Here’s another opportunity to define innovation at Jon Burg’s Future Visions blog. According to Jon, “The goal of this project is as follows: To create a crowdsourced definition of innovation.” Click here to go to the original post and be part of his ebook “Innovation in 2009.”
Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.
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Exploring Twitter has been part of early changes in my 2009 online strategy. Getting exposed to interesting ideas has been one of the advantages so far. Here’s a re-presentation of quotes and links that reflect Brainzooming-oriented perspectives.
Get your clicking finger ready and head off to the web to see as many of these interesting points and people as you’d like. Have fun, and follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/mikebrown!
THOUGHTS & QUOTES FROM OTHERS
THOUGHTS & QUOTES FROM ME
SURF’S UP – LINKS WORTH FOLLOWING
Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.
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I’m a contemplator and planner by nature, trying to figure out all potential angles first. It’s who I am.
When starting the blog, however, Kathryn Lorenzen, a wonderful career coach (trust me – contact her), suggested diving in more aggressively before understanding everything about blogging. Great advice, and much of Brainzooming is about approaches to do that more.
One way I’ve become comfortable with the idea is being more open to noticing and following “hints” placed in front of me and acting on them.
An example last week was participating in the Twitter-based IDEF140 contest devised by Stone Payton. The week was full of “hints”:
Follow that Tweet – @stonepayton tweeted Saturday, January 17 on a contest to define “innovation” in less than 140 characters with a $100 prize. Sounded cool, so I wrote one (Innovation = A fundamental, valuable improvement relative to the status quo) and tweeted it Saturday, thinking that was it.
Reach Out – I considered lifting the contest idea since $100 is cheap for diverse input on Twitter to help expand understanding on a topic (i.e. “creative instigation”). That was until Stone raised the potential prize to $1000. Suddenly stealing the cheap idea involved a higher prize expectation. After tweeting Stone (jokingly) about pricing “idea thieves” out of the market, it created a tweet and email conversation about alternatives. That led to visiting each others’ blogs, LinkedIn networking, and finding Chuck Dymer as a common connection.
Keeping Up with @Macker – Throughout the week, definitions were added to IDEF140 (as it became known). @Macker seemed to have an unlimited number of definitions. Seeing that forced me to write others, including a more mathematically oriented one and another (my personal favorite) tied to “Taking the NO Out of InNOvation.”
Mounting a Campaign – When voting started Thursday, I wasn’t planning much campaigning. Then two hints surfaced – Sally Hogshead voted for entry #2, and the organizers said a modest get out of the vote campaign could mean a win. That prompted a more aggressive Twitter, blog, and email effort (including a cut and paste tweet) for votes. My dad and Jan Harness signed up for Twitter and some infrequent tweeters returned to Twitter!
What Matters Is Helping Others – Trying to win wasn’t about the eventual $200 prize. It was about learning of possibilities from new online endeavors. After discovering I won (thanks everybody that voted!), I saw Stone supports the Furniture Bank of Metro Atlanta which helps recently homeless people and others in challenging situations secure basic furniture items (i.e., bedding, sofa, etc.). That seemed like a lot more appropriate recipient for the prize money, so it went to @FBMA.
That was last week. Diving in and following hints led to “meeting” intriguing people, challenging myself to think more about innovation, introducing friends to social media, identifying a potential opportunity to work with Sally Hogshead, and helping people financially who really need it!
Thanks for the “diving in” advice Kathryn. As always, it’s been a huge help!!!
Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.
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The first quote below from Matthew Arnold was on a cardboard coaster in my hotel room in Cancun, Mexico last year. It was intriguing, and I brought it back. Doing some quick research on him, uncovered a variety of intriguing quotes of his:
Hope you enjoyed Creative Quickie Week, and watch for weekend updates on Twitter!
Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.
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I reported earlier this week on a Twitter-based contest to define the word “innovation” in 140 characters or less (i.e. the maximum length for a message on Twitter). Over the course of the week, there are several definitions I’ve supplied and now it’s time to vote on your favorites by noon EST on Friday, January 23.
Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.
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Random inputs provide a great way to trigger creative thinking. But if you’re really stuck, coming up with rich random inputs may even be challenging. Arghhhhhh!
If you’re there, go to “Writer’s Window,” a website that generates random ideas to incorporate into stories, drawings, presentations or any other creative endeavor staring you in the face! Use the random idea provided, asking questions such as:
The combinations created should get you going in an exciting, new creative direction!
SPECIAL NOTE -Starting at Noon on 1/22/2009, you can begin voting for your favorite “innovation” definition under 140 characters long, by clicking here. I submitted these 6 possibilities:
Be sure to vote for one of mine, but only if you think it really deserves it!
Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.
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Lori Schade forwarded a cool site from the Art Institute of Vancouver with a quick test to see whether you are predominantly a left (analytical, objective, quantitative) or right (perceptive, subjective, qualitative) brain thinker.
Take the test, identify your thinking strengths and weaknesses, and devise your strategy for being a whole-brain thinker, i.e. drawing on multiple, diverse thinking perspectives to address a thinking challenge.
Some people are blessed with the ability to be whole brain thinkers on their own. For the rest of us, the best strategy comes down to surrounding ourselves with people who think in different ways than we do to challenge and expand our thinking. Get started building your whole brain thinking team today!
Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.
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