The Brainzooming Group

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:

• “Culture is properly described as the love of perfection.”
• “For the creation of a masterwork of literature two powers must concur, the power of the man and the power of the moment, and the man is not enough without the moment.”
• “Use your gifts faithfully, and they shall be enlarged; practice what you know, and you shall attain to higher knowledge.”
• “The freethinking of one age is the common sense of the next.”
• “Greatness is a spiritual condition.”
• “To have the sense of creative activity is the great happiness and the great proof of being alive.”

Hope you enjoyed Creative Quickie Week, and watch for weekend updates on Twitter!

Mike Brown

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.

More Posts - Website

Follow Me:

Continue Reading

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.

Mike Brown

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.

More Posts - Website

Follow Me:

Continue Reading

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:

• How does the random idea fit with my situation?
• How is my situation like the random idea?
• If my situation and the random idea collided with each other, what would happen?

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:

• Innovation = Shattering the status quo into a million pieces that reform into something much better and more beneficial.
• Innovation = ((thinking randomly + borrowing liberally) / implementing successfully) * persistence * time
• Innovation = The ability of @Macker to create scads of “innovation” definitions.
• Innovation = The magic of imagining, implementing, & improving upon what’s been done before to benefit others.
• Innovation = A fundamental, valuable improvement relative to the status quo.
• Innovation = Taking NO, not for an answer, but for the inspiration to bring something beautifully new and wonderful to life.

Be sure to vote for one of mine, but only if you think it really deserves it!

Mike Brown

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.

More Posts - Website

Follow Me:

Continue Reading

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!

Mike Brown

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.

More Posts - Website

Follow Me:

Continue Reading

Create an inspiration space where you work with images, objects, and any other paraphernalia that trigger fun, innovative, and/or spiritual thoughts for you and others with whom you work.

The form or structure of it doesn’t matter. What matters is whether it truly inspires new ideas and possibilities in you and those around you!

How about this? Email photos of your personal inspiration space and why it inspires you to mike@mikebrownspeaks.com, and we’ll share them here.

That includes you, Jan H., Jan L., Seth, and Chris, or I’ll just come by and take the pictures myself!

Mike Brown

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.

More Posts - Website

Follow Me:

Continue Reading

Mike Brown

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.

More Posts - Website

Follow Me:

Continue Reading

Here’s a great opportunity to share your definition of “innovation” on Twitter with @stonepayton. Stone is running a contest through mid-week to provide one or more definitions of “innovation” via Twitter. That means that your definition has to be 140 charcters or less.

The total prize money is up to $1000 (based on the number of submissions) along with a whole bunch of publicity about how you are an innovation savant!

My first entry was “Innovation = A fundamental, valuable improvement relative to the status quo.”

You can get full information on the contest (IDEF140) here.

When submitting your entry, include @mikebrown in the entry to let Stone know you learned about the contest here.

Let’s turn out big with lots of definitions!

Mike Brown

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.

More Posts - Website

Follow Me:

Continue Reading