Russ Schoen

Thought is cause: experience is effect. If you don’t like the effects in your life, you have to change the nature of your thinking.

– Mariannne Williamson

What can you learn from a square watermelon? Click on the link below to read about a unique way to meet a market need, a customer
focused approach and thinking outside and inside the box LITERALLY!
 

CLICK HERE TO READ THE STORY ABOUT THE SQUARE WATERMELON AND LESSONS YOU CAN TAKE AWAY

Thanks to Jonathan Vehar of www.newandimproved.com for sharing this story with me. Enjoy!
 

This interesting tidbit of news comes from the website www.dailygood.org. Click here to subscribe.

Enjoy…


Good News of the Day:
How friendly are you with your co-workers? Although close relationships at work are sometimes discouraged, it turns out that employees who are friendly with each other are better able to cope with office stress. Researchers have long known that work stress can take a heavy toll on health. Studies have shown that stress at work increases the risk for depression, heart attack and other health worries. But now a new report shows that the solution to work stress may be found in the cubicle next door. Employees who feel social support at work are far less likely to suffer serious depression problems, according to a study published in the American Journal of Public Health. http://www.dailygood.org/more.php?n=3239

 

A special thanks to Bob Eckert of www.NewandImproved.com for passing it along!

Happy June. Here is a little statistic from Dr. John Gottman and the world of love research that I found interesting and hope you do to. Enjoy and have fun putting the insight into practice!

If this finds you in the Buffalo, Niagara region, please check out  the creativity and innovation management conference hosted by the Center for Studies in creativity. I will post updates next week… to learn about the conference, click here!

Check out this video which is a reprise of an 11 minute lecture given by a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. The original youtube video was downloaded more than 1 million times. There are so many life lessons delivered in such an authentic and inspiring way… Please view and share!

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE VIDEO

This was sent to me last week by a friend. She said she saw it on a blog (Click here to see the blog) and though you may have heard it before, it is good stuff and worth remembering. Enjoy and thank you to the original author!!!!

"One thing I always like to ask folks who seems really stressed out about this or that is will what you are doing now going to really matter in a year from now? What is it that you do were this time last year that had you worried or stressed, and does that same event matter you now? Most of what we deal with in life is generally the small stuff and at the end of the day, there is no real reason to sweat the small stuff.

Here is something I got from my parents that I thought I would share with you all. As a person’s whose professional career just got back on track after a few years without clear direction, it is always important to remember to take a few moments, or more, to remember the things that are really important in life:

When things in your life seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and the 2 glasses of wine theory…

A professor stood before his philosophy class with some items on his desk in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous "YES."

The professor then produced two glasses of wine from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

"Now," said the professor, as the laughter subsided, "I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life.

The golf balls are the important things; your family, your children, your health, your friends,and your favorite passions; things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.

The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house,and your car.

The sand is everything else; the small stuff. If you put the sand into the jar first", he continued, "there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life.

If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the good things that are important to you. Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your partner out to dinner. Play another 18 holes. Do one more rundown the ski slope. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first; the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand."

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the wine represented. The professor smiled. "I’m glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple of glasses of wine with a friend."

Share this with someone you care about… I just did"

Well, I ran across this list on another website (and I can’t remember which one - but thank you for putting this together!) Anyway, here is a list of a number of upcoming creativity conferences. I definitely will be at Crea and Cpsi and a few others…. Check them out and see what you think…

February 25-29 - ACA’S 2008 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE Creativity Across Cultures, in Singapore http://amcreativityassoc.org/index1.htm

March 6-8 - Alden B. Dow Creativity Center 19th Annual International Creativity Conferenc, 2008 - Northwood University Campus, Midland, Michigan http://www.northwood.edu/abd/creativityconference/

March 7-9 - Florida Creativity Weekend V 2008 Sarasota, Florida http://www.flcreativity.com/

April 16-20 - CREA 2008 Creativity European Association - Sestri Levante, Italy http://www.creaconference.com/

April 21, 2008 Creativity & Innovation Day, Worldwide www.creativityday.org.

April 21-23 - 6a Conferencia Iberoamericana de Creatividad e Innovaci—n 2008, in Mexico. http://6aconferencia.path-leadership.org/index.html.

May 15-18 - Mindcamp Atlanta 2008 The center for Business Innovation and Creativity first annual conference on Innovation and Creativity in business and education At the KSU center at Kennesaw State University hvardis@kennesaw.edu.

May 19-21 - The Front End of Innovation 2008 at the Boston World Trade Center & Seaport Hotel. www.iirusa.com/frontend/14544.xml.

May 28-30 - 2nd Creativity and Innovation Management Community Meeting - Buffalo State College http://buffalostate.edu/creativity/CIM2008.xml.

June 15-18 - 2008 ISPIM Conference - Open Innovation: Creating Products and Services through Collaboration in Tours (Loire Valley), France www.ispim.org/conference/index.html.

June 20-22 - 52nd International Humor Program on “The Positive Power of Humor and Creativity.” www.humorproject.com.

June 22-27 - the 54th annual Creative Problem Solving Institute will be held at Callaway Gardens, Pine Mountain, GA from Contact the Creative Education Foundation http://www.cpsiconference.com/splash.html

July 3-4 - 8th International Creativity Conference: UK Creativity Jamboree at the UNESCO historical maritime campus of the University of Greenwich http://www.gre.ac.uk/__data/assets/file/0003/94701/8thInternationalCreativityConferenceFlierweb.pdf.

September 9-12 - Fourth Art of Management and Organization Conference Banff, Canada, www.essex.ac.uk/afm/emc/streams_banff.htm.

Sept 11-14, 2008 Mindcamp Creativity Weekend, Toronto http://www.thinkxic.com/mindcamp/weekend.php

September 25-27 - The Idea Festival, in Louisville, Kentucky www.ideafestival.com.

October - The Next Idea Creativity Conference 2008 creativityinstitute@juno.com

October - 14th Annual International Creativity Conference 2008 in Africa http://www.sacreativity.com

October - The European Association for Creativity and Innovation (E.A.C.I.) http://www.eaci.net/

October 17-19 - International Congress of Creativity and Innovation 2008 in LoulŽ, Portugal. www.apgico.pt/congress.htm

October 27-28, 2008 Sustainable Innovation 08 - in Malmo, Sweden www.designophy.com/article.php?id=1185.

Happy mid-February! After a bit of a blogging sabbatical, I am back with a book recommendation that I believe will help kick-start the rest of your 2008.

Before I get to the recommendation, I want to share a quote that jumped out at me today.

"The most serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers. The truly dangerous thing is asking the wrong question." - Peter Drucker

And with that, the question I pose to you to start your week is this: What are the most important things for you to focus on in 2008? To help you think through and reflect on this question, I recommend the following book that I have used the last 3 years.

   Your Best Year Yet, is a simple practical down to earth guide, that will act as a facilitator for you.  I think it is good stuff and hope you find it useful…

From today forward, I will be updating this blog once a week! Let me know what you think.

Got some reading time coming up? Here is my first annual top 3 book recommendations for you.. The two criteria I used for this selection were very rigorous:)

1) I READ the book in the calender year 2007

2) I thought very highly of it and thought you might be interested in it!

So, if you haven’t checked them out, do yourself a favor and pick them up.

The first is a book I picked up in an airport. It is an extraordinary read that may keep you up all night to finish it. Best fiction book I have read this year, called Water for Elephants.

Click the image to read more about it and check out the reviews.

 

 

The next two books I think really tap into what it means to be creative and the courage it takes! Very inspiring! Both of them.

For those who have wonderlust and haven’t yet read this (and this one has gotten lots of press lately and all of it in my opinion well deserved) is the phenomenal, Eat, Pray, Love!

 

 

 

And for those of you wondering, how can you make more of a positive impact in the world, Check out this book! (It is so good that this is the second time I’ve referred to it this year!)
That’s right. Leaving Microsoft to Change the World!

 

 

 

 

 

Got your own recommendations? Please post them here and Happy Holidays! 

 

 

I am very pleased to announce the start of my latest venture Creativity4aCause! Creativity4aCause’s mission is simple: to use the power of creativity to make a difference for children by using raised funds to help build schools. I am excited to announce that our first project is now underway raising money for Room to Read! I, along with two of my friends, Janet Friedman and Linda McGivern have taken on the challenge to raise $15,000 by January 1, 2008 to build a permanent school in Nepal which will be build in 2008!

Why? About a month ago, I had the opportunity to meet John Wood, the founder of Room to Read, and I was totally blown away by this guy’s commitment to results in terms of building schools and libraries in third world countries that are SUSTAINABLE. John has a book out that details his journey from the world of Microsoft to the world of non-profit called Leaving Microsoft to Change the World. It’s a phenomenal book and worth a read. Give yourself that gift!

 
You can also check out a video on their work at frontline here.

We plan on visiting the school at its groundbreaking ceremony in Nepal in 2008!

Want to help with the cause??? I hope so. You can do so by clicking here!

And if you donate at least $50 by November 15th, I’ll send you a powerpoint with 197 quotes on leadership, creativity and innovation as a thank you gift! This .ppt is already set up to go to use as a slideshow for meetings, presentations etc!

Creativity4aCause! is also excited to announce that coming soon will be creative thinking and innovation tip sheets for sale which profits going towards Charity.. how fun is that????!!!   

 

A friend of mine had mentioned Sir Ken Robinson and his take on creativity and education a few weeks ago. Well, I finally watched it this week and I was blown away in a good way. Ken’s take is that  we need to not only rethink how children are educated, but that creativity needs to be made a priority in schooling if we are to equip students to be prepared for the future. I couldn’t agree more. I found the following clip not only informative, but also very entertaining. I invite you to check out Sir Ken Robinson’s talk at the TED conference here!!!  It’s just over 19 min long and in my opinion worth every minute! Please let me know what you think.
 

During the last few months, I have come across two amazing websites that I invite you to check out! 

Are you looking to raise some money for a good cause? Then check out the website firstgiving. This website allows you to set up your very own fundraising webpage that you can email out to friends, family, colleagues (ect!). It is so simple to use, it took me about 5 whole minutes to set up my first ever donation page this summer for the creative youth leadership program. And within a month, of setting up the site, I had reached my fundraising goal!

Do you have some extra money that you are looking to do something with a worldwide impact? Why not become a mini microfinancier and help someone start a business? If you haven’t heard about it yet, then go check out the kiva website and learn how just a few dollars can really help someone improve his/her life! Its a phenomenal website and cause! 

I hope you take a few minutes to check out these sites and forward them onto others you think might be interested!  

What’s one of the biggest barriers to innovation? The way new ideas are treated! Typically, the more novel an idea is, the more likely it is rejected right away. In order for creative ideas to succeed, they need time to be nurtured and developed! So, how might you develop and strengthen a new idea?

For close to a decade, I have been working with individuals, teams, and organizations to support and nurture creative thinking. One of the
most powerful tools for encouraging creative thinking in yourself and others is a very simple tool known as Praise First: POINT!

Use the tool known as Praise First POINT to deliberately evaluate new ideas and watch creative thinking thrive!

POINT stands for Pluses, Opportunities, Issues and New Thinking. Here’s how it works.

When presented with an idea: First start with Praise!

1) Pluses - List at least three things that are good about the idea as the idea stands now.

2) Opportunities – List at least three future benefits that might occur if this idea was pursued. For example, it might lead to more jobs.
Use the statement starter, "It might"  to help you generate opportunities

It might…

It might…

It might…

3) Issues – what concerns or issues do you have with this idea? List your key issues or concerns and phrase your issues as open-ended questions starting with how might?

For example, if one of your issues is we don’t have the funding, you might phrase it as How might we obtain funding?

How might…

How might…

4) New thinking: For each of your key issues, brainstorm ways to overcome the issue. For example, use new thinking to overcome the issue, How might we obtain funding? What ideas do you have?

The next time you are presented with a new idea or you have a new idea yourself, use POINT and see what happens!

A great question, and the opening line from David Vail’s (Geek Squad agent) latest blog entry on this past week’s Geek Squad’s
Do Tanks at the idea festival in Louisville, Kentucky. David and his fellow agents, idea festival attendees, and contest winners got to
experience a high paced, professionally facilitated interactive innovation session! As David puts it in his blog, "The energy, the excitement was infectious. And it was work."

Why was it work? Because many of us aren’t used to being deliberate in thinking up ideas. But doing so can not only be energizing it can lead to new insights as well.

So what does a rubber chicken have to do with a cell-phone? Well, one of the creative thinking tools we used during the session is called forced connections and here is how it works.

1) Pick a stimulus that is unrelated to the challenge you are working on. In this case, we picked a rubber chicken.

2) List attributes/characteristics of that stimulus.  In the case of a rubber chicken, some attributes/characteristics that might be listed include: yellow, flexible, silly, fun, hungry, stretchy, colorful

3) Pick one attribute/characteristic and use it to force new ideas to the challenge you are working on. Don’t judge the ideas, just list them! In the case of this session, we were working on how to improve upon the idea of a bio-degradable cell phone.

So for example, picking the characteristic of flexible might lead to the idea of having part of the cell phone be degradable (the casing), or being able to crunch up the phone into fertilizer. Picking the characteristic of hungry might lead me to think of food, which leads me to think about a line of biodegradable phones that would be made specifically to biodegrade for gardens ~ Use your phone to grow new food! Or the characteristic of silly, might lead to a line of environmentally friendly phones that educates children about recycling and has a special button (gps) that can tell you the nearest recycling place to your current location!  I could go on and on! But I won’t ~ Instead I’ll invite you to try out forced connections for yourself.

Here’s how:

First state a challenge that you want some ideas on ~ For example, how might you raise funds? or how might you attract new customers?

Now, pick an object unrelated to that challenge.

List some characteristics of that object.

Finally pick a characteristic and use that characteristic to inspire new ideas for solving your challenge!

Challenging? It just might be work at first. But practice this technique and you will be guaranteed to generate some novel ideas!