Teresa Amabile at Harvard Business School collected 12,000 daily journal entries from 238 people working at seven companies, to study creativity. She observed two things I found interesting:

• People were least creative when they were under time pressure. There was also a "time-pressure hangover" where creativity dropped for two days after the time pressure decreased.

• Creativity drops when people compete instead of collaborating. The most creative teams shared ideas and debated in a trusting environment. Competition stopped the sharing information. "And that's destructive because nobody in an organization has all of the information required to put all the pieces of the puzzle together."

- Breen, B. (2004). The 6 myths of creativity. Fast Company, 89, 75. Retrieved on Dec 8, 2004 from http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/89/creativity.html.