Business environments and cultures can encourage or stifle creative thinking – just like our own creative minds.

Tom Kelley, general manager of award-winning industrial design firm, IDEO, writes about a common form of response to creative ideas in a “pivotal meeting where you push forward a new idea or proposal you’re passionate about.

“A fast-paced discussion leads to an upwelling of support that seems about to reach critical mass. And then, in one disastrous moment, your hopes are dashed when someone weighs in with those fateful words: ‘Let me just play Devil’s Advocate for a minute . . .’

Kelley notes the speaker “now feels entirely free to take potshots at your idea, and does so with complete impunity. Because they’re not really your harshest critic.

“They are essentially saying, ‘The Devil made me do it.’ They’re removing themselves from the equation and side­stepping individual responsibility for the verbal attack. But before they’re done, they’ve torched your fledgling concept.”

An article in Fast Company magazine notes the advice by consultants to “think outside the box” is “about as cliched as it gets,” according to Jesse Sheidlower, editor-at-large of the Oxford English Dictionary.

The origin of the ubiquitous phrase, the article says, “is generally attributed to consultants in the 1970s and 1980s who tried to make clients feel inadequate by drawing nine dots on a piece of paper and asking them to connect the dots without lifting their pen, using only four lines.

“(Hint: You have to think outside the — oh, you know.)”

From “Outside the Box”: The Inside Story, by Martin Kihn | June 1, 2005, Fast Company.

“Only one set of skills can ensure this generation’s economic future – the capacity for innovation.”

That quote comes from the website of the new book “Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People That Will Change The World” by Tony Wagner, which declares that nurturing creative thinking is crucial and that “only one set of skills can ensure this generation’s economic future: the capacity for innovation.”

The book asks, “What do the best schools and colleges do to teach the skills of innovation? What are some of the most forward-looking employers doing to create a culture of innovation?”

In his review article, Jonathan Wai, Ph.D. notes he shares author Wagner’s interest “in what constitutes a meaningful science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education.”

Wai writes that the book profiles five STEM innovators and three social innovators, and that “These stories are worth learning from and developing hypotheses from,” but warns “it is important to remember that the plural of anecdote is not data.”

He continues, “In addition, the STEM innovators he profiles are very much entrepreneurs.

In her post “A Little Weird? Prone to Depression? Blame Your Creative Brain,” Susan Biali, M.D. writes about a friend of hers turning her on to “The Creative Brain” by psychiatrist and neuroscientist Nancy C. Andreasen.

Biali says, “If you’re a creative sort, this book will make you feel blissfully normal in your strangeness.

“It was pretty much one big sigh of happy relief and recognition for me.”

She goes on to include some of her favorite highlights of the book, with comments. Here are a few excerpts:

1) “We cannot afford to waste human gifts. We need to learn how to nurture the creative nature.”

Every parent needs to know this. Every person who has a talent that they long to play with and develop, but thinks it’s silly or a waste of time or too late, needs to understand how important this gift is and understand its worth in their very cells.

Imaginational and cognitive intensities, qualities of the kind of “teeming” brain that many high ability and creative people have, may be key elements for solving problems and doing creative thinking.

But over-active thinking and imagination can sometimes get in our way.

This number problem comes from the post Overthinking and Your Child-Like Mind and, as the caption notes (click to view larger size), children are able to solve it much more quickly than programmers.

Executive Director for the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, Tina Seelig, PhD also teaches courses on creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

In her post Seeing Your World in TechniColor in her blog CreativityRulz, she writes about one way to enhance creativity: Paying more careful attention to our environment, which, she notes, “actually takes some effort.”

“Most people see the world in black and white, missing most of the opportunities in their midst.

“They travel down the same routes day after day. The path is so familiar that they can practically navigate it in their sleep.

“But, there are some people who see the world in Technicolor.

“I have never been a fan of learning in a classroom. Inside a laboratory or a garage, I always wanted to know more, but never inside a classroom.”

Caltech physicist Caolionn O’Connell, PhD.

“It is often said that education and training are the keys to the future. They are, but a key can be turned in two directions.”

Ken Robinson continues, “Turn it one way and you lock resources away, even from those they belong to. Turn it the other way and you release resources and give people back to themselves.

“To realize our true creative potential—in our organizations, in our schools and in our communities—we need to think differently about ourselves and to act differently towards each other. We must learn to be creative.” [From his book "Out of Our Minds."]

“They wondered if that capacity for creativity they remembered from their youth would or could ever return.” Lisa Rivero

How can we successfully hold on to the creative thinking and passions we had earlier in life?

Ken Robinson and many other writers and leaders warn that too many children are having their intellectual and creative abilities eroded by educational institutions.

We may find inspiration to be more creative in art classes and writing workshops – but what if our very sense of being creative has been eroded by ordinary schooling?

In his acclaimed TED conference presentation in 2006, Ken Robinson referred to the “really extraordinary capacity that children have, their capacities for innovation…” – but added, “And my contention is, all kids have tremendous talents and we squander them, pretty ruthlessly… creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.”

Definitions of the word “improvise” include “to compose, play, recite, or sing on the spur of the moment, without previous preparation” and “to make, provide, or arrange from whatever materials are readily available.”

One of the elements of creativity tests such as the widely used Torrance Test of Creative Thinking is questions about “unusual uses” – such as, “How many uses can you think of for a tin can?”

That sounds like a cognitive sort of improvisation.

You can see drawings by children and adults who took the Torrance Test, plus evaluations by creativity scholars James C. Kaufman and Kyung Hee Kim, in the post How Creative Are You?

The photo is Keith Jarrett. His Amazon.com page lists his albums and notes he “has come to be recognized as one of the most creative musicians of our times – universally acclaimed as an improviser of unsurpassed genius.”

This image is from a series of Mercedes Benz ads. The text reads:

Left brain: I am the left brain. I am a scientist. A mathematician. I love the familiar. I categorize. I am accurate. Linear. Analytical. Strategic. I am practical. Always in control. A master of words and language. Realistic. I calculate equations and play with numbers. I am order. I am logic. I know exactly who I am.

Right brain: I am the right brain. I am creativity. A free spirit. I am passion. Yearning. Sensuality. I am the sound of roaring laughter. I am taste. The feeling of sand beneath bare feet. I am movement. Vivid colors. I am the urge to paint on an empty canvas. I am boundless imagination. Art. Poetry. I sense. I feel. I am everything I wanted to be.

[Image and text from post: Left Brain/Right Brain: Gorgeously Illustrated Mercedes Benz Ads.]

Having two “brains” with different functions is valid neuroscience. But how true is the idea of the right hemisphere being the “creative” one?

As popular and appealing as that concept is, it can also be a misleading oversimplification. A number of writers and neuroscientists encourage an integration of thinking, using both sides of our brain/mind.