TinaSeelig

There are seeds of something interesting in all ideas... One of my favorite exercises it ask teams to come up with the worst idea for a particular challenges - such as restaurant ideas, a family vacation, or ways to save water during the drought. The, I give that terrible idea to another team and that team has to turn the idea into something amazingly great... They do so all the time! The terrible idea unlocks some really interesting opportunities. I write about this exercise in detail in What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20.

Procrastination is interesting... You can mine it to determine why you aren't doing what you say to yourself that you want to accomplish. There is always something getting in the way. By being honest with yourself, you unlock reasons for your lack of action. Some questions to ask... Are you really motivated to achieve the goal, or is it someone else's goal for you? Or, if you reach that goal, what other opportunities will it unlock?

LOTS! The first thing is open ended problems without a right answer. They need to be given opportunities to follow their own interests and come up with unique solutions. I am a huge fan of Don Wettrick in Indiana who teaches high school... He gives his students a chance to pick projects of their own choosing and then provides them with tools to tackle them.

Creativity is applying your imagination to address a challenge. This requires both motivation and experimentation. So, the best way to improve your creativity is to tap into your motivation (no matter how small it is) and to begin experimenting. This can be as easy as seeing how you feel after getting different amount so sleep, or how your colleagues respond to you when you greet them in different ways. These small experiments tune up your creative problem solving abilities.

I don't keep track of anybody's ideas besides my own... It is up to each to us use our creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship skills to bring out ideas to fruition... I have had many students go on to do remarkable things, such as starting Instagram, as well as those who become neurosurgeons and educators. I don't take credit for their accomplishments, but am delighted that they used what they learned in our program to manifest their own dreams.