As another recession is getting started and the USA watches more manufacturing go overseas one wonders when we’ll do something to get off our bums and be more competitive and retain jobs. Well, somebody is at least thinking about it. A think tank issued a press release today recommending that a National Innovation Foundation should be created, and funded, in order to help the USA compete and drive growth. See the release here: www.mercurynews.com/politics/ci_9023834 I’m glad that the ITIF (see www.itif.org) came out with this suggestion, although it strikes me as a bit obvious. One wonders why this wasn’t done 15 years ago. The Bush administration, in it’s infinite wisdom on support of small business, is trying to eliminate the

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If you want to read a wonderfully tasty, short, and elegant piece of creative fiction, go immediately to Amazon and order Stewart O’Nan’s “Last Night at the Lobster.” About every five years or so I read something so well done, so heart felt, that I can’t put it down. This is it, I only wish it had gone on another 100 pages, it totals about 145. Sometimes the best things are fundamental, and this book proves it. A simple premise — a restaurant manager walks through his last day at the Red Lobster, a place he manages with passion and grace. Corporate is closing him down and the book is infused with melancholy, and yet, it’s hopeful as well. The

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A brief post to honor and celebrate the life of the late, great, and highly creative, Sir Arthur C. Clarke.  Clarke died yesterday, March 19, 2008 at the age of 90.   He is best known for his science fiction writing, specifically the short story, The Sentinel, that led to the seminal film “2001:A Space Odyssey.” It is not widely known that Clarke was something of an inventor/technologist having articulated the idea that geostationary satellites would be ideal telecommunications relays — in 1945. To say that this was a good idea — as it lead to them actually being used in that fashion and also set up the conduit used by cable television services like HBO to distribute content all over

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Just watched another episode of Gordon Ramsay’s television show, Kitchen Nightmares. It’s a show where celebrity chef Gordon visits a restaurant in trouble and puts things in order. I get a huge kick out of this show! It’s entertaining, and, a real example of creative problem solving. For those who are unfamiliar with Gordon, he’s quite a character. A huge success as a restaurateur in the UK, he was once a promising soccer (football) player whose career ended early due to injuries. After years of kitchen dues paying he became a great chef. It’s quite a story. He’s quite blunt at times, and uses bad language frequently. I suspect he’s accentuating these traits at times to make the show more

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Roving reporter hat on, I sit in a brilliant white bathrobe in the King Copthorne hotel in Singapore, up early, filing this missive about the ACA International Conference 2008, themed Creativity Across Cultures, “Sowing the Creative Seed”. Imagine those newsroom sounds…do do do do…. ACA is the American Creativity Association and you might wonder why an American group is having their annual meeting here in this red dot of an island nation at the tip of the Malaysia peninsula. Until this event, Austin, Texas was their meeting place of choice. The simple answer is they made a gutsy decision to be truly international, and they are aided and abetted in that effort by Singapore Management University (SMU). After 19 years

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Just returned from a long weekend in Barcelona. To say that I was blown away by the audacious innovation exhibited there would be an understatement. Specifically, I’m referring to the Gaudi architecture, although the whole city is bursting with beauty. Of course I’d heard of Gaudi before the trip and seen pictures in books and such, but seeing the real thing was an eye opener. His unfinished masterpiece the Sacrada Familia church is breathtaking. Impressive also is the vision of the city to continue building something that won’t be finished until 2030. Travel is one of those not-so-secret keys to enhanced creativity isn’t it? You learn to see with new eyes as a result. Gaudi’s work is deeply inspirational and

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I’ve always struggled with labeling what I do “creativity” although even with my corporate customers it most certainly is creativity. I struggle because I know that many people will immediately dismiss creativity expertise as something that is touchy-feely (or “airy fairy” if you live in the great white north, that is, Canada). People who have looked into it know that creativity is more than just self-expression, and know that it also is problem solving and decision making. My simple mantra is: you can’t have innovation without creative thinking! Creativity to many managers, unfortunately, means “loss of control” and is therefore not a desirable thing. The term “deliberate creativity” is better because it implies some control, some structure, but it sort

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I know a lot of professional creative people, that is, creativity and innovation practitioners, artists, facilitators, consultants, and marketing types. I’ve noticed something I want to comment on and I suspect this will be controversial. What I want to comment on is a lack of integrity among some creative professionals. By integrity I mean simply someone who does what they say they will do. Creative people sometimes get a pass on being reliable. The excuse that is made for them is that they “flaked out” or they were “keeping their options open,” or simply made another choice. Making another choice or changing your mind is excusable, and sometimes a creative act in and of itself. On the other hand, there

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Recession fears continue to dominate the headlines. I was somewhat heartened to read some recent research in the Harvard Business Review from the eminent innovation scholar Clayton Christensen (and colleagues Stephen P Kaufman and Willy Shih). It doesn’t hurt that he has that Harvard glow does it? Give these guys credit, they have articulated something especially important in these uncertain times. Essentially Christensen and colleagues looked at three classic financial evaluation tools to see if they hinder or assist companies in innovation (for more detail go to the actual article http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu, do a search on Christensen and you’ll find the article Innovation Killers: How Financial Tools Destroy Your Capacity to Do New Things). For many of us these tools are

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A new year is here and with it probably a recession. News of earlier this week — the unemployment rate in the USA is already rising. Let’s not be gloomy, let’s get creative and think of new solutions to our job hunting challenges. I’m going to list seven new ideas below (for 23 more look at my post of last July!) but before you go to my ideas, understand that the power is when you generate your own. Yes, you are creative, and yes, you can have some great ideas to solve your job finding challenges. Get a notebook just for this purpose. Start listing ideas, thoughts, wishes, facts, feelings, and action steps. If you want to know more about

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