The definition of what constitutes an innovative idea has gotten pretty loose lately. Challenge your team to come up with truly revolutionary ideas that create a distinct competitive advantage. Here’s how.
Laying Pipe By Helicopter To Bring Water To The Driest Parts Of The World
This amazing device can unspool three miles of hose from a helicopter in a matter of minutes, to easily get water to places far away from any source.
Read more about this life-saving innovation here.
How do the most creative people work? Bryan Cranston Kendrick Lamar Max Levchin and other creatively supercharged folks share their methods.
Thinkers, builders, improvers, and producers.
Do you have all of them in your company?
A house powered by exercise?
The JF-Kit House by the Spanish design firm Elii is an experiment in “domestic fitness,” rendering “the image of a possible future where citizens produce part of their domestic energy requirements with their own physical activities.” Each room features a fancifully named exercise station that would, theoretically, help create energy to power the home, including an “arm workout bureau,” a “spinning kitchen,” and a “triceps greenhouse.” A video shows the home’s imagined inhabitant lifting weights, cycling, and doing calisthenics as part of his house’s everyday upkeep and daily chores like cooking.
“Solutions are quite complex in maternal health. For us, there is no silver bullet, but we can tell the stories.”
—Christy Turlington Burns is one of this year’s Most Creative People for her work in raising awareness about maternal health.
After Apple booted Google Maps from iOS last year, Daniel Graf led the development of a beautiful, refreshed mapping experience that shot to number one in the iTunes store and kicked Apple’s ass on its own turf. Here’s how Graf made it happen—in his own words:
“We have a very successful Android version of Google Maps, so the easiest thing to do was to say, this is super-successful, users love it, so why don’t we just port it over to iOS? But I wanted to challenge the team. While the Android version is a great product, you can also tell it’s been around for a while. You have to access everything via menus—it’s not really best-use-case driven anymore. I said, let’s take a step back—what if we could start from scratch and forget anything we’ve ever done? We have the foundation—the Google data, the mapping data, the local business data, the imagery, the navigation algorithms—it’s a dream to start with.”
“I focus best on Friday when it is sunny out.”
“Looks like classical music enhances my focus.”
Ever wondered just how focused (or not) you really are during the day? Melon could be your answer. This new headband measures your focus and then sends the results to your smartphone. The goal is to help you learn which environments and activities improve your focus. More info, and a demo video.
Inside Graham Hill’s single-room, 420-square-foot apartment.
“One of the easiest ways to go green is to go small,” Hill says. “I want to show people that there’s an amazing modern green future, and make it easy for them to step into it.”
Hill transforms his couch into a bed, makes a desk appear from the wall, and then moves that entire wall to reveal a guest bedroom. Just as quickly, he disappears the guest room, pops a Murphy bed back into place, and reveals a dining room table with seating for 10. Even Hill’s bathroom is multifunctional: He soundproofed the toilet stall and added a handsome wooden bench that folds over the seat, which turns it either into a private phone booth or, no joke, a very tiny meditation studio. That’s why he and nine others who are trying to change how we live made our list of The 100 Most Creative People of 2013.
“Every time someone comes to Syria Deeply, I feel like they’re coming over to my house for dinner. What will I serve them today?”
Lara Setrakian (No. 20) shares her approach to content on her site, Syria Deeply, which has redefined conflict coverage.
“In my experience, what’s true as a woman is very different from some of the more cliched ways we’ve represented women over the years. I want to tell a more complex story. I want to tell a more empowered story, a more joyful story, a more sexy story …
There’s an opportunity to create a new way of looking at women in the culture, and that’s by example.” -Connie Britton, No. 13 on our list of Most Creative People in business
It’s here! We’ve named our 100 Most Creative People of 2013!
At the top of the list? Who else but Nate SIlver…?
5 Ways To Innovate By Cross-Pollinating Ideas
Tina Seelig details how to combine unlike concepts to find the next big thing.
- Combine unlike ideas.
- Talk to people.
- Build on existing ideas.
- Hire a diverse workforce.
- Use a metaphor.
Read the story here.
17-year-old Jennie Lamere created Twivo which allows Twitter users to block certain words from their feed to prevent spoilers.
