Author Archives: Paul Reali

All nuance considered, the Kodak empire was built on film. The company’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization has no one cause, but if there was one primary driver, it was the rise of digital photography and the end of film, and Kodak’s inability to adapt to that change. Here’s the part of the story you probably [...]

Much of the time, creativity is a team sport. One essential aspect of team creative performance is the climate in which the team works. The climate affects the level of engagement people have in their work, and I would posit that — since creativity is a decision — that a worker must be engaged in [...]

Ideas are cheap. Plentiful. Less than a dime a dozen. Ideas are not creativity. Novel solutions, crafted from ideas, make up creativity. What is the difference between having an idea and having a solution? The hard work of actually doing something. From Poke the Box, by Seth Godin: The first imperative is to be aware—aware of the [...]

To promote his new book Anything You Want, Derek Sivers has created a series of interesting animated videos. Here’s one that’s appropriate for creatives, about the way we judge our own ideas. Obvious to you. Amazing to others. from Derek Sivers on Vimeo.

Creativity equals change. While the word “creativity” is tossed about so casually that it has become a kleenex word (that is, it has become generic rather than specific), there are some of us still fighting to reclaim it. So: creativity is the work of producing something new and valuable. When introduced to others, this new [...]

This is a recommendation for Art & Copy, a 2009 documentary about advertising and the people who create it, which serves as a reflective glimpse into creatives and creativity, ideas and environments, vision and persuasion, and creating art for the sake of commerce. I watched it just a few days after visiting the World of [...]

In upstate New York, where I grew up, we decorated the eaves of our homes with icicles. Real icicles. Snow collected on the roof, and is it melted, it created lovely ice stalactites. (Lovely and life-threatening. I’ve seen icicles as big as a second grader.) In Charlotte, NC, we hang icicle lights from our roofs, [...]