Apply now for this year’s annual Healing and Self-Expression Retreat in the Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu, Peru A twelve year journey into the heart of creativity and innovation For well over a decade now, I’ve been obsessed with three questions: What is creativity? Why does it have such universal appeal? How can we have […]
[ARTICLE] The Body, Mind, and Spirit of Bay Area Creativity
Apply now for this year’s Healing and Self-Expression Retreat in the Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu, Peru. Each retreat limited to 10 participants only. The Bay Area is the single most creative and innovative region in the United States, if not the world. Home to such major players as Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, […]
[VIDEO] Creativity and Bay Area Innovation, Part VIII: The City of Gold
Gold is revered cross-culturally because it seems to build a bridge between this world and some other. The City of Gold The peninsula currently known as San Francisco has had many names, and based on the number of indigenous tribes living in the area before the Spanish arrived, many more than I’ll be able to report. […]
[VIDEO] Creativity and Bay Area Innovation, Part VII: The Spirit of Transformation
To have a landscape peppered with snake-like rocks, as occurs in the Bay Area, is not insignificant for creativity and innovation. In every creative act, something is always transformed into something else. When you begin to adapt creativity as a way of living, you begin to see it flourishing everywhere. And part of living a […]
[VIDEO] Creativity and Bay Area Innovation, Part VI: Play!
One of the most undervalued aspects of creativity and innovation is the aspect of play. Though children do it naturally, we adults tend to neglect its value, often falling into the trap of relentless, unceasing productivity. Ground zero for play grounds Recently, I made a trip The Koret Children’s Playground in San Francisco’s Golden Gate […]
[VIDEO] Creativity and Bay Area Innovation, Part V: The Spirit of Cooperation Fueling Innovation
…it’s no accident that high tech arose in the Bay Area and not in the more established intellectual hotspots of the East Coast. Whereas East Coast companies such as IBM and Xerox were both secretive and insular, not wanting the secrets behind their advances to be leaked out to competing companies, the cooperative environments of […]
[VIDEO] Creativity and Bay Area Innovation, Part III: The Weather Factor
If you are able to sit down at a restaurant with your friends and loved ones, order seasonal foods reverently prepared and sip, perhaps, a few lovely, mind-lubricating wines, if you are able to do all that, you may be unable to control yourself; you may be absolutely and completely unable to keep your creative […]
[VIDEO] Creativity and Bay Area Innovation, Part II: The Great Cultural Mashup
The Bay Area sits at the westernmost edge of Western culture and the easternmost edge of Eastern culture, setting up a cultural edge condition that fosters creativity and innovation. Culture and Creativity Last time in the “Creativity and Bay Area Innovation” series, I talked about the influence of the Asian system of Feng Shui on […]
[VIDEO] Creativity and Bay Area Innovation, Part I: The Feng Shui Factor
The Bay Area is hands down the single most creative and innovative region in the United States, receiving a whopping 32 percent of all the venture capital invested in the United States. Introduction to the “Creativity and Bay Area Innovation” series The Bay Area is hands down the single most creative and innovative region in the […]
The Lowdown on Bassnectar: How a 7.0 Earthquake Inspired The Bay Area’s Most Indigenous Musical Genre
On Sunday, September 27th, Lorin Ashton and Bassnectar return to the Bay Area to play at the Bay Area Vibze Festival. Bassnectar shows have been some of the most profound and joyful experiences of my life. And because Lorin’s music has touched me so deeply, as a student of creativity and Self-expression, I’ve asked myself, and had […]