I’m a closet statistics nerd. Good for me, because innovation is a numbers game. One of my favorite counterintuitive statistical truths is expressed by Bayes’ Theorem, which can effectively bend the odds.

It’s hard to imagine more different characters than LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman and John Steinbeck. And yet when it comes to sparking creativity, they share an unexpected hack.

The evidence is clear: back-to-back meetings strain our cognitive function. One innovation leader I know has created a rule to make sure he shows up ready to sprint.

In our quest for breakthrough outcomes, we can often neglect something as simple as care. Yet it’s the problems we actually care about that get the brain’s extra special attention.

Ever wonder where Amazon’s famous organizational innovation, the “two pizza team,” came from? The fly-wheel inducing innovation didn’t come from a brainstorm…

Innovators ranging from Lin-Manuel Miranda to Jeff Bezos have made good use of down time. For all our connectedness, being unplugged has never been more important.

We see sick days as days we can’t work. As a few classic examples of transformation demonstrate, perhaps we should see them as a gift — an opportunity to receive a new vision of the future.

With graduation looming, lots of fresh perspectives are pouring into the job market. I’d like to implore graduates to preserve their “outsider’s perspective,” as they begin their careers.

For breakthroughs to happen, we need fresh inputs to drive new connections. These connections aren’t just the function of new input, though; we’ve got to create space to realize new connections.

Frustrated by what he considered to be inadequate design, Steve Jobs left his desk. He didn’t do it absent-mindedly, but deliberately, looking for something that would unlock the riddle.

In design, HOW you’re working — speed, reflection, iteration, and all — is every bit as important as WHAT you’re working on. Perhaps even more so.

What do you do when you realize the sheer volume of ideas required for a breakthrough? Steve Jobs advocated one unexpected tactic…

The holy grail of venture building is to create “network effects” through “demand-side increasing returns.” You’ll be surprised that some consider a network to be the second-best form…

Innovation is all about recombining existing elements in unexpected ways. Sometimes, that seems like theft. My belief is we need to normalize such acts of recombination by sharing our own!

How can a leader create an environment that’s hostile to bias, and one that cultivates the emergence of new ideas? Trier Bryant provides a simple framework to answer this very question.

One of Google’s stratospheric successes might never have reached escape velocity if folks weren’t allowed to indulge pet projects. Here’s the inside scoop.

Jon Beekman, Founder and CEO of ManCrates, shares an enlightened tactic for helping innovators find the breakthroughs they aren’t even looking for.

A recurring theme on the road to creative mastery is how we (wrongly) perceive those who are successful as having never struggled. The truth is, they did. But they persisted, nonetheless.

An eccentric habit may shed light on how Harvard’s B.F. Skinner became one of the most influential psychologists of all time. He learned to value his midnight thoughts so much, he set a nightly alarm!

What can leaders do to promote creativity and innovation in their organizations? According to bestselling author and innovation guru Tom Kelley, they should squint.