A Quote by Harper Reed

When I give talks, I often quote from a button I received at a Google event: Always Be Creative. I use it to illustrate how important creativity is in technology and business.
In the business world, there are systems and processes for just about everything else. Yet creativity and innovation, arguably THE most important aspects of progress, are often left to happen by chance. The system provides a scaffolding for creative support and exploration, yet is open enough to avoid curbing creativity or outputting cookie-cutter solutions.
People always think of technology as something having silicon in it. But a pencil is technology. Any language is technology. Technology is a tool we use to accomplish a particular task and when one talks about appropriate technology in developing countries, appropriate may mean anything from fire to solar electricity.
The more I do this creative work teaching the "Personal Creativity in Business" course at Stanford the more I realize that business is about people in groups being creative in their own way. If business creativity does not allow individual development, then it isn't sustainable. But if business creativity means people bringing out their best and developing that, then amazing things can happen - not only for the business but also more importantly for the individual and the surrounding community.
I don't know where creativity comes from, but I think everybody has the ability to be creative. I think what's important about creativity starts when you're very young and how we're allowed to experience our imagination. The people who bring us up and teach us are fundamental in either encouraging creativity or discourging creativity. My imagination was always encouraged.
Technology is a big destroyer of emotion and truth. Auto-tuning doesn’t do anything for creativity. Yeah, it makes it easier and you can get home sooner; but it doesn’t make you a more creative person. That’s the disease we have to fight in any creative field: ease of use.
People equate job titles to levels of creativity. We think that musicians are creative while accountants are not. Job title has nothing to do with human creativity. In fact, we all have enormous creative potential. Even those that often state with authority that "I'm not creative." With a systematic approach to building creative capacity, we all have the opportunity to create and leave a mark on the world.
Innovation is a subset of creativity. Innovation often deals with product launches and is often relegated to the C-suite or to heads of R&D departments. Innovation requires creativity, but creativity is something that is much more broad. It applies to people at all levels of an organization. Today, we all are responsible for delivering "everyday creativity". Small creative acts that add up to big things.
I’m not very creative” doesn’t work. There’s no such thing as creative people and non-creative people. There are only people who use their creativity and people who don’t. Unused creativity doesn’t just disappear. It lives within us until it’s expressed, neglected to death, or suffocated by resentment and fear.
You can't use up creativity, creative thinking builds on itself and increases the creativity of the thinker...You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.
A feeling I got from working at Google was that technology could solve any problem. Yes, it's fantastic, but what I realized later was there's technology, and there's people. Google had its list ordered: Technology. People. And I think the right order is: People. Technology.
What I’m trying to show is that the main event today is not seen by those of us that are living it… So it’s not the effect of [technology], it is that everything exists with-in [its milieu]. It's not that we use technology, we live technology. Technology has become as ubiquitous as the air we breathe, so we are no longer conscious of its presence.
From a management standpoint, it is very important to know how to unleash people's inborn creativity. My concept is that anybody has creative ability, but very few people know how to use it.
Creativity or talent, like electricity, is something I don’t understand but something I’m able to harness and use. While electricity remains a mystery, I know I can plug into it and light up a cathedral or a synagogue or an operating room and use it to help save a life. Or I can use it to electrocute someone. Like electricity, creativity makes no judgment. I can use it productively or destructively. The important thing is to use it. You can’t use up creativity. The more you use it, the more you have.
It's a funny line when you're walking - the creativity, the subjectivity versus the objectivity, creativity versus the business, and recognizing that you are in the music business, so there are certain things that you have to acquiesce to on the business side and certain creative decisions that you have to make for the purposes of serving the business side of it.
Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is a result of good work habits. That's it in a nutshell ... In order to be creative you have to know how to prepare to be creative.
One of the missions of Google[x] is to use technology to get technology out of the way
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