A Visual Dialogue created by workshop participants Creativity at Work Newsletter Winter 2011 Over the past year I have been invited by some of the largest and most successful companies in the world to introduce the arts as a catalyst for developing creativity, leadership and innovation within the organization. I’ve been working within specific business [...]
Tagged as:
aesthetics,
arts-based learning,
creativity. innovation
My favourite stories about innovation are of the grass roots variety. Here is an inspiring approach from India. Jugaad is a Hindi word that loosely translates as “the gutsy art of overcoming harsh constraints by improvising an effective solution using limited resources.” Jugaad is an antidote to the complexity of India: a country of mind-blogging [...]
Tagged as:
alchemy,
grass roots innovation,
Innovation,
jugaad
New York City has come up with a creative way to promote safety on the streets via arts-based learning: By rewriting traditional street-sign warnings in haiku form, New York City is using poetry to urge motorists, cyclists, and pedestrians to think about safety. (See one of the 200 new signs below.) City Transportation Commissioner Janette [...]
Tagged as:
arts-based learning,
haiku,
New York,
poetry
It’s the same story every year. Canada’s performance in productivity and innovation remains poor. Eugene Lang and Diana Carney in a Globe and Mail article published today, say “Successive governments have attempted to tackle the issue, yet progress is as elusive as ever.” I suspect it’s because much of the focus in the past has [...]
Tagged as:
Canada,
Innovation,
productivity
Discover ways to make peace with left-brain logic and right-brain imagination, by taking a whole-brain approach to creativity. Learn how to create synergy between imagination, emotion, data and analysis, to produce optimal innovative results. Only a few days left to register for Whole Brain thinking. This is my most requested workshop worldwide. Whole Brain Thinking: Cultivate [...]
Tagged as:
creative process,
Creativity and Innovation,
critical thinking,
innovation technique,
leadership development,
management education,
Royal Roads University,
training,
Victoria BC,
whole-brain thinking
Here are some terrific examples of connecting diverse stimuli to generate new ideas: Excerpted from “Creative Thinkering: Putting Your Imagination to Work” by Michael Michalko, New World Library, 2011. The human brain cannot deliberately concentrate on two separate objects or ideas, no matter how dissimilar, no matter how remote, without eventually forming a connection between [...]
Tagged as:
BOOKS on Creativity and Innovation,
Creativity and Innovation,
idea-suggestion systems
I hope this doesn’t describe your workplace. If it does, here are some guidelines about Cultivating organizational creativity.
Cultivating organizational creativity in an age of complexity, is the newly released companion study to the IBM 2010 Global Chief Human Resource Officer Study, and I am pleased to be one of the 40 people selected by IBM as a creative leader, for this study. Here are some of the highlights: Why are some organizations [...]

Tagged as:
complexity,
Innovation,
organizational creativity