This is a post I write for myself as much as any other reason. I once tried to keep a dream journal. Frequently I would wake up, vivid images of my dream from the night before resonating in my head. I won’t bother writing this down, I can remember it too clearly. Sure enough, moments … Continue reading Capture Your Ideas
The benefits of working collaboratively on creative pursuits are numerous. Stimulating new ideas, gathering resources and offering new perspectives are just a few ways that collaboration helps you. But say you are in a team, or leading a team, how could you possibly gauge how much people are “working together?” A somewhat older study into … Continue reading The Power of Collective Voice
Disclaimer: Well, isn’t every industry creative? Yes. For the purposes of this discussion, however, I am talking about the traditional (and incorrect, I believe) label of “creative businesses.” In this context, it is referring to sectors such as design, architecture, fashion, art, media and communications, etc. While “creative businesses” worry about how rigid management procedures can damage … Continue reading Learning from the Creative Industries
My head was spinning. I was sitting on a bus with my face pressed against the glass window. It was the middle of the day. Outside people and cars passed by as they went about their daily business. I didn’t register any of it. My mind was elsewhere. I was going home from my final … Continue reading Why You Should Leave Things Until the Last Minute
In traditional project management, success if often measured by the trinity of cost, time and quality. The rule of thumb is that you can’t increase one without decreasing others. If you need to finish the project faster, it will cost you more, unless you also reduce its quality also. If you need to raise quality it … Continue reading How Do You Measure Success?
A series of articles in a recent Harvard Business Review discusses the balance between transparency and privacy in offices. This issue is of particular importance to offices in creative industries because the work process can be a lot more fragile and sometimes personal. Although not about architecture or architectural offices these articles seemed to hit … Continue reading Privacy and Creativity
Many businesses that offer design products and services have a close relationship with creativity. This could include businesses that engage in graphic design, industrial and furniture design, architecture, web design, interior design and many others. The proliferation of these types of businesses has caused design to be crystalised into a process that can be managed, … Continue reading How to fit Creativity in the Design Process
For all the management skills and beautiful spaces you can provide for teams, sometimes where you sit them can make a huge difference to the type of work and creativity they produce. In this post, I’ll examine a few of the more common types you might hear discussed these days, along with what characteristics they … Continue reading Office Seating Arrangements and What They Mean
In businesses, the creative process is often under-managed due to fear of stifling free thinking and exploration. So, hypothetically, if we were to take the view of a design business being an assembly line and try to apply typical process improvement steps to it, would it work? Would it affect creativity? To help answer this … Continue reading Sources of Under-management in Design Businesses
producing creativity 