Tag: creativity

  • Some Thoughts On BRIC, Brooklyn’s Beloved Arts Organization

    Jordana and I were recently interviewed by Brooklyn Independent Media about BRIC, Brooklyn’s beloved non-profit arts organization. For 35 years, BRIC’s been driving and reflecting the cultural diversity and creativity of our favorite borough, led by its brilliant visionary, Leslie Schultz. From live music and performing arts (the Celebrate Brooklyn! Performing Arts Festival and BRIClab),…

  • Research You Can Walk Through

    For years, Scratch has studied the compression of time and space between, say, a good idea and a better one; a thriving company and a dead one; instant success and precipitous failure and then (often in a reality show?) premeditated redemption. “Time’s moving faster than ever,” right?  Sure it is, or at least if feels…

  • Sometimes I Don’t Aim

    “Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write. I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” – Jane Hischfield     Ever write a…

  • Figurative Sidewalk Stain

    (Artist unknown, Brooklyn, 2013)

  • Knowing Your Place

    Long ago, in what seems like another life, a colleague much senior to me (in age, experience and level) summoned me to his office on a Friday afternoon for a “chat.”  Sounded ominous, and it was. I’d been working for the (unnamed) company for some time, and had achieved some early success.  Enough success that I wasn’t just feeling confident, I was feeling unstoppable. …

  • The World’s First Creative Director

    Finding the best creative talent is among the most difficult tasks any leader faces.   Most of us only get it right every once in a while.  There are lots of reasons why: structure, communication, timing, vibe, process.  I often hear colleagues and peers lament the challenge. Where does the best creative talent come from?  How do we find it? When I…

  • I Can Haz Millennials

    Some highlights from a recent interview I did at Yahoo!’s first CMO summit under CMO Kathy Savitt and CEO Marissa Mayer.  In the clip, I talk about the difference between marketing to/at Millennials vs empowering them to speak through your brand.  It’s just amazing how seriously I seem to take this.

  • “Two things of opposite natures seem to depend / On one another”

    I’ve probably learned as much about creativity + business from Wallace Stevens as I have from anyone… from Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction IV Two things of opposite natures seem to depend On one another, as a man depends On a woman, day on night, the imagined On the real. This is the origin of change. Winter and…

  • Poem For The Hartford Public Library

      MARVELOUS WILL IT BE IN THE EYES OF EVERY GENERATION   There was a clearing, a readiness for first bells, an opening for the outpouring.  A hand was raised: How much of the past would have to be overlooked? He stings, he bites, he is absolutely convinced, and all the time he figures himself…