Evelyn Rodriguez says:

"To astound the world, you must sink into creativity as a heroic act"

She talks about how to become what Seth Godin would call "remarkable" and what fellow blogger/ marketer Tom Peters terms as "gasp-worthy"

To Evelyn, the secret to making your idea/product/self more remarkable and gasp-worthy lies in creativity. And she will be providing us with ideas over the next month or so on how to unlock our own creative processes.

Headrush has a great post today too. Kathy Sierra discusses remarkable ideas - in the context of how do you get remarkable ideas out of your company/team/not for profit group/ family unit. What she discovered contradicts conventional "wisdom." She found that remarkable ideas come from INDIVIDUALS and are actually stifled and "dumbed down" when smart, creative people compromise as part of a team environment (controversial stuff.) Her post goes on to talk about how the best team environment for inspiring gasp-worthy, intelligent ideas is one where there are differences of opinion. A diverse environment where team members are encouraged to think independently, feel free to debate their ideas, and in conflict between good ideas, the best idea wins.

"Paradoxically, the best way for a group to be smart is for each person in it to think and act as independently as possible."

Think about that for a second. This is what renaissance girls and boys have been fighting for all along: The permission to act independently and creatively. This is the very thing that is stifled in the modern workplace and the very reason why so many talented and creative people are self-employed entrepreneurs.

But think about it from a management perspective. We NEED the people on our team that are able to create remarkable ideas/products/processes. We NEED "driven self-starters with an entrepreneurial spirit." And we say we want it. On paper those words look good. They look like the very things that will make us better.

In practice, though?

We want a "team player" who doesn't "cause conflict" or "rock the boat." We want somebody who follows our mission statement without question or challenge. Essentially we want somebody non-creative.

So what's a renaissance girl to do?