To arrive at a breakthrough, you have to take a break from the breakneck pace. Without reflection, important insights get missed. Just ask Steve Martin…

Spectacular entrepreneurs craft clever experiments. And a robust experimentation practice demands a rigorous ideation ritual. At Stanford, this is how folks build the muscle.

World-class creators like Jon Acuff literally count their ideas. It’s one of the simplest ways to measure your creative capacity, and whether it’s growing.

The surprising secret to YouTube sensation Mr. Beast’s rise to prominence? Gathering likeminded learners to exponentially reduce the ramp of a new pursuit. Such folks are lunatics.

A common thread of breakthroughs is that they occur in “accidental” or unexpected ways. What if, instead of dismissing the accidental elements as irrelevant, we started deliberately deploying them?

What do Kobe Bryant, Jerry Seinfeld, Michael Phelps, and the digital artist Beeple have in common? They all made sacrifices to do something special.

Lorne Michaels, the most-nominated person in Emmy history, has accomplished something that very entertainers do: sustained creative excellence. His mantra for creative success is quite surprising…

If you’re seeking innovation, then you’re going to fail a lot. These misses can’t weight too heavily on you. Seinfeld, Elon Musk, and others fail often. Don’t take yourself too seriously.

It’s an enormous mistake to wait for lightning to strike. Seinfeld’s relentless approach to developing new material — and his mindset in so doing — gives him an incredible advantage in the creative process.

A message for young folks: amidst the frenzied pace of life, it’s tempting to veg out whenever you can. “Doomscrolling” is real! Instead of whittling away the hours, creative geniuses make good use of found time.

A critical priority in a productive, creative life is to make time to think, reflect, and synthesize. Here are a few examples of how spectacular innovators have carved out the necessary space.

The origin story of Netflix is a case study in innovation. Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings were uniquely positioned to take advantage of a market shift because they had a habit of exploring.

Thomas Edison said that cultivating the imagination was one of the essential qualities of the inventor. Sounds straightforward enough… But how does one do that?

A simple ritual powers Jeff Bezos’ efficacy as a leader of innovation at Amazon. Every quarter, he conducts a simple audit — two simple tactics that every innovation-oriented-professional ought to leverage with regularity.

I’ve helped nearly a million fledgling innovators come up with new ideas and assess which are worth pursuing. I have yet to see a student make this one mistake…

It’s easy to dismiss tools like mood boards as “designer speak,” but the truth is, they’ve been indispensable to great thinkers seeking to capture inspiration throughout history.

How do you court the muse? Innovators from Jeff Bezos to Victor Hugo to Jerry Seinfeld teach us embrace every bit of inspiration as soon as it arrives - by writing it down.

Pianists play the piano. Swimmers do laps. But what about innovators? What do they do? Innovators generate abundant options. Try this.

What is your regular creative training regimen? David Kelley once told me, “I think people fail to realize that the first-order goal is to be getting in practice. The first step is training your mind to think differently.”

When we use information, it cements it into our long term memory. We know that inputs fuel output. What’s much more surprising is that outputs reinforce inputs, too.