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Salman Rushdie said yes! Sadly, it was five years too late.
A little history: From roughly 1989 to 1998, author Salman Rushdie was actively in hiding because of an Iranian fatwa against him. During that time, he occasionally gave interviews—but always in secret, with no public notice.
Which is how, one Tuesday in 1998, I found out that Salman Rushdie had done an interview with a KING-TV news reporter two ...
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(x – 1) + (y – 1) = z
You: “Uh, Bill, I was told there’d be no math in these posts.”
Me: “I never promised that.”
Still, your point is taken. But stay with me—it’ll all make sense.
In this equation:
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It sounds counterintuitive, but creativity and innovation LOVE constraints!
I discovered this first-hand during the 15 years that I produced the longest-running, highest-rated, and most award-winning regional comedy TV show in the United States. Here’s just one example: One day, we had the opportunity to tape a comedy sketch with Michael Jordan (this is when he was still playing with the Bulls). But there were some constraints: we had only a 5-minute window with MJ, the sketch would have to be shot ...
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Have you ever seen a new invention/product/service and said to yourself, “Well, duh! Anybody could have come up with that. In fact, I had that same idea months ago!”?
I know—it’s practically a rhetorical question, right? I mean, we’ve ALL had that experience. We’ve ALL come up with the “great” idea, but dismissed it as being too obvious. “Surely someone else has already invented this.” We’ve ALL come up with the obvious idea.
And yet, “someone else” is the one cashing the ...
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Innovation Trick #47: The Article out of Left Field.
Let’s say you have a challenge, or an opportunity, that could use an innovative idea — but nothing’s coming. Your innovation well has run dry. What do you do?
Try this trick. Fire up your Google machine, open your tablet, or pick up an actual magazine and read an article. ANY article. The only stipulation is that this article should have NOTHING to do with your challenge/opportunity. It could even be an article ...
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That innovative idea that you and your team have come up with — is it any good? You'll never know unless you do this step first.
If you're a video person, I lay it all out in the video below. If reading is more your thing, skip the video and hop straight to the transcript below!
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Have you ever had a great idea come to you — seemingly out of the blue — only to find that that million-dollar idea has vanished into thin air mere seconds later? Let's make sure that never happens again!
If you're a video person, I lay it all out in the video below. If reading is more your thing, skip the video and ...
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In this video, I share a trick that I used to use back when I was writing monolog jokes for "The Tonight Show" and I needed a quick, creative idea. You don't have to be a joke writer for this trick to work for you, too!
If you're a video person, I lay it all out in the video below. If reading is ...
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Why do I keep talking about "Turning Creativity into Money™"? Well, listen my children and you shall hear, of a story from my TV career.
If you're a video person, I lay it all out in the video below. If reading is more your thing, skip the video and hop straight to the transcript below!
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There's a common misconception about creativity that has the unfortunate effect of actually stifling creativity, rather than stimulating it.
If you're a video person, I lay it all out in the video below. If reading is more your thing, skip the video and hop straight to the transcript below!