Gregg Fraley

There’s a new wave of poker madness about to start.  I’m not talking Texas Hold-em.  I’m talking about Stephen M. Shapiro’s new book, Personality Poker, the playing card tool for driving high performance teamwork and innovation. Personality Poker is being released on Thursday, October 28th, 2010. This book is innovative in several ways.  First, it’s a truly novel way to assess yourself, teams, and companies. The built in assessment reveals your personality preferences, but perhaps more importantly, it’s been designed to tell how your traits fit into the innovation process. Second, it’s not just a book, it’s also a deck of cards, a card game, which comes packaged with the book.  I’ve never seen this kind of packaging done before

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If you are interested in Creativity, but have avoided creativity conferences, I have an idea for you — go on the first ever Creativity Cruise. Most creativity conferences are held at hotels, and in a way, this is where the problems start. I’ve already said too much in my blog about the why’s and why not’s of Creativity Conferences, but one I didn’t mention in the Not column is the plastic, antiseptic, and expensive aspect of hotel locations. With the exception of Toronto’s MindCamp, nearly all the conferences are hotel-based. Eileen Doyle and Bruce Baum — two noted creativity practitioners — have decided to change all that, with the Creativity Cruise. Before I go into the details I’ll simply say

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I am often asked about how improv can be used in Idea Generation. I’m asked because I’ve done improv in Chicago at the schools there (IO and Players Workshop of Second City) and I do Idea Generation as a business.  While I’m not a serious candidate for Whose Line Is It Anyway, I have learned, and integrated, the basics into how I think. As for Idea Generation/Brainstorming/Corporate Problem Solving it’s practically all I do these days, so, I’d likely make that All Star team. Call me the spitballer who mixes pitches like structured problem solving — that’s my fastball, and improvisation — that’s my curve. Let me state it simply:  You can adapt classic comedy improvisation games to help solve

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You meet some interesting people using Twitter. Going back a couple years now I ran across a guy named Mark Dykeman (@MarkDykeman).  More accurately, he found me, and was kind enough to review Jack’s Notebook.  In any event, it’s clear we have similar interests.  I’m always keen to hear his unique perspective related to creativity and keep an eye on his Thoughtwrestling blog.  I was delighted to hear he’s just completed a new e-book about Mind Mapping titled: “Unstuck, Focused, Organized, using Mind Mapping.” The short version of this review is simply, if you are disorganized, either generally, or in some area of your life, this is a highly useful, amazingly practical, heaping helping of fast acting self-help. The book

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Traipsing through O’Hare Airport a couple weeks ago, killing time, made the fatal error of stopping by Brookstone’s shop.  They always have cool stuff. I’d heard of the electronic pen concept from a friend a couple years ago and had made a mental note then to get one. Of course, it fell off my radar screen (never saw it on a shelf anywhere…) and I never got around to it.  I saw one, and was compelled to take the plunge.  I’m really glad I did, this Echo “smartpen” from Livescribe, is possibly the most useful tool for personal creativity I’ve ever bought.  Now, I love my iPhone, and, am sure to buy an iPad soon, but honestly, I see the

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Alright, maybe it’s not that different, but I swear, Jimmy Fallon is pulling out all the stops to innovate and entertain on his late night show.  Let’s face it, being a big late night star is a high risk business, witness Conan O’Brien’s crash and burn — and Conan was funny!  Fallon is an SNL grad with a couple of interesting movies under his belt (my favorite being Fever Pitch). I’d seen Late Night just after he’d started the gig (March 2009), and at the time, to me, he was trying a bit too hard.  Accidently revisited these last few weeks, and things have changed, Fallon’s at the top of his game. On the one hand, he’s doing some old

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This is part two in a series of posts about the Three Oaks Creativity Weekend. I’ve titled this series of posts “Letting Go” because that was the theme that emerged. Generally meetings, events, or conferences decide on a theme and then orchestrate events around it; we did the opposite.  Since it was Not a Conference, we decided to let the group create the theme. We talked about it early on, listed a few options, then it popped up spontaneously through the weekend. Letting Go was mentioned many times, but we could easily have called the weekend, the Sound of Music. At several points, once during an improv session, the group burst into “the Hills are Alive,” and when our campers

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My wife Caroline and I hosted a private gathering last weekend, specifically to do sharing around the concept of creativity.  It was not a conference.  Only 20 people attended, and that was intentional. I’m going to post a few times about this unique “creativity weekend” so let me give you a bit  of background to start. The original impulse to host a 4 day creativity event was simply to reconnect with a number of creative people, who are also friends. When I say “creative people” I mean people with a specific interest in the topic — not just people who Are Creative. Those attending all had some connection to applied creativity, innovation, facilitation, self-expression, and the arts. The invite list

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This weekend I’m hosting a group of friends here in Three Oaks.  It’s an interesting group and I’m looking forward to a lot of “new” input. I know that by Monday I’ll have a list of new books to read, new ideas to develop, and newly refreshed friendships.  This is all good! A lot of the focus in innovation facilitation is on tools and techniques to generate new ideas.  This makes sense, after all innovation is about new things, and the tools are helpful in having you think differently. Still, one must know something in the first place. New ideas are rarely “green field”, they are usually a build on a previous idea, or a combination of old things or

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There is quite a bandwagon rolling right now about Creativity. 5 years ago it seemed that Creativity was a bad word. You could never say it aloud at a corporation because what it meant wasn’t new ideas, it was interpreted as “lack of control” or, even worse, those touchy-feely things that have nothing to do with business. Alright, you could say the word, IF, you coupled it with “…and Innovation.” This is still something you nearly always have to do. When you think about it, it’s kind of silly. Creativity is a bigger concept than innovation, in fact, innovation is a subset. So, saying Creativity AND Innovation is a bit like say, I like Music AND Raggae. Now, every few

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