The innovation age began in 1972; people born then have important innovation roles

In 1972, forty-one years ago, the Blue Marble, a famous photograph of the Earth was taken by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft, at a distance of about 45,000 kilometres (28,000 mi).º It was the first time we saw our planet from space. That same year Bhutan instituted  Gross National Happiness (GNH) and not Gross National Product (GNP) as a sign of well-being, an alternate view of what success means.

People born in that era appreciate opportunities to enliven new ideas, make new decisions and take new actions. Ones that engage people to support, sustain and enable life and vitality to flourish. Innovation is in their blood. World Creativity and Innovation Week April 15 – 21 can be used as a time to open the door for that expression and to act on visions, hopes and future dreams.

Watch this brief video for an insight into an innovation-era world view.  Have you others to share?

Marci Segal, MS.  Freeing leaders’ thinking so they can create new futures.

Marci Segal, MS, Creativity and Change Leadership, Freeing leaders’ thinking so they may create new futures.

Oh, Mabel Behave (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Every so often for a break I clean out files.  Here’s today’s find, a gem. Questions for people in helping roles to consider (adapted from Fundamentals of Counseling Shertzer and Stone, 1974 p.8).

What if these are questions are for creativity facilitators as well.  You think?  Should they be?

• Can I behave in some way which will be perceived by the other person as trustworthy, dependable, or consistent?
• Can I be expressive enough so that I will communicate unambiguously?
• Can I let myself experience positive attitudes towards the people I’m working with – warmth, caring, liking, interest and respect?
• Can I be strong enough as a person to be separate from the group and not own their content?
• Am I secure enough to permit others’ their unique identities and not try to force my will on them?
• Can I let myself enter fully into the world of the others’ feelings and personal meanings and see them as they do?
• Can I receive people as they are?  Can I communicate this attitude?
• Can I act with sufficient sensitivity in the relationship that my behaviour will not be perceived of as a threat?
• Can I free others from the threat of external evaluation?
• Can I meet this group or person as people who are in the process of creating something new and not be bound by their past and by my past?

Do you feel it’s important for creativity facilitators to ascribe to a code of behaviour? Just wondering…

Marci Segal, MS, Creativity and Change Leadership; Freeing leaders’ thinking so they can create new futures; Founder and Steward, World Creativity and Innovation Week April 15 – 21. Speaker, facilitator, author.  Executive team building, innovation programs.

Likely you are aware of my involvement with World Creativity and Innovation Week April 15-21, (WCIW) as its founder in 2001 and steward.  Each year around this time my attention goes 100% (and then some friends would say) to support the energy, and shake the bushes so that everyone on the planet feels they can lift themselves away from the future the past was leading us to, toward a new one.

World Creativity and Innovation Week April 15-21 is a focused time of year for people to celebrate their creativity, their ability to

• be open to and generate new ideas
• be open to and make new decisions
• be open to and take new actions

that make the world a better place and make their place in the world better too.

2013 WCIW Three New Things

Each WCIW I find at least three new things to do or think about, and in so doing, influence my future…

1. Prepared and presented my first Pecha Kucha at Toronto PechaKucha, the topic being World Creativity and Innovation Week April 15-21.
2. Attended the opening of an art show of never seen creations.
3. Made a new slow cooker recipe.

I hope you found new things too, new thoughts, ideas, decisions, actions… it would be great if you want to share…:-)

Feel Free

Feel free to look around  World Creativity and Innovation Week April 15-21 for examples of what others did all over the planet.  Pretty amazing stuff.  There’s more on our Facebook page and Facebook group.

Feel free to consider how you might leverage World Creativity and Innovation Week April 15-21, 2014, next year, to shift to a newer, brighter future.  We’ll be looking for volunteers – so let me know your interest.

Thanks to all who made this year a tremendous success!

Until the next…

Marci Segal, MS, Creativity and Change Leadership, Freeing leaders’ thinking so they can create new futures, founder and steward, World Creativity and Innovation Week April 15-21 (since 2001)

See on Scoop.it – Creativity and Learning Insights

Today, frog is pleased to release the Collective Action Toolkit (CAT).

See on designmind.frogdesign.com

Marci Segal, MS. Creativity and Change Leadership. Freeing leaders’ thinking so they can create new futures.

My table mates said they liked the PK’s because they are like mini-Ted Talks.

Wouldn’t it be nice if all presentations were made that way?  Boiled down to the essence, entertaining, engaging.  Conversation follows.  Simple.  Human.  Even in schools, what if students had to do their reports using PK’s?

Are you having a face to face meeting during World Creativity and Innovation Week April 15 – 21? Do you want to spark your creativity?  Use a Pecha Kucha format for your presentation.  Challenge others too.  You’ll be amazed at the energy and inspiration you’ll unleash.  

More info pechakucha.org

FYI I designed a leadership conference that had the CEO and VP’s use PK’s to present their subjects, then coached them to lead a variety of interactive exercises to invite and engage the delegates who flew in from all over the country.  Huge success.  People are still talking about it.  Totally believe in this stuff for meetings- interaction, concise and entertaining information sharing and laughter. Yup. Laughter is good, for a lot of reasons.  Want references?  Let me know.

Tchau

Marci Segal, MS, Creativity and Change Leadership. Freeing leaders’ thinking so they can create new futures.

There’s a good chance I’ll be presenting a PK at the Gladstone Hotel for World Creativity and Innovation Week on April 16.  Please join me! http://www.pechakucha.org/cities/toronto

365: 2012/07/25 – we become new (Photo credit: Foxtongue)

Thanks again to Women in Science and Engineering who invited me to present at their 2013 conference Imagine, Innovate, Inspire held at the University of Toronto this weekend.  My 90-minute interactive keynote: Language to Leverage Creativity: Prepare to Nuance your Networking was fashioned so participants would:

• learn something new that would help them get to know their creativity (so they could use it to support innovation)
• network with new people
• have fun.

Accomplished?  From the feedback:  yes, yes, and yes.

Keynote debrief

(After each experience I reflect on questions such as what surprises me, what’s great, what’s next, etc.)
For this keynote what surprises me is that these how to’s remain teachable.
How to:

• access imagination
• get new ideas easily
• receive others’ new thinking
• use specific questions that invite collaboration

It’s great to be reminded that people feel:

• relieved and encouraged knowing they don’t have to be creative to do creative things.
• inspired and supported using positive interacting skills that build on their strengths.

Think there’s room for this kind of behaviour in work scenarios?  Wouldn’t it be nice, eh?  How to, too.

Taking it further

Inspired by the group I was reminded of this poem. Even though one might think creativity is a magic wand, and people always appreciate it, it’s important to remember there’s effort involved and all does not necessarily fall gently, neatly and easily into place. It’s best to be ready for that moving forward.

By Marge Piercy

Marge Piercy, “For the young who want to” from Circles on the Water: Selected Poems of Marge Piercy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982). First appeared in Mother Jones V, no. 4 (May 1980). Copyright © 1980, 1982 by Marge Piercy and Middlemarsh, Inc. Used by permission of the Wallace Literary Agency, Inc.

Let me know if you’d like a keynote like this one to vitalize your next conference.

Creativity = New ideas, New decisions, New actions

©2013 Marci Segal, MS, Creativity and Change Leadership; Freeing leaders thinking so they can create new futures.

What if….

You used these questions, modified as needed, to interview idea candidates for your next great idea.  That’s right, pretend your short list of ideas are people.

What do you suppose would happen if you asked each idea the questions that follow?

What kind of responses might you get?

What might you learn to help you decide on the best option for now?

What new thinking might emerge, what new perspectives?

Wondering…Do you think doing this exercise of interviewing your ideas is a waste of time?

The Questions

If we’re sitting here a year from now celebrating what a great year it’s been for you in this role, what did we achieve together?

When have you been most satisfied in your life?

If you got hired, loved everything about this job, and are paid the salary you asked for, what kind of offer from another company would you consider?

Who is your role model, and why?

What things do you not like to do?

Tell me about a project or accomplishment that you consider to be the most significant in your career.

Tell me how…

What’s your superpower, or what’s your spirit animal?

Why have you had x amount of jobs in y years?

We’re constantly making things better, faster, smarter or less expensive. We leverage technology or improve processes. In other words, we strive to do more–with less. Tell me about a recent project or problem that you made better, faster, smarter, more efficient, or less expensive.

Discuss a specific accomplishment you’ve achieved in a previous position that indicates you will thrive in this position.

So, (insert name), what’s your story?

What questions do you have for me?

Tell us about a time when things didn’t go the way you wanted– like a promotion you wanted and didn’t get, or a project that didn’t turn out how you had hoped.

For full text see 14 Revealing Interview Questions by Jeff Haden in Inc.com in their Managing Process Innovation Tab.

Marci Segal, MS, Creativity and Change Leadership, Freeing leaders’ thinking so they can create new futures.

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In what ways might Viral Search impact your view the world and your place in it?

Knowing about and seeing Viral Search leads me to wonder what’s next, how will it influence innovation, behaviour and business moving forward.  Your guesses on how your business, start-up or personal activities might change as a result of viral search?

Insights into Imagination

‘Seeing’ what people are talking about sparks my imagination; it provides an entry-way into the conceptual/theoretical dimensions. Others have different pathways to entertain new ideas, new decisions and new actions, so to assume everyone’s path is the same is naive.

Marci Segal, MS, Creativity and Change Leadership; Freeing leaders’ thinking so they can create new futures.

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I’m reading The Future by Al Gore and am wowed by the synthesis of factors he presents and how they interact in ways we never imagined, nor experienced.  It provides fodder for using creativity thinking and creative problem solving in businesses, schools, communities and the home.  New ideas, new decisions, new actions.

The introduction, for example, is compelling for its revelations; how we view the past influences our attitude toward the future, is one. Different cultures perceive the past, hence the future, uniquely. Reconsider the past and a new future emerges. What we expect may happen may not.

Does what worked in the past work now?  Why are so many businesses transforming their business models? To what effect? We are living through these confusing experiences now. Here it is, from the man.

We need new thinking, today’s changes are converging like a perfect storm and people need resilience to stay afloat. This book is a paradigm cracker that can inspire action, training and support to enable desirable futures to emerge (instead of the opposite).

Below is Gore’s PBS interview about the book and great topline book review from newbooksinbrief dot com.

To check out this book on Amazon.ca or purchase it, please click here: The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change

Topline review of Al Gore’s The Future from newbooksinbrief dot com.

Our world is becoming increasingly integrated and complex, and changing faster and faster.

Out of the morass of elements involved, Al Gore identifies 6 themes or factors that are emerging as the major drivers of change. The factors are

1. Work: the movement of labor from West to East (outsourcing); and, at the same time, a shift towards much more automation (robosourcing);
2. Communications: the rise of the internet that has led to a wild proliferation of information, and the ability of the world’s population to instantly connect with one another for a host of purposes–and the increasing reach of the internet from the developed to the developing world
3. Power: the shifting of power from West to East; and, at the same time, the shifting of power from national governments to smaller players, such as businesses and corporations, but also rogue players, such as guerrilla and terror organizations
4. Demographics: the enormous increase in the world’s population, and the movement of peoples both within and across national borders (as the result of numerous factors)
5. Biotechnology: the increasing manipulation of DNA to produce not only new organisms with novel features, but new materials and fuels as wel
6. Climate Change: the increase in world temperatures caused by the continuing build-up of CO2, as well as the numerous other climate effects that this entails.

While several of these drivers of change have the potential to bring great benefits to the world’s people, all are fraught with potential dangers, and it is this that is Gore’s focus in the book. This, as well as Gore’s own advice as to how best to deal with the potential dangers.

When it comes to work, Gore argues that the major danger is that the increasing robosourcing of labour (and even services) threatens to deprive a large portion of the world’s population of gainful employment. The major solution is to increasingly redistribute wealth from the few who earn the bulk of wealth to public services provided by government.

When it comes to communications, the major threat is the vulnerability of people’s personal information (and organizations’ operational information) of being collected (or stolen) by numerous players (including corporations, governments and criminal organizations) and used for nefarious purposes. The major solution is to introduce new measures to ensure that information is protected, and people’s privacy preserved.

When it comes to power, the major danger is that the private interests of groups that are gaining power (especially multi-national corporations) will increasingly run up against the interests and values of private citizens. The major solution is to reform our democracies to ensure that the interests of corporations do not continue to outbalance the interests of citizens.

When it comes to demographics, the major danger is that the continuing rise in the world’s population will place an overbearing amount of stress on the world’s natural resources, and that this will ultimately lead to the depletion of said resources. The major solution is to continue efforts to curb global population, and to introduce efforts to reduce consumption to sustainable levels.

When it comes to biotechnology, the major danger is that the discoveries and innovations that are being made here are being introduced faster than we are able to consider their ethical implications and potential negative consequences. The major solution is to ensure that we subject these innovations to full inquiry and public debate, in order that we may decide deliberately just what we want to allow, and what we do not.

When it comes to climate change, the major danger is that the world will experience irreversible climate effects, and that these effects will compromise the world’s arable land and water sources to the point where we will not be able to meet our needs. The major solution is for the governments of the world to take action now to reduce CO2 emissions, by way of such measures as taxing CO2, and introducing a cap and trade system.

Gore’s book does contain a lot of very interesting information about the world today, and the forces that are guiding change. It should be noted, though, that Gore is very single-minded (unduly, I believe) in what he believes are the solutions to the world’s problems. They virtually always involve government interference and regulation. In other words, they are fully top-down. Gore gives very short shrift to the potential of bottom-up solutions (and is rather black and white in his thinking), which, I believe, is a major shortcoming of the book.

A full executive summary of this book is  available at newbooksinbrief dot com.

To check out this book on Amazon.ca or purchase it, please click here: The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change

Marci Segal, MS. Creativity and Change Leadership, Freeing leaders’ thinking so they can create new futures.

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