Create a city in your head

May 16, 2012

Cities are hotbeds of new ideas and innovation. Studies have shown that on every measure of creativity and innovation – number of patents registered, supercreative professionals, research & development budgets – size really does matter. A city that was ten times larger than its neighbour, wasn’t ten times more innovative; it was seventeen times more innovative. A metropolis fifty times bigger than a town was 130 times more innovative.

This is down to cross-fertilisation of ideas and contagion as people bump into each other and set off new trains of thought. You don’t have to move to the city though if you want to be more creative. Widen your reading, go to places you don’t normally go, listen to different people and use Twitter follows and blogs selectively so that they become your desktop research team.

You can create the hothouse effect of the city in your head. That way you can take the time to smell the roses.