Creativity & Innovation

Evidence-based creativity & innovation practices.

24 concepts in this area — each broken into concrete practices with the real mechanism, an honest read on the evidence, and how to practice it with IX Coach.

• Combinatorial Creativity, Made Practical — How do you generate genuinely new ideas by combining existing ones?
• Creative Confidence, Made Practical — How do you build creative confidence and overcome the fear of being uncreative?
• Deliberate Constraints, Made Practical — How do constraints boost creativity and what does the research actually show?
• Design Thinking, Step by Step — What are the stages of design thinking and how do you actually use them?
• Divergent Thinking: Generating Many Ideas — What is divergent thinking and how do you generate more and better ideas?
• First-Principles Thinking, Made Usable — What is first-principles thinking and how do you actually apply it?
• Incubation: Why Stepping Away Solves Problems — Why do solutions come when you stop trying, and how do you use incubation on purpose?
• Lateral Thinking, Made Practical — What is lateral thinking and how do you use it to solve problems?
• Morning Pages, Made Practical — What are morning pages and do they actually work for creativity?
• Morphological Analysis, Made Practical — How does morphological analysis generate creative solutions systematically?
• Oblique Strategies, Made Practical — How do oblique strategies help break creative blocks and generate new ideas?
• Osborn’s Brainstorming Rules, Made Practical — What are the rules of brainstorming and do they actually work?
• Quantity Over Quality: How More Drafts Produce Better Work — Does producing more drafts or ideas actually lead to better creative output?
• SCAMPER: A Systematic Creativity Technique — How does the SCAMPER technique help you generate creative ideas?
• Six Thinking Hats, Made Practical — How does the six thinking hats method improve decision-making and group thinking?
• Steal Like an Artist, in Practice — What does “steal like an artist” actually mean, and how do you do it?
• The Adjacent Possible, Made Practical — What is the adjacent possible and how do you use it to unlock creative and personal growth?
• The Artist Date, Made Practical — What is an artist date and how does it help creativity?
• The Beginner’s Mind in Creative Practice — How does cultivating a beginner’s mind actually improve creative output?
• The Creative Act: Rick Rubin’s Approach to Making — What does Rick Rubin’s Creative Act teach about how to create and sustain creative work?
• The Medici Effect: Innovation at the Intersection — How does combining ideas from different fields produce breakthrough innovation?
• The Third Alternative, Made Practical — How do you find a solution that goes beyond compromise and gives everyone what they really need?
• The Three Bs of Creativity: Bed, Bath, and Bus — Why do good ideas come in the shower or just before sleep — and how do you use that?
• Why Constraints Boost Creativity — Do constraints actually make you more creative, and how do you use them?