About the author

Michael Wienke is a marketer, strategist and writer obsessed with creativity and innovation. What keeps him up at night isn’t settling for the safe answer — it’s the pursuit of the next great idea, the kind that changes the way people think, work, or live.

That pursuit led him back to UMass Boston, where he dove into creativity, cognitive science, and organizational behavior. The research gave him language for what he’d already lived through in hundreds of brainstorms: the rush when a wild idea sparks and the crash when fear and routine smother it.

Michael’s spent his career igniting that spark of innovation across Fortune 500s, global brands, and fast-moving fintech scale-ups. The throughline? A restless need to push past safe thinking and find stories that surprise people. For him, creativity is as essential as oxygen. It’s part art, part science — a muscle you have to flex, or lose.