Creativity and Innovation

Steve Dilla has a great post today describing a creative meeting he had recently to prepare for an upcoming conference at Fellowship Church in Grapevine. He identifies several factors that made the creative planning productive that I think are right on target. I added a comment about one of my little creative strategies. Check it out here.

And speaking of creativity and innovation, something I've been working through over the past several months is this concept:

"Innovation must be driven by discipline, and creativity must be channeled through order. Otherwise you just end up with a great big, cool and pretty mess of inneffective stuff."

Sometimes I find that my right brain creeps over to my left and picks a fight, and a ballroom blitz ensues. Then paint, ideas and scribbles are left all over the place in in a right brain victory while undone to-do lists, missed deadlines and a messy desk are scattered around in the wake of a left brain loss.

And poor Mr. Left Brain really only wanted to help Mr. Right Brain be successful. Boy, my right brain can really be a punk, sometimes...

This is not a good thing.

It's been said that a pond or lake may be able to sprawl out widely but a river channeled through the right river banks can become a powerful force. (or something like that)

Maybe I should make the whole "disciplined innovation" or "channeled creativity" concept a regular feature here. But first my left brain needs to build a little bit of muscle and street smarts to handle his own with my right...

How about you?

What do you think?