Sometimes I forget that I’ve stolen an idea, which makes it entirely original. That includes, of course, this one.

― Twitter / Adam Lisagor: Sometimes I forget that I’v…

You don’t have these perfectly transparent, simple thoughts. You have thoughts that are all cluttered up, like overused bookshelves.

― Rick Moody (I’m re-reading The Ice Storm this week and it is so, so good.) (via rach)

An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea.

― Twitter / Tiny Buddha (via gina)

rickyv:

“Apparently sprinters reach their highest speed right out of the blocks, and spend the rest of the race slowing down. The winners slow down the least. It’s that way with most startups too. The earliest phase is usually the most productive. That’s when they have the really big ideas. Imagine what Apple was like when 100% of its employees were either Steve Jobs or Steve Wozniak.”

Excited to read the rest of a book that begins with that paragraph.

While walking his dog in the mountains, he accidentally brushed up against some cocklebur plants, and by the time he got back home, dozens of the round, spiky seeds were clinging to his wool trousers (and his poor dog’s fur). What you don’t know is how hard it was for de Mestral to translate that natural stroke of genius into a manmade one.

― mental_floss Blog » VELCRO: The Humble Origins of the Greatest Thing to Ever Happen to My Sneakers

Many of the people in Buduburam who came to sketch their ideas for a perfect phone at the Nokia studio did not actually own one… But when I paged through the fat three-ring binders where the Nokia team was storing those sketches, it was evident that the future, or at least some vision of it, had already arrived. Some of the drawings were basic pencil sketches; others were strikingly elaborate, with arrows pointing to different dream features, which were really just a way of pointing — I realized then — to the dreams themselves.

― Cellphones - Third World and Developing Nations - Poverty - Technology - New York Times

And that, I think, is the rub. Article after article, book after book, seminar after seminar exhort people to explore, to expand, to be more creative. But after all this ink and air, have we really seen any great increase in creativity or creative thinking? Not really. And I don’t think it’s from lack of intellectual ability or innate talent, per se. It’s because creativity comes with a cost most of us would prefer not to pay.

― What’s the Price of Creativity? | Marketing Profs Daily Fix Blog