"Embrace your constraints. They are provocative. They are challenging. They wake you up. They make you more creative. They make you better.”
"Detractors initially said Twitter's 140 character limit was constraining -- but that unleashed a new form of wit and creativity, and power for activists."
Co-founder of Twitter Biz Stone tells us of the multiple lessons he learned from his enterprising entrepreneurial journey, often the hard way.
In his new book, Biz Stone, the co-founder of Twitter, discusses the power of creativity and how to harness it through stories from his remarkable life and career.
Stone is known as the creative, effervescent, funny, charming, positive, optimistic, altruistic and yet remarkably savvy co-founder.
His book -- Things a Little Bird Told Me: Confessions of the Creative Mind -- spans 224 pages and 18 chapters, and covers the pivotal and personal stories from his life along with lessons earned and learned the hard way.
Born in Boston in 1974, Biz Stone's first start-up was Xanga.
He was recruited by Google in the early 2000s, and connected with Blogger founder Evan Williams; the pair later left to work on their own start-up Odeo.
Twitter was founded in 2007 after a hackathon when the original videocasting product did not pan out as materialised.
Twitter's dizzying global success led to Stone being recognised by Time magazine as one of the most influential persons in the world.
His other books include Who Let the Blogs Out? A Hyperconnected Peek at the World of Weblogs.
"Creativity is what makes us unique, inspired and fulfilled. This book is about how to tap into the creativity in and around us all," Stone begins.
Here are my top 20 takeaways from his book that offer insights into creativity, ethics and global vision.
1. Create opportunities, don’t wait for them
2. Start with an idea
3. Invest emotionally in your idea
4. Creativity has infinite approaches
5. Learn to harness constraints for creativity
6. Tap the flocking and swarming nature of humans in social media
7. Treat failure as an asset, not just a lesson
8. Have an idealist on your team
9. Stay neutral in politics
10. Define your company’s culture -- and indoctrinate all new employees into it
11. Listen to your customers
12. Zoom out
13. Give back to society -- start now, no matter how small it is
14. Have a sense of humour
15. Investors help -- but can also take over your company
16. Look at the world through the lens of infinite possibility
17. Think humanity first, then technology
18. Redefine old problems
19. The key to global citizenship is empathy
20. When you succeed, start over again
No comments:
Post a Comment