Michael Lebowitz recently gave the keynote presentation at St. Louis University’’s Institute for Private Business Seminar Series. His talk, Empowering a Culture of Creativity, explains how we use our company culture and the values we’ve developed to drive innovation. It’s also a solid primer on the underlying philosophy, structure and approach we have here – a Big Spaceship 101.

The last slide sums it up nicely:

How to Empower Creativity

- Define your purpose

- Agree on your values

- Develop a culture that rewards sharing and collaboration

- Allow everything to be questioned

- Embrace frameworks over processes

- Create an environment that’s open and empowering

- Look for efficiency only where it’s needed

- Let people explore and discover – encourage tinkering

- Don’t penalize well thought out decisions that don’t work

- Don’t confuse creativity with art

Also, in case you’re curious about the sound of a world sans collaboration (slide 39) – go here.