SO back to Stanford – How to Cultivate Creativity using Design Thinking. Bill Burnett of the Stanford d.school used this quote which I thought really summed up the creativity challenge:

“You do not see what you are looking at, you see what you are looking for”

As an example there is the famous video  of the basketball players where students are asked to count how many passes were made by a team and completely missed the gorilla. This video has spawned many talks on inattention and even a book “The Invisible Gorilla”.

Try it yourself:

Burnett referred to the research of Neuroscientist Gregory Berns who identified the key traits of creative people:

These traits can be learned – especially our own fear response to novelty. So keep an eye out for the next quick blog to learn more