Do you want the people that you vote for to be creative? A lot of voters want just the opposite: they want their candidates to be predictable. They want them to vote the way they said they would. Creativity: Isn't that what happens when they start to compromise their principles,...

Behold the impressive golden frieze to the right. It's in a hallway at Harvard Business School. Even though it's from 1834, it has a message written just for today's crisis: it's titled "Credit: Man's Confidence in Man". Under a picture of two...

Apple's corporate image is one of the creative iconoclast; their motto, "Think Different." Their products look great. Artsy people like graphic designers, photographers, and film directors choose Apples.

Does the ad campaign work? Does the average person-in-the-street think of Apple computers as being more creative? A recent study done at...

I was sad to read of the death of Gary Gygax, co-creator (with Dave Arneson) of the legendary role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. I was first introduced to the game when I started college at MIT in 1978. There, I learned that many of my classmates were already seasoned players...

At the conclusion of the annual schmoozefest known as the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the world's leaders called for "a new kind of collaborative leadership." At no other annual event can you find country presidents and prime ministers mingling with CEOs of the largest multinational corporations,...

What happened in Iowa and New Hampshire? Yes, we know it's called "voting," it's the democratic process in action, blah blah blah. But is this the best way to choose a president?

I should say right up front that my answer is "yes." I believe in the power of the...

Yes, there is a thief next door. And across the street, too. There might even be one in your house. At least, that's the claim coming from music and film producers, who have been fighting against illegal music and video downloads--a.k.a. "file sharing"--for years, staring with legal action that put...

This week, Osama bin Laden is on the cover of Newsweek. The story? Back in the winter of 2004-2005, we almost got him. But you know what? It wouldn't really make a difference, and here's why.

Al Qaeda is a new kind of organization. It's a diffuse, international social...

Like many of you, I just returned from a summer vacation, but one that was shorter than I would have liked: five days and four nights. But I'm lucky; many of my friends didn't take any vacation this summer. Research shows that Americans work more hours than anyone on the...

I was only seven when, in the summer of 1967, the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco drew in hippies from around the country. I didn't realize that 2007 was the fortieth anniversary until I started seeing articles in the newspaper about how important that summer was. Then, I saw a...

Quick -- name an open source product that's innovative. If you said "Linux," you failed the test. Linux -- the darling of counter-culture programmers, for its "free software" advocacy and for providing an alternative to Microsoft Windows -- is not an innovation. It's essentially a copy of another operating...

Driving home from work in St. Louis, I pass Busch Stadium, home of the World Champion St. Louis Cardinals. Now that baseball season is in full swing, I often look down from the raised highway onto a sea of red jerseyed fans. With my new book Group Genius...

Where does innovation come from? The conventional wisdom is that it comes from corporate spending on research. That's why one of the biggest corporate tax breaks is the credit given to corporations for spending on research and experimentation (R&E). In December 2006, Congress voted to increase the subsidy from $7.3...