As I was tracking the Apple tech conference yesterday – yes, I’m just that much of an Apple fan/geek – and noticed I was increasingly nonplussed – we all new about the bigger iPhone and had heard for months about the coming Apple Watch – I began to wonder just how longer we’ll care about Apple’s announcements. Perhaps, I thought, Apple’s day in the sun is over and we’re becoming as jaded to their innovations – okay, so they don’t really innovate as much as they take existing platforms to a higher and more beautiful level – as we are to innovations and evolutions in other industries. But then I found myself thinking...

Ask most people if they think they are creative, and they will likely drop their eyes, if not their heads, and answer – often very quickly – “No.” Somewhere along the line, we have decided – or probably were taught – that creativity requires some measure of genius, the ability to see something no one has ever seen, to do something completely novel, to develop an original idea or invention. Framed that way, it’s highly understandable that most of us feel like we don’t measure up. But what if creativity is far less the solitary pursuit of the inspired genius and more an attentive regard for the ideas and contributions of...

Which setting do you think is more likely to produce a good idea? A quiet room in the library, the auditorium where a prestigious lecturer holds the floor, or a crowded coffee house in the late afternoon? If you guessed the library, you’re to be forgiven for imaging that the good ideas are solitary achievements. If you imagined it was the lecturer, you can be excused for thinking we get our best ideas from experts. But if you instead suspected that it might be the crowded coffee house, then you already know something essential about creativity. It is largely about connection and conversation. Creativity, that is, emerges not from...