wandering wandering star

…moments of insight are a very-well studied psychological phenomenon.

There really are two defining features. The first defining feature is the answer comes out of the blue. So it comes when we least expect it. It comes when we’ve quit the music business, and we’re trying to paint a canvas in Woodstock, New York. It comes when we’ve given up, when we feel like we have nothing left to say.

It comes in the shower. It comes in the bathtub. It comes under the apple tree. So it comes in the least expected moments. That’s the first defining feature.

The second defining feature is that as soon as the answer arrives, we know this is the answer we’ve been looking for. We don’t have to double-check the math or carefully edit the lyrics: We know this is it. So, you know, the answer comes attached with this feeling of certainty - it feels like a revelation. So these are the two defining features of these moments of insight, and they do seem to play a big role in creativity, especially when people are looking for really radical solutions to very, very hard problems.

The virtue of youth, after all, is that the young don’t know enough to be insiders, cynical with expertise…

We can continue to be innovate if we maintain the perspective of the outsider… If you are bored, start again.

Outsider creativity isn’t a phase of life. It’s a state of mind… We need to be willing to risk embarrassment, ask silly questions, surround ourselves with people who don’t know what we’re talking about.

We need to leave behind the safety of our expertise.

In this soft economy, hard luxury has thrived.

That’s because these brands provide a not-so-little-thing called meaning, which translates into value. And more than ever it’s about value: the interaction between price and what we get in return. In truth, that’s what the economy has impacted most—a closer examination of what’s behind the brand curtain as consumers have searched for more value, not just lower prices.

Yet brand managers, staring down the barrel of a lingering recession, often blame high prices for lost sales. It’s reactionary, in order to move product. But we know that people don’t choose a product in a purely logical way. Brand Keys proprietary research points to a split: rational factors make up only about 30% of why we choose what we choose. Emotional factors account for the rest.

And that’s the luxury advantage. Luxury brands know how to create and foster emotional value. It’s this distinction that enables them to continue to live so large, even in a time of constricted budgets. What luxury brands do well is exhibit clear brand values that lead to a meaningful emotional differentiation in the mind of the consumer.

To paraphrase Mark Twain, “The report of [brand] death is greatly exaggerated.”

Collaboration is overrated. At least the word is.

What people want is “community,” engagement and highly effective opportunities to work with highly effective people who can get things done. And if those highly effective people are kind of cool and kind of smart they will become your “work friends.”

Then they will become your Facebook friends and you will have Thanksgiving Dinner with them because it’s way more fun and much less stressful than hanging with your own family. And you will be happier at work, and therefore stay longer and then that big nameless, faceless, well-branded corporate entity that signs your paycheck will continue to prosper and thrive, making bazillions of dollars, and then it can hire a phenomenal design firm to build a “campus” for its happy workers, who will stay longer and work more but won’t mind as much because they have a dry cleaner, fitness center and their best friends all within 10 feet of their desk. See how this works?

Petula Dvorak called Pinterest “digital crack for women” arguing that “the site’s churning cycle of interest, hope, inspiration, jealousy, desperation, despair and depression keeps them coming back.

Add easy functionality. You sign-up and hit the “Pin it” button. It requires no investment of time or learning and accelerates behavior many women were doing anyway.

“I don’t know what’s the opposite of a sociopath, but that’s what Reid is,” Thiel says.

“The anti-sociopath understands other people incredibly well and tries to craft solutions that work for them.”