Creativity and innovation knows no boundaries of time or space.  Here are some of the greats we admire--from vastly different geography and times.

Perhaps the most enduring of the greats in history and the most universal in outlook and philosophy, is Lao Tze.  

Confucius, the other Chinese sage, whose sayings adorn the United Nations, was known to hold him in supreme regard.  Although Lao Tze lived more than 2000 years ago, his ideas are still relevant and powerful.

The state-of-the-art cyber cafe in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, for example, welcomes visitors with an inscription from Lao Tze.  His views on leadership, human nature, life and the universe are timeless and still guide the thoughts of leaders around the world.

"Nature is complete because it does not serve itself.  
The sage places himself after and finds himself before.
Ignores his desire and finds himself content.
He is complete because he does not serve himself.

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There are some who will not believe that the genius of Da Vinci (artist, sculptor, scientist, inventor, architect, anatomist, visionary, perhaps the smartest man of all time) found its early roots in a broken home, wherein he was born illegitimate, growing up with 17 half sisters and brothers, and handicapped socially by being a southpaw in an era where left-handedness was associated with the devil.

Unlike his "More fortunate peers, Leonardo didn't go to school, but spent most of his time in nature, until at 15, he was apprenticed to a painter's workshop.

Da Vinci exemplifies the ideal of whole brain thinking, by combining his visionary and imaginative right brain with his meticulous and observant left brain.  His work covers four themes: painting, architecture, mechanics, and human anatomy.  His ideas were often hundreds of years ahead of their time.

In the area of creativity and thinking, there is no individual who can serve as a better model.

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"There is no must in art, because art is free."

Shortly after saying this, Vasily Kandinsky, the Moscow-born painter took the bold plunge into abstract art.  In this one move, Kandinsky rose from the pack of his contemporary Russian artists, traditionalist to the core, who by and large rejected him and his new ideas.  He moved to France, where his ideas immediately attracted a following, and he found himself in the forefront of the international art scene--acclaimed as the first painter to experiment with "pure" abstraction.  Kandinsky made his canvases "sing" with an intensity that others could see and hear, and become catalysed into higher realms of thought.

Click here to view a montage inspired by Vasily Kandinsky.

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