPad app in the iPad app store.

Philippe Starck is a French product designer who has designed everything from toothbrushes to hotel interiors and is now creative director of interior design company Yoo. His simple, iconic and often startling designs entered the mass market when in 2002 he created a number of beautifully designed, but inexpensive, products for Target stores. Starck writes in a blog post for Wired about what creativity means to him: “Creativity is almost a mortal sickness. It’s not easy to be happy and creative: With creativity comes great anxiety, great effort, great desire for love. To be creative, you have to be curious, generous, to want to try to understand.” For Starck, to be creative, “it helps to live a sort of modern monk’s life. I go early to bed and wake up a little earlier than others because the peak — the hormonal peak of creativity — is around seven o’clock in the morning. To be creative, you can’t be intoxicated by drugs or alcohol. You cannot be intoxicated by poison coming from industrial food. You have to go to the gym and have a lot of sex (although not necessarily in that order!). You also need to live consciously avoid mainstream thinking. If you go out every night for dinner or to a cocktail party, where you speak with everybody, you cannot create because you just end up just repeating what people tell you. You get very comfortable and very unoriginal. The only way to create is to be alone, in front of a white, blank sheet of paper or your computer in the middle of nowhere. It’s the best way to find only your ideas, your intuition.” For most, the idea of living a monk’s life to unleash their creativity isn’t an option, and luckily it isn’t necessary, but it does require some concentrated effort. Creativity is not a a gift that only a select few are given – we all have it, and if we treat it like a muscle that needs to be exercised regularly it will only grow stronger!

Without a culture of creativity in a business and without resorting to just copying other people’s ideas (hello China), innovation becomes impossible. And innovation is what drives growth in the good times, and survival in challenging ones.  The President of Ohio-based bathroom fixtures company Moen, David Lingafelter, is convinced that innovation driven by creativity is what has helped his company survive the recession. Interviewed earlier this year he said they don’t just follow trends, they also try to create them. Once a year Moen designers get together to sketch out products that don’t yet exist.  “They’ll sketch for an afternoon, and they’ll bring ideas to each other,” he says. “They’ll work off of the energy of one another. You’d be surprised at what comes out of that. If you’re working around a bunch of people who love to do it, energy gets created. It feeds on itself. If you say we’re going to make the same chrome faucet, turn the lights out and run the machines, no one wants that. Whether it’s our product development process, whether it’s functionality innovation, whether it’s style uniqueness, all of that stuff excites people.” Escaping from the everyday reality to envision future possibilities are clearly a key part of innovation for Moen and should be for all businesses.