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…
- Prepared and presented my first Pecha Kucha at Toronto PechaKucha, the topic being World Creativity and Innovation Week April 15-21.
- Attended the opening of an art show of never seen creations.
- 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)
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Want to assess your creative capability during World Creativity and Innovation Week April 15 – 21? Plot yourself, and perhaps your team on the diagram to uncover areas for growth and exploration.
Source: mgleeson.edublogs.org via Ariana on Pinterest
World Creativity & Innovation Week is an annual 7 day celebration established in 2001. Similar to PechaKucha, it started as a grassroots initiative in Toronto by Marci Segal and has organically expanded to some 46 different countries to date.
PechaKucha Night Toronto is excited to be collaborating with WCIW, celebrating creativity and innovation on April 16 at Gladstone Hotel Melody Bar. Doors will open at 7:30pm and we’ll start with another special performance at around 8:00pm.
For more information about what WCIWToronto is, check out their facebook page on
WCIWGlobal’ facebook page:
And of course our very own event page:
PechaKucha Toronto
https://www.facebook.com/events/111296219068378/
See on www.pechakucha.org
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Idea lynceus (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Like the pun?:-)
See on Scoop.it – Creativity and Learning Insights
What is a creative idea? A mystical gift from your God? The discovery of something new? A profound insight of almost spiritual proportions? An irritant to rational thinking? A creative idea can be any of these things.
Thanks to Linda Salna for this link. Insights into what happens, fascinating. And fun.
Ignore the bit where it talks about exceptionally creative people. Not fun. Personally biased against any label of ‘exceptionally creative people’.
See on www.athenna.com
Marci Segal, Freeing leaders’ thinking so they can create new futures.
MS, Creativity and Change Leadership; Founder, World Creativity and Innovation Week April 15 – 21
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Quick. What is one small thing you can do to influence education so that everyone wins? Yes, you can.
Marci Segal, MS Creativity and Change Leadership. Freeing leaders thinking so they can create new futures. Creativity expert, speaker, author, consultant.
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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
- Work: the movement of labor from West to East (outsourcing); and, at the same time, a shift towards much more automation (robosourcing);
- 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
- 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
- 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)
- Biotechnology: the increasing manipulation of DNA to produce not only new organisms with novel features, but new materials and fuels as wel
- 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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]]>‘Flitch Way Country Park’ (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Flitch meetings blur boundaries between organization silos. Strategic and brave leaders, those with an open mind to innovation and sustaining a culture that supports gaining insights and cooperation through collaboration, use them.
What’s a flitch meeting? A meeting where a problem in one area is solved by another department. If you are looking for something to do for World Creativity and Innovation Week April 15 – 21 – this might be just the thing for you to pivot yourself and your team into a new internal relationship.
What’s the hardest part, you ask? Accepting the solutions the other department suggests as valuable.
A great tool to get access to the value of the other group’s offering is to respond to each of these question stages
- what’s good about the idea first, as it is
- discuss what’s good about it for the future
- list the obstacles to moving forward on it
- generate alternative ideas to make the original one even stronger.
(You might want to try this approach at home first, to experience how it feels. Ask the kids for a holiday suggestion, for example, and work it through. Or better, use it with your team to discuss the idea of using Flitch meetings; and with a colleague in another department…)
Let us know how it goes. Bet you’ll be delightfully surprised.
Marci Segal, MS, Creativity and Change Leadership, Freeing leaders’ thinking so they can create new futures.
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