The Next Idea: Creativity and Innovation

WOW IDEAS #18 Time, Lion, Web Connection

2010-12-14T11:38:00.004-05:00

THE SECRET POWERS OF TIME

Professor Philip Zimbardo conveys (a 10 min animated presentation) on how our individual perspectives of time affect our work, health and well-being. Time influences who we are as a person, how we view relationships and how we act in the world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3oIiH7BLmg&feature=channel

CHRISTIAN THE LION

OK, so this isn't a website. But it's a video so amazing it'll have you believing anything is possible. The backstory: John Rendall and Anthony Bourke bought Christian, a lion cub, from Harrods in 1969 and raised him in their London home. Several years later, they set the lion free to live in the wilds of Africa.

A year later, against the advice of experts, the pair was determined to locate Christian.They traveled to Kenya to find him, and their reunion was recorded on film. Really, you just have to watch it -- it's truly inspirational. (If you want to see the video with Whitney Houston singing in the background, click this link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__UHSZHJ9LA&feature=related?cnn=yes

You can read the full story at the Born Free Foundation site.

WEB PLAYROOM: ZE FRANK - Connecting to People using the Web (16 min)

On the web, a new "Friend" may be just a click away, but true connection is harder to find and express. Ze Frank presents a medley of zany Internet toys that require deep participation -- and reward it with something more nourishing. You're invited, if you promise you'll share.
http://www.ted.com/talks/ze_frank_s_web_playroom.html

WOW IDEA #17 Education, More for Less, Flow

2010-12-14T11:16:00.008-05:00

Ken Robinson: Animated Video on “Changing Education Paradigms” The effects on Creativity and Divergent Thinking 11:40 min
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

"InNOVAtive" designs for ultra-low-cost products - Getting MORE from less to serve more people (19 mins).

Engineer, RA Mashelkar shares three stories of ultra-low-cost design from India that use bottom-up rethinking, and some clever engineering, to bring expensive products (cars, prosthetics) into the realm of the possible for everyone.
http://www.ted.com/talks/r_a_mashelkar_breakthrough_designs_for_ultra_low_cost_products.html

FLOW or “The Zone” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is the former head of psychology at the University of Chicago. Noted for his work in happiness and creativity

What is flow?

According to experts, "Flow is the mental state
of operation in which the person is fully immersed in
what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus,
full involvement, and success in the process of the
activity."

Athletes call it "The Zone."

According to Csikszentmihalyi, flow is completely
focused motivation. It's a single-minded immersion
and represents perhaps the ultimate in harnessing
emotions in the service of performing and learning.

In flow the emotions are not just contained and
channeled, but positive, energized, and aligned
with the task at hand.

The hallmark of flow is a feeling of spontaneous
joy, even rapture, while performing a task.

Can you start thinking of ways being in "Flow"
could help you in particular areas of your life?

Csikszentmihalyi identified these 9 factors
that accompany the "Flow" experience:

1- Clear goals (expectations and rules are
discernible and goals are attainable and align
appropriately with one's skill set and abilities).
Moreover, the challenge level and skill level should
both be high.

2- Concentrating, a high degree of concentration
on a limited field of attention (a person engaged in
the activity will have the opportunity to focus and
to delve deeply into it).

3- A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness,
the merging of action and awareness.

4- Distorted sense of time, one's subjective
experience of time is altered.

5- Direct and immediate feedback (successes and
failures in the course of the activity are apparent,
so that behavior can be adjusted as needed).

6- Balance between ability level and challenge
(the activity is neither too easy nor too difficult).

7- A sense of personal control over the situation
or activity.

8- The activity is intrinsically rewarding, so there
is an effortlessness of action.

9- People become absorbed in their activity, and
focus of awareness is narrowed down to the activity
itself, action awareness merging.

WOW IDEA #16 Unconscious, 50 Blogs, Good Ideas

2010-12-14T10:54:00.001-05:00

THE INTELLIGENCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS – Gerd Gigerenzen
Director of the Max Plank Institute, Berlin Germany

Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious According to the speaker, human beings tend to think of intelligence as a deliberate, conscious activity guided by the laws of logic rather than Intuition and heuristics in problem-solving and decision making. Learn the power of “1/N” from a Noble Laureate of economics.

http://fora.tv/2008/02/08/Intelligence_of_the_Unconscious (01:16 min)

50 BEST BLOGS FOR CREATIVE THINKING
Like the smell of a crackling, sparking campfire, creativity slowly permeates everything around it and changes what it touches for the better. Unlike the smell of a crackling, sparking campfire, however, its results tend to last quite a bit longer. The ability to think innovatively benefits far more people than those embroidered into the visual, liberal, and performing arts, however. Business, education, law, and even medicine can benefit from its adherents learning how to percolate their creative juices - and using the following blogs, a diverse range of people can find exactly what they need to formulate ideas and put them to (hopefully) good use.
http://www.onlinedegree.net/50-best-blogs-for-creative-thinking/

WHERE GOOD IDEAS COME FROM

People often credit their ideas to individual "Eureka!" moments. But Steven Johnson shows how history tells a different story. His fascinating tour takes us from the "liquid networks" of London's coffee houses to Charles Darwin's long, slow hunch to today's high-velocity web.

http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_johnson_where_good_ideas_come_from.html (17 min)

THE MYTH OF POSITIVE THINKING (Smile or Die)

A 10 minute animated presentation on the Myth of Positive Thinking
By acclaimed journalist, author and political activist Barbara Ehrenreich
explores the darker side of positive thinking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5um8QWWRvo&feature=channel

Here are some beautiful ideas from the AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL –
10 COMMANDMENTS and RITUAL CHANT

1. You should express your individual creativity

2. Realize that you are accountable

3. Before birth you agreed to help others

4. Mature emotionally

5. Entertain

6. Be a steward of your energy

7. Indulge in music

8. Strive to achieve wisdom

9. Learn self-discipline

10. Observe without judging

RITUAL CHANT

Forever Oneness,
Who sings to us in silence,
Who teaches us through each other,
Guide my steps with strength and wisdom.
May I see the lessons as I walk,
Honor the purpose of all things,
Help me touch with respect,
Always speak from behind my eyes.
Let me observe, not judge,
May I cause no harm, and leave
Music and beauty after my visit.
When I return to Forever,
May the circle be closed and
The spiral be broader.

WOW IDEA #15 d-school, 3-D Printer, Goose

2010-09-22T16:20:00.006-04:00

AWAKENING CREATIVITY - "d-school" and Design-Thinking (DT)
George Kembel, co-founder and executive director of the “d-school” at Stamford University’s graduate school, explores ways to tap the latent human capacity for creativity and innovation. He shares the “Design-Thinking” process of 1. Empathy 2. Definition 3. Ideation 4. Prototyping and 5. Testing to real life challenges and innovations. Applicable to organizations, business, products, education, etc.

http://fora.tv/2009/08/14/George_Kembel_Awakening_Creativity (01.12 min)

3-D PRINTING SPURS CREATIVITY AND MANUFACTURING REVOLUTION
New technology is giving rise to never-before-possible businesses that are selling products like iPhone cases, doorknobs, perfume bottles and architectural models. (5 min)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/technology/14print.html?pagewanted=1&hp (4 min)

VIRTUAL CHOIR - 'Lux Aurumque' Eric Whitacre's
185 people from all over the world sing together in a “Virtual Choir”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7o7BrlbaDs (6 min)

WHAT WE ARE - A BUNCH OF MONKEYS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsPw649qN9I (4min)

LESSON OF THE GOOSE
by Carol B of Bermuda...
Sent by Scott Weiner
RexBarker@Joke-Of-The-Day.com

1. As each goose flaps its wings, it creates an uplift for the bird behind it. By flying in a V-formation, the whole flock adds 71 percent more flying range than if each bird flew alone.

Lesson: People who share a common direction and sense of community can get where they are going quicker and easier when they are traveling on the thrust of one another.

2. When a goose gets sick, wounded, or shot down, two geese drop out of formation and follow it down. They stay with the goose to help and protect it until it is able to fly again or dies. Then they launch out with another formation to catch up with the flock.

Lesson: If we have as much sense as geese, we will stand by each other.

3. Whenever a goose falls out of the formation, it suddenly feels the drag and resistance of trying to fly alone and quickly gets back into formation to take advantage of the lifting power of the bird in front.

Lesson: If we have as much sense as a goose, we will stay in formation with those who are headed where we want to go.

4. When the lead goose gets tired, it rotates back into the formation and another goose flies at the point position.

Lesson: It pays to take turns doing the hard tasks and sharing leadership.

5. The geese in formation honk from behind to encourage those up front to keep up their speed.

Lesson: We need to make sure our honking from behind is encouraging- -not something less than helpful. This is Rex Barker, reminding you that there are constant lessons and reminders for us both as individuals and as humanity. It is up to us to learn from them and grow.

WOW IDEA #14 Motivation, Creativity Crisis, Aurguing

2010-07-15T13:40:00.002-04:00

1. WHAT REALLY MOTIVATES US - This lively Animation, adapted from Dan Pink's talk illustrates the hidden truths behind what really motivates us at home and in the workplace.www.theRSA.org
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc&feature=player_embedded (11mins)

2. THE CREATIVITY CRISIS – Newsweek Magazine

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/10/the-creativity-crisis.html and
CREATIVITY TEST http://www.newsweek.com/photo/2010/07/10/creativity-test.html

For the first time, research shows that American creativity is declining. What went wrong—and how we can fix it.

Back in 1958, Ted Schwarzrock was an 8-year-old third grader when he became one of the “Torrance kids,” a group of nearly 400 Minneapolis children who completed a series of creativity tasks newly designed by professor E. Paul Torrance. Schwarzrock still vividly remembers the moment when a psychologist handed him a fire truck and asked, “How could you improve this toy to make it better and more fun to play with?” He recalls the psychologist being excited by his answers. In fact, the psychologist’s session notes indicate Schwarzrock rattled off 25 improvements, such as adding a removable ladder and springs to the wheels. That wasn’t the only time he impressed the scholars, who judged Schwarzrock to have “unusual visual perspective” and “an ability to synthesize diverse elements into meaningful products.”

The accepted definition of creativity is production of something original and useful, and that’s what’s reflected in the tests. There is never one right answer. To be creative requires divergent thinking (generating many unique ideas) and then convergent thinking (combining those ideas into the best result).

In the 50 years since Schwarzrock and the others took their tests, scholars—first led by Torrance, now his colleague, Garnet Millar—have been tracking the children, recording every patent earned, every business founded, every research paper published, and every grant awarded. They tallied the books, dances, radio shows, art exhibitions, software programs, advertising campaigns, hardware innovations, music compositions, public policies (written or implemented), leadership positions, invited lectures, and buildings designed.
Related Article: Forget Brainstorming »

Nobody would argue that Torrance’s tasks, which have become the gold standard in creativity assessment, measure creativity perfectly. What’s shocking is how incredibly well Torrance’s creativity index predicted those kids’ creative accomplishments as adults. Those who came up with more good ideas on Torrance’s tasks grew up to be entrepreneurs, inventors, college presidents, authors, doctors, diplomats, and software developers. Jonathan Plucker of Indiana University recently reanalyzed Torrance’s data. The correlation to lifetime creative accomplishment was more than three times stronger for childhood creativity than childhood IQ.

Like intelligence tests, Torrance’s test—a 90-minute series of discrete tasks, administered by a psychologist—has been taken by millions worldwide in 50 languages. Yet there is one crucial difference between IQ and CQ scores. With intelligence, there is a phenomenon called the Flynn effect—each generation, scores go up about 10 points. Enriched environments are making kids smarter. With creativity, a reverse trend has just been identified and is being reported for the first time here: American creativity scores are falling.

Kyung Hee Kim at the College of William & Mary discovered this in May, after analyzing almost 300,000 Torrance scores of children and adults. Kim found creativity scores had been steadily rising, just like IQ scores, until 1990. Since then, creativity scores have consistently inched downward. “It’s very clear, and the decrease is very significant,” Kim says. It is the scores of younger children in America—from kindergarten through sixth grade—for whom the decline is “most serious.” Weekly Podcast and Radio Program 7/10/10: Obamanomics, Immigration, Spy Games; Keys to Creativity; Israel and Iran; The Karen Oberlin Loesser Show; Movie Review: Inception; From the Archives: McNamara's Mistake. SUBSCRIBE OR DOWNLOAD PODCAST: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/newsweek-on-air/id73329823

The potential consequences are sweeping. The necessity of human ingenuity is undisputed. A recent IBM poll of 1,500 CEOs identified creativity as the No. 1 “leadership competency” of the future. Yet it’s not just about sustaining our nation’s economic growth. All around us are matters of national and international importance that are crying out for creative solutions, from saving the Gulf of Mexico to bringing peace to Afghanistan to delivering health care. Such solutions emerge from a healthy marketplace of ideas, sustained by a populace constantly contributing original ideas and receptive to the ideas of others.

It’s too early to determine conclusively why U.S. creativity scores are declining. One likely culprit is the number of hours kids now spend in front of the TV and playing videogames rather than engaging in creative activities. Another is the lack of creativity development in our schools. In effect, it’s left to the luck of the draw who becomes creative: there’s no concerted effort to nurture the creativity of all children.

Around the world, though, other countries are making creativity development a national priority. In 2008 British secondary-school curricula—from science to foreign language—was revamped to emphasize idea generation, and pilot programs have begun using Torrance’s test to assess their progress. The European Union designated 2009 as the European Year of Creativity and Innovation, holding conferences on the neuroscience of creativity, financing teacher training, and instituting problem-based learning programs—curricula driven by real-world inquiry—for both children and adults. In China there has been widespread education reform to extinguish the drill-and-kill teaching style. Instead, Chinese schools are also adopting a problem-based learning approach.

Plucker recently toured a number of such schools in Shanghai and Beijing. He was amazed by a boy who, for a class science project, rigged a tracking device for his moped with parts from a cell phone. When faculty of a major Chinese university asked Plucker to identify trends in American education, he described our focus on standardized curriculum, rote memorization, and nationalized testing. “After my answer was translated, they just started laughing out loud,” Plucker says. “They said, ‘You’re racing toward our old model. But we’re racing toward your model, as fast as we can.’ ”

Overwhelmed by curriculum standards, American teachers warn there’s no room in the day for a creativity class. Kids are fortunate if they get an art class once or twice a week. But to scientists, this is a non sequitur, borne out of what University of Georgia’s Mark Runco calls “art bias.” The age-old belief that the arts have a special claim to creativity is unfounded. When scholars gave creativity tasks to both engineering majors and music majors, their scores laid down on an identical spectrum, with the same high averages and standard deviations. Inside their brains, the same thing was happening—ideas were being generated and evaluated on the fly.

Researchers say creativity should be taken out of the art room and put into homeroom. The argument that we can’t teach creativity because kids already have too much to learn is a false trade-off. Creativity isn’t about freedom from concrete facts. Rather, fact-finding and deep research are vital stages in the creative process. Scholars argue that current curriculum standards can still be met, if taught in a different way.

To understand exactly what should be done requires first understanding the new story emerging from neuroscience. The lore of pop psychology is that creativity occurs on the right side of the brain. But we now know that if you tried to be creative using only the right side of your brain, it’d be like living with ideas perpetually at the tip of your tongue, just beyond reach.

When you try to solve a problem, you begin by concentrating on obvious facts and familiar solutions, to see if the answer lies there. This is a mostly left-brain stage of attack. If the answer doesn’t come, the right and left hemispheres of the brain activate together. Neural networks on the right side scan remote memories that could be vaguely relevant. A wide range of distant information that is normally tuned out becomes available to the left hemisphere, which searches for unseen patterns, alternative meanings, and high-level abstractions.

Having glimpsed such a connection, the left brain must quickly lock in on it before it escapes. The attention system must radically reverse gears, going from defocused attention to extremely focused attention. In a flash, the brain pulls together these disparate shreds of thought and binds them into a new single idea that enters consciousness. This is the “aha!” moment of insight, often followed by a spark of pleasure as the brain recognizes the novelty of what it’s come up with.

Now the brain must evaluate the idea it just generated. Is it worth pursuing? Creativity requires constant shifting, blender pulses of both divergent thinking and convergent thinking, to combine new information with old and forgotten ideas. Highly creative people are very good at marshaling their brains into bilateral mode, and the more creative they are, the more they dual-activate.

Is this learnable? Well, think of it like basketball. Being tall does help to be a pro basketball player, but the rest of us can still get quite good at the sport through practice. In the same way, there are certain innate features of the brain that make some people naturally prone to divergent thinking. But convergent thinking and focused attention are necessary, too, and those require different neural gifts. Crucially, rapidly shifting between these modes is a top-down function under your mental control. University of New Mexico neuroscientist Rex Jung has concluded that those who diligently practice creative activities learn to recruit their brains’ creative networks quicker and better. A lifetime of consistent habits gradually changes the neurological pattern.

A fine example of this emerged in January of this year, with release of a study by University of Western Ontario neuroscientist Daniel Ansari and Harvard’s Aaron Berkowitz, who studies music cognition. They put Dartmouth music majors and nonmusicians in an fMRI scanner, giving participants a one-handed fiber-optic keyboard to play melodies on. Sometimes melodies were rehearsed; other times they were creatively improvised. During improvisation, the highly trained music majors used their brains in a way the nonmusicians could not: they deactivated their right-temporoparietal junction. Normally, the r-TPJ reads incoming stimuli, sorting the stream for relevance. By turning that off, the musicians blocked out all distraction. They hit an extra gear of concentration, allowing them to work with the notes and create music spontaneously.

Charles Limb of Johns Hopkins has found a similar pattern with jazz musicians, and Austrian researchers observed it with professional dancers visualizing an improvised dance. Ansari and Berkowitz now believe the same is true for orators, comedians, and athletes improvising in games.

The good news is that creativity training that aligns with the new science works surprisingly well. The University of Oklahoma, the University of Georgia, and Taiwan’s National Chengchi University each independently conducted a large-scale analysis of such programs. All three teams of scholars concluded that creativity training can have a strong effect. “Creativity can be taught,” says James C. Kaufman, professor at California State University, San Bernardino.

What’s common about successful programs is they alternate maximum divergent thinking with bouts of intense convergent thinking, through several stages. Real improvement doesn’t happen in a weekend workshop. But when applied to the everyday process of work or school, brain function improves.

So what does this mean for America’s standards-obsessed schools? The key is in how kids work through the vast catalog of information. Consider the National Inventors Hall of Fame School, a new public middle school in Akron, Ohio. Mindful of Ohio’s curriculum requirements, the school’s teachers came up with a project for the fifth graders: figure out how to reduce the noise in the library. Its windows faced a public space and, even when closed, let through too much noise. The students had four weeks to design proposals.

Working in small teams, the fifth graders first engaged in what creativity theorist Donald Treffinger describes as fact-finding. How does sound travel through materials? What materials reduce noise the most? Then, problem-finding—anticipating all potential pitfalls so their designs are more likely to work. Next, idea-finding: generate as many ideas as possible. Drapes, plants, or large kites hung from the ceiling would all baffle sound. Or, instead of reducing the sound, maybe mask it by playing the sound of a gentle waterfall? A proposal for double-paned glass evolved into an idea to fill the space between panes with water. Next, solution-finding: which ideas were the most effective, cheapest, and aesthetically pleasing? Fiberglass absorbed sound the best but wouldn’t be safe. Would an aquarium with fish be easier than water-filled panes?

Then teams developed a plan of action. They built scale models and chose fabric samples. They realized they’d need to persuade a janitor to care for the plants and fish during vacation. Teams persuaded others to support them—sometimes so well, teams decided to combine projects. Finally, they presented designs to teachers, parents, and Jim West, inventor of the electric microphone.

Along the way, kids demonstrated the very definition of creativity: alternating between divergent and convergent thinking, they arrived at original and useful ideas. And they’d unwittingly mastered Ohio’s required fifth-grade curriculum—from understanding sound waves to per-unit cost calculations to the art of persuasive writing. “You never see our kids saying, ‘I’ll never use this so I don’t need to learn it,’ ” says school administrator Maryann Wolowiec. “Instead, kids ask, ‘Do we have to leave school now?’ ” Two weeks ago, when the school received its results on the state’s achievement test, principal Traci Buckner was moved to tears. The raw scores indicate that, in its first year, the school has already become one of the top three schools in Akron, despite having open enrollment by lottery and 42 percent of its students living in poverty.

With as much as three fourths of each day spent in project-based learning, principal Buckner and her team actually work through required curricula, carefully figuring out how kids can learn it through the steps of Treffinger’s Creative Problem-Solving method and other creativity pedagogies. “The creative problem-solving program has the highest success in increasing children’s creativity,” observed William & Mary’s Kim.

The home-game version of this means no longer encouraging kids to spring straight ahead to the right answer. When UGA’s Runco was driving through California one day with his family, his son asked why Sacramento was the state’s capital—why not San Francisco or Los Angeles? Runco turned the question back on him, encouraging him to come up with as many explanations as he could think of.

Preschool children, on average, ask their parents about 100 questions a day. Why, why, why—sometimes parents just wish it’d stop. Tragically, it does stop. By middle school they’ve pretty much stopped asking. It’s no coincidence that this same time is when student motivation and engagement plummet. They didn’t stop asking questions because they lost interest: it’s the other way around. They lost interest because they stopped asking questions.

Having studied the childhoods of highly creative people for decades, Claremont Graduate University’s Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and University of Northern Iowa’s Gary G. Gute found highly creative adults tended to grow up in families embodying opposites. Parents encouraged uniqueness, yet provided stability. They were highly responsive to kids’ needs, yet challenged kids to develop skills. This resulted in a sort of adaptability: in times of anxiousness, clear rules could reduce chaos—yet when kids were bored, they could seek change, too. In the space between anxiety and boredom was where creativity flourished.

It’s also true that highly creative adults frequently grew up with hardship. Hardship by itself doesn’t lead to creativity, but it does force kids to become more flexible—and flexibility helps with creativity.

In early childhood, distinct types of free play are associated with high creativity. Preschoolers who spend more time in role-play (acting out characters) have higher measures of creativity: voicing someone else’s point of view helps develop their ability to analyze situations from different perspectives. When playing alone, highly creative first graders may act out strong negative emotions: they’ll be angry, hostile, anguished. The hypothesis is that play is a safe harbor to work through forbidden thoughts and emotions.

In middle childhood, kids sometimes create paracosms—fantasies of entire alternative worlds. Kids revisit their paracosms repeatedly, sometimes for months, and even create languages spoken there. This type of play peaks at age 9 or 10, and it’s a very strong sign of future creativity. A Michigan State University study of MacArthur “genius award” winners found a remarkably high rate of paracosm creation in their childhoods.

From fourth grade on, creativity no longer occurs in a vacuum; researching and studying become an integral part of coming up with useful solutions. But this transition isn’t easy. As school stuffs more complex information into their heads, kids get overloaded, and creativity suffers. When creative children have a supportive teacher—someone tolerant of unconventional answers, occasional disruptions, or detours of curiosity—they tend to excel. When they don’t, they tend to underperform and drop out of high school or don’t finish college at high rates.

They’re quitting because they’re discouraged and bored, not because they’re dark, depressed, anxious, or neurotic. It’s a myth that creative people have these traits. (Those traits actually shut down creativity; they make people less open to experience and less interested in novelty.) Rather, creative people, for the most part, exhibit active moods and positive affect. They’re not particularly happy—contentment is a kind of complacency creative people rarely have. But they’re engaged, motivated, and open to the world.

The new view is that creativity is part of normal brain function. Some scholars go further, arguing that lack of creativity—not having loads of it—is the real risk factor. In his research, Runco asks college students, “Think of all the things that could interfere with graduating from college.” Then he instructs them to pick one of those items and to come up with as many solutions for that problem as possible. This is a classic divergent-convergent creativity challenge. A subset of respondents, like the proverbial Murphy, quickly list every imaginable way things can go wrong. But they demonstrate a complete lack of flexibility in finding creative solutions. It’s this inability to conceive of alternative approaches that leads to despair. Runco’s two questions predict suicide ideation—even when controlling for preexisting levels of depression and anxiety.

In Runco’s subsequent research, those who do better in both problem-finding and problem-solving have better relationships. They are more able to handle stress and overcome the bumps life throws in their way. A similar study of 1,500 middle schoolers found that those high in creative self-efficacy had more confidence about their future and ability to succeed. They were sure that their ability to come up with alternatives would aid them, no matter what problems would arise.

When he was 30 years old, Ted Schwarzrock was looking for an alternative. He was hardly on track to becoming the prototype of Torrance’s longitudinal study. He wasn’t artistic when young, and his family didn’t recognize his creativity or nurture it. The son of a dentist and a speech pathologist, he had been pushed into medical school, where he felt stifled and commonly had run-ins with professors and bosses. But eventually, he found a way to combine his creativity and medical expertise: inventing new medical technologies.

Today, Schwarzrock is independently wealthy—he founded and sold three medical-products companies and was a partner in three more. His innovations in health care have been wide ranging, from a portable respiratory oxygen device to skin-absorbing anti-inflammatories to insights into how bacteria become antibiotic-resistant. His latest project could bring down the cost of spine-surgery implants 50 percent. “As a child, I never had an identity as a ‘creative person,’ ” Schwarzrock recalls. “But now that I know, it helps explain a lot of what I felt and went through.”

Creativity has always been prized in American society, but it’s never really been understood. While our creativity scores decline unchecked, the current national strategy for creativity consists of little more than praying for a Greek muse to drop by our houses. The problems we face now, and in the future, simply demand that we do more than just hope for inspiration to strike. Fortunately, the science can help: we know the steps to lead that elusive muse right to our doors.

3. WHAT COUPLES ARE REALLY ARGUING ABOUT

The original article in Scientific America was also a short summary, but there is a podcast http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=the-real-concern-when-couples-fig ht-10-06-26 60-Second Psych - June 26, 2010

Married couples argue about all kinds of things, from money to whose turn it is to take out the garbage. But in reality, says Scientific American, all fights come down to two basic issues that have little to do with the content of the arguments: One person feels that he or she is:

Being Unfairly CONTROLLED or BLAMED and/or Feels NEGLECTED.

Baylor University psychologists gave a questionnaire to 3,539 married couples and analyzed such variables as the words couples used to describe a fight and the feelings they experienced. Researchers concluded that the tension that sparked the arguments almost always involved deeper issues relating to whether the partner’s:

Felt UNDERSTOOD or Felt VALUED.

Appreciating this dynamic might help couples figure out how to improve communication. For example, says study author Keith Sanford, if a husband realizes that his wife’s anger over his coming home late is really about her feeling disregarded, he could fashion an apology that includes demonstrations of deference and expressions of appreciation.

The Real Concern When Couples Fight

New research reveals that nearly all fights between romantic partners can be distilled into two fundamental complaints. Christie Nicholson reports
Fights between couples are personal. So it makes sense that the passionate ones are rarely about the actual content but rather are typically about something else entirely.

But what is the something else?

Well for a new study published in the journal Psychological Assessment scientists created a questionnaire and gave it to 3,539 married couples with ages ranging from 18 to 85 years, and with length of marriages ranging from one year to 61 years. They then analyzed variables such as the words couples chose to describe a past fight, and the self-reported feelings and behaviors while each were in the throes of fighting.

They found that every argument, covering everything from laundry to string theory, resolves itself into two fundamental complaints:

One person feels that he or she is BEING BLAMED or CONTROLLED, unjustly, for something that has nothing to do with the argument, or

One FEELS NEGLECTED, and this manifests in the feeling of You Don’t Really CARE About Me or You Are Not As INVESTED As I Am.

Past studies have shown a couples ability to manage conflict is crucial in terms of long-term relationship quality and stability, physical health, and healthy outcomes for their children.

So it behooves each partner to clearly understand the real reason behind their behavior. Why doesn’t he want to have Thanksgiving dinner with your family? And why does it bother you so much?

WOW IDEA #13 Golden Circle, Blue-Dot, Rembrandt

2010-07-15T13:12:00.005-04:00

1. HOW GREAT LEADERS INSPIRE ACTION (The GOLDEN CIRCLE)

Simon Sinek has a simple but powerful model for inspirational leadership all starting with a GOLDEN CIRCLE. Ordinary people and companies use the ordinary strategy of What-How-Why. Extraordinary people and companies use the extra-ordinary strategy of Why-How-What. His examples include Apple, Martin Luther King, and the Wright brothers – verses the failure of Tivo.

http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html (18 mins)

2. THE WORLD WOULD BE BETTER IF EVERYONE WATCHED THIS VIDEO
Carl Sagen shows us the world from space (the Blue-Dot) and how we live on it.
http://gizmodo.com/5513783/the-world-would-be-better-if-everyone-watched-this-video

3. RESEARCHER DECODES REMBRANDT'S 'MAGIC'

A University of British Columbia researcher has uncovered what makes Rembrandt's masterful portraits so appealing. New research suggests that Rembrandt may have pioneered a technique that guides the viewer's gaze around a portrait, creating a special narrative and "calmer" viewing experience.)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100528092019.htm

Images of the Rembrandt-like portraits and original photographs are available at http://www.dipaola.org/rembrandt

4. HOW LIGHT BULBS MAKE YOU SMARTER

By Tom Bartlett http://chronicle.com/blogPost/How-Light-Bulbs-Make-You/23292/
An illuminated light bulb is the universal symbol for having an idea. Anyone who has read the comics, or noticed the icon for an ideas blog (see right side of screen), is well aware of that.

But can looking at a light bulb actually improve insight?

It seems like a ridiculous question to ask, but it's in line with a number of other experiments demonstrating how behavior or performance can be "primed" by showing participants certain objects. For instance, in a 2004 paper, researchers reported that people who were shown objects associated with business, like briefcases, became more competitive. This may explain why people who wear backpacks are such losers.

Anyway, in a recent study, participants were asked to perform a number of tasks including, for example, connecting four dots with straight lines without lifting their pencils or retracing a line. After assigning the task, the researchers then either did or did not switch on an exposed light bulb in the room. When they switched on the bulb, more participants (44 percent) solved the puzzle in the allotted time, compared with 22 percent of the bulbless control group.

So, you might object, maybe the subjects just needed more light? To account for that, the researchers tried experiments with shaded light bulbs, but found that those didn't improve the results. They also checked to see whether the light was affecting people's moods -- perhaps happier people are better at puzzles -- but found no correlation there either. To quote from the paper: "The results of four studies suggest that exposure to an illuminating lightbulb primes bright ideas."

However, flipping on a light bulb didn't help with "non-insight" tasks, like algebra problems.

The moral: If you want to have better ideas, get rid of your lampshades.

(The paper, published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, can be read here. The researchers who had this bright idea were Michael L. Slepian, Max Weisbuch, Abraham M. Rutchick, Leonard S. Newman, and Nalini Ambady.)

Hope you enjoy them?

Please drop us a line and share with us your thoughts. Call 315-846-5516
e-mail us at creativityinstitute@juno.com

WOW IDEAS #12 Nature Techno, Marshmallow Team Building, Creativity Lying Down

2010-05-19T19:12:00.004-04:00

10 TECHNOLOGIES WE STOLE FROM THE ANIMAL KINGDOM
http://blogs.static.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/33696.html

1. Sharkskin: The Latest Craze in Catheters
2. Holy Bat Cane!
3. Trains Get a Nose Job for the Birds
4. The Secret Power of Flippers
5. What Would Robotic Jesus Christ Lizard Do?
6. Puff the Magic Sea Sponge
7. Wasps They Know the Drill
8. Consider the Lobster Eye
9. Playing Dead, Saving Lives
10. Picking Up the Bill

BUILD A MARSHMALLOW TOWER, TEAM BUILDING RESEARCH
Tom Wujec presents some surprisingly deep research into the marshmallow problem -- a simple team-building exercise that involves dry spaghetti, one yard of tape and a marshmallow. Who can build the tallest tower with these ingredients? And why does a surprising group always beat the average
http://www.ted.com/talks/tom_wujec_build_a_tower.html (6 mins)

CREATIVE THINKING: TRY LYING DOWN
Sourse: http://www.physorg.com/news4028.html

Solving an anagram often produces an A-ha! or Eureka moment — the answer appears suddenly, often out of the blue. These insight moments are similar to what people experience when achieving creative breakthroughs, Dr Lipnicki said.

Therefore, it might be that we have our most creative thoughts while flat on our back, he said.

According to Dr Lipnicki, whose results are to be published in Cognitive Brain Research, the reason this happens may involve differences in brain chemistry between lying down and standing up.

In theory, there may be greater release of a chemical, NORADRENALINE, in the brain when standing up than when lying down.

Its suspected that noradrenaline inhibits the abilities to solve anagrams and to think creatively so we decided to test the idea that lying down would actually help solve anagrams more quickly.

Dr Lipnicki asked 20 healthy subjects to solve anagrams in both a lying down and standing posture. There were 32 five-letter anagrams, such as osien (noise) and nodru (round).

For each subject the anagrams were randomly selected into two 16-item blocks, one block for lying down and the other for standing up. Half of the subjects did the task in the order of lying down, then standing up, while the other half did the task first when standing and then when lying down. The average time for solving an anagram lying down was 26.3 seconds, while standing up the average was nearly 30 seconds.

Subjects were also asked to solve arithmetic problems, but the study found lying down made no difference to solving arithmetic compared to standing up.

Anagrams can be characterised as insight problems, in part because they are often solved in a moment of sudden awareness. Both anecdotal reports and experimental evidence suggest that insight can occur during, or be inspired by, sleep, Dr Lipnicki said.

Our finding that postural condition affects how quickly anagrams are solved suggests that body posture may influence insight, which could be facilitated when merely lying down.

But Dr Lipnicki said his study was preliminary research, and that it would be premature for companies to rush out and buy beds for their conference rooms.

Hope you enjoy them?

Andre and Judy de Zanger

WOW IDEAS #11 One Year in 90 Sec, Pentatonic Scale, Wedding Dance

2010-04-14T15:23:00.003-04:00

ONE YEAR IN 90 SECONDS (powerful visuals)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBtdGalL-QE

THE POWER OF THE PENTATONIC SCALE (Musical Fun) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne6tB2KiZuk (3Min)

WEDDING ENTRANCE DANCE (12 million people have seen it)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-94JhLEiN0&NR=1&feature=fvwp

7 SMALL COMPANIES WITH BIG INVENTIONS AND INNOVATIONS
When the year offers little future tech from the big guns, it may be time turn to smaller companies who are often more agile, able to take bigger risks and follow boundary-pushing ideas. Here are 7 products and innovations coming out of the little guys. http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/reviews/4342022.html

WOW IDEAS #10 Year of Ideas, No More War, Saw Stop

2010-04-14T15:16:00.003-04:00

- NEW YORK TIMES – YEAR OF IDEAS
The Times Magazine looks back on the past year the most clever, important, silly and just plain weird innovations.
http://www.nytimes.com/projects/magazine/ideas/2009/

- WAR/NO MORE TROUBLE | PLAYING FOR CHANGE | SONG AROUND THE WORLD http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgWFxFg7-GU (5 min)

- SawStop inventor Steve Gass demonstrates how the saw's blade-stopping technology works, using his own finger to set off the blade lock.
http://www.finehomebuilding.com/item/8228/sawstop-inventor-walks-the-walk

- COLOR CHANGING CARD TRICK – Seeing Is Not Believing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voantzb7ewe (3 min)

- METAPHORICAL THINKING Aphorism enthusiast and author James Geary waxes on a fascinating fixture of human language: the metaphor. Friend of scribes from Aristotle to Elvis, metaphor can subtly influence the decisions we make. “Combinatory Play” seems to be the essential feature in productive thought – Albert Einstein.
“To unleash the mind’s creative energy, multiply by the square of the speed of thought (E=MC2)”
http://www.ted.com/talks/james_geary_metaphorically_speaking.html (9min)

- CREATIVITY AND THE AGING BRAIN - Use the powers of the aging brain to enhance creativity. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/life-art/200903/creativity-and-the-aging-brain

The aging brain resembles the creative brain in several ways. For instance, the aging brain is more distractible and somewhat more disinhibited than the younger brain (so is the creative brain). Aging brains score better on tests of crystallized IQ (and creative brains use crystallized knowledge to make novel and original associations). These changes in the aging brain may make it ideally suited to accomplish work in a number of creative domains. So instead of promoting retirement at age 65, perhaps we as a society should be promoting transition at age 65: transition into a creative field where our growing resource of individuals with aging brains can preserve their wisdom in culturally-valued works of art, music, or writing.

In a recent study, psychologist Lynn Hasher and her group at the University of Toronto found that older participants were (as many seniors will attest!) more distractible than their younger counterparts. However, members of this older, distractible group were also better able to use the distracting information to solve problems presented later in the study. This work, along with other studies on aging and cognition, suggest that the aging brain is characterized by a broadening focus of attention. Numerous studies suggest that highly creative individuals also employ a broadened rather than focused state of attention. This state of widened attention allows the individual to have disparate bits of information in mind at the same time. Combining remote bits of information is the hallmark of the creative idea.

Other studies show that certain areas of the prefrontal cortex involved in self-conscious awareness and emotions are thinner in the aging brain. This may correlate with the diminished need to please and impress others, which is a notable characteristic of both aging individuals and creative luminaries. Both older individuals and creative types are more willing to speak their minds and disregard social expectations than are their younger, more conventional counterparts.

Finally, intelligence studies indicate that older individuals have access to an increasing store of knowledge gained over a lifetime of learning and experience. Combining bits of knowledge into novel and original ideas is what the creative brain is all about. Thus, having access to increased internal warehouse of knowledge provides fertile ground for creative activity in the aging brain.

Many seniors are already making a mark for themselves in creative fields. Consider Millard Kaufman, who wrote his first novel, the hit book Bowl of Cherries, at age 90. Then there's 93-year-old Lorna Page, who caused waves in Britain with her first novel A Dangerous Weakness. Following in the footsteps of Grandma Moses (who did not take up painting until in her 70's), former patent attorney John Root Hopkins turned to art in his 70's and had a showing of his work in the American Visionary Art Museum at age 73. There are numerous examples throughout history of the creative power of the aging brain: Benjamin Franklin invented the bifocal lens at the age of 78, Thomas Hardy published a book of lyric poetry at age 85, Frank Lloyd Wright completed the design of the Guggenheim Museum in New York at and 92, and Giuseppe Verdi wrote Falstaff, perhaps his most acclaimed opera, at the age of 85.

I suggest that we change our expectations of the elderly. Instead of referring to "the aging problem," we should expect our seniors to be productive throughout the lifespan. I challenge each citizen, whether you are currently a senior citizen or a senior-to-be: first, consider one life lesson that you would like to pass on to future generations. Second, decide upon a creative medium in which you could embed this lesson - perhaps a novel or a painting or a musical piece. Then make it the work of your post-retirement years to grow proficient in that medium and to produce a work that embeds your message.

References:
Kim, S., Hasher, L., & Zacks, R.T. (2008). Aging and a benefit of distractibility. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 14, 301-305.
Horn, J.L. & Cattell, R.B. (1967). Age differences in fluid and crystallized intelligence. Acta Psychologia, 26, 107-129.
Lehman, H.C. (1949). Some examples of creative achievement during later maturity and old age. Journal of Social Psychology, 30, 49-79.
Salat, D.H. et al. (2004). Thinning of the cerebral cortex in aging. Cerebral Cortex, 14, 721-730.

WOW IDEAS #9 Myths, Holland, FunTheory

2009-12-31T17:22:00.002-05:00

- EAST VS. WEST -- THE MYTHS THAT MYSTIFY - An eye-opening look at the myths of India and of the West -- and shows how these two fundamentally different sets of beliefs about God, death and heaven help us consistently misunderstand one another.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/devdutt_pattanaik.html

- CREATIVE “ANIMATED CATALOGUE” FROM HOLLAND
http://producten.hema.nl/

- THE WORLD'S DEEPEST BIN - THEFUNTHEORY.COM -
We believe that the easiest way to change people's behaviour for the better is by making it fun to do. We call it The fun theory.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbEKAwCoCKw&feature=related

- HUBBLE IMAGES CAPTURE UNIVERSE’S BEAUTY
http://www.wired.com/science/space/multimedia/2009/04/gallery_hubble?slide=12&slideView=2

- VINE SEEDS BECOME 'GIANT GLIDERS' - Remarkable footage has been captured of falling Alsomitra vine seeds, which use paper-thin wings to disperse like giant gliders.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8391000/8391345.stm (1,24 min)

- PLANET-EARTH FLAG using Ying-Yang (Article)

- LICENSE TO WONDER (Article)

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- EAST VS. WEST -- THE MYTHS THAT MYSTIFY
Devdutt Pattanaik takes an eye-opening look at the myths of India and of the West -- and shows how these two fundamentally different sets of beliefs about God, death and heaven help us consistently misunderstand one another.
We all search for meaning in our work and lives. Devdutt Pattanaik suggests we try a tactic of our ancestors -- finding life lessons in myth, ritual and shared stories. As the Chief Belief Officer at Future Group in Mumbai, he helps managers harness the power of myth to understand their employees, their companies and their customers. He's working to create a Retail Religion, to build deep, lasting ties between customers and brands.
Pattanaik is a self-taught mythologist, and the author (and often illustrator) of several works on aspects of myth, including the primer Myth = Mithya: A Handbook of Hindu Mythology and his most recent book, 7 Secrets from Hindu Calendar Art. He writes a column called "Management Mythos" for Economic Times that juxtaposes myth onto modern leadership challenges. His newest area of inquiry: How is traditional management, as expressed in old Indian cultural narratives, different from modern scientific management techniques?"
http://www.ted.com/talks/devdutt_pattanaik.htm (18 mins)

- LICENSE TO WONDER

One colleague told me that when he was studying science at school, the relentless focus on the known gave him the impression that almost everything had already been discovered. But in fact, science ” as the physicist Richard Feynman once wrote ” creates an expanding frontier of ignorance, where most discoveries lead to more questions. (This frontier ” this peering into the unknown ” is what I especially like to write about.) Moreover, insofar as science is a body of knowledge, that body is provisional: much of what we thought we knew in the past has turned out to be incomplete, or plain wrong.
The second misconception that comes from this facts, facts, factsmethod of teaching science is the impression that scientific discovery progresses as an orderly, logical creep; that each new discovery points more or less unambiguously to the next. But in reality, while some scientific work does involve the plodding, brick-by-brick accumulation of evidence, much of it requires leaps of imagination and daring speculation. (This raises the interesting question of when speculation is more likely to generate productive lines of enquiry than deductive creep. I don’t know the answer ” I’d have to speculate.)
Vittorio Luzzati/National Portrait Gallery in London Rosalind Franklin in 1950.
There are plenty of (probably) apocryphal tales about what inspired a great discovery, from Archimedes in his bathtub, to Newton and his apple. But there are also many well-documented accounts of inspiration ” or lack of it ” in the history of science. Among the most famous is the story of Rosalind Franklin and her non-discovery of the structure of DNA.

Franklin was an expert at getting x-ray diagrams from crystals of molecules. The idea is that the array of spots in the diagram will reveal how the atoms in the crystal are arranged. When Franklin started working on DNA, she obtained superb x-ray diagrams; one of her contemporaries described them as among the most beautiful of any substance ever taken. Indeed, it was from one of her diagrams that James Watson and Francis Crick deduced what the correct structure of DNA must be. (The picture was shown to Watson without Franklin’s knowledge.)

She had the data. Why didn’t she reach the solution? There are several answers to this; but one is that she had a fixed idea about how the problem should be solved. Namely, she wanted to work out the structure using the methods she had been taught. These methods are intricate, abstract, and mathematical, and difficult to use on a molecule as complex as DNA. Watson and Crick, meanwhile, were building physical models of what the diagram suggested the structure should be like ” an approach that Franklin scorned. What’s more, their first model was ludicrously wrong, something that Franklin spotted immediately. But they were willing to play; she wasn’t. In other words, she wouldn’t, or couldn’t, adopt a more intuitive, speculative approach.

Our ability to make scientific discoveries is limited in a number of fundamental ways. One is TIME: it’s hard to do good experiments that last for more than a few weeks. Experiments that run for years are rare; as a result, we know relatively little about long, slow processes. Another constraint is MONEY (no surprise there); a third is ETHICS (some experiments that would be interesting to do are ethically impossible). Some questions remain uninvestigated because no one stands to profit from the answers. Still others are neglected because they have no obvious bearing on human health or welfare, the areas of research are unfashionable, or the appropriate tools haven’t been invented yet. Some problems are just overwhelmingly complex.

But there’s one way in which we should not be limited: imagination. As Einstein put it, Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
Notes:

Why Rosalind Franklin didn’t solve the structure of DNA when she had the data has been much discussed; see, in particular, Maddox, B. 2002. Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA Harper Collins. See also, Judson, H. F. 1996. The Eighth Day of Creation: Makers of the Revolution in BiologyExpanded Edition. Cold Spring Harbor Press; and Watson, J. D. 2001. œThe Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA.Touchstone Press.
Many thanks to Daniel Brockert, Dan Haydon, Horace Judson and, especially, Gideon Lichfield, for insights, comments and suggestions.

http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/license-to-wonder/

New Flags & The Dance Of Mutual Enhancement
Further Explorations Of The Yin-Yang Symbol 
By Elizabeth Reninger, taoism.about.com/od/basicprinciples/a/Lanterns.htm

Pledging Allegiance
If someone were to sponsor a competition for the design of a planet-Earth flag, I would, for sure, submit the Taoist yin-yang symbol, as an emblem of relating with joyful sanity to pairs-of-opposites. Each time we gazed with devotion upon our planetary insignia, we could be pledging allegiance to the knowing that pairs of opposites exist – only and always – interdependently, in relation to each other, and that each always contains within itself the essence of the other.
This would include, for example, physical characteristics: big/small, long/short, young/old, beautiful/ugly, fat/skinny.
As well as moral attributions: right/wrong, good/bad, victim/tyrant, saint/sinner.
Directional distinctions: up/down, front/back, inside/outside, right/left.
And the biggies: attraction/repulsion, existence/non-existence, presence/absence, birth/death, self/other.
Posturing & In-Dependency
The way these pairs of opposites function is that one half has no meaning whatsoever – perceptually, cognitively or experientially – without the other half as its (conscious or unconscious) point of reference.
Why does this matter? Because we humans tend to spend a lot of time positioning ourselves: creating separate “me’s” and then positioning these “me’s” in relation to “others” – comparing and contrasting in terms of all sorts of categories, i.e. pairs of opposites. In other words, we invest a lot of energy in the placing of ourselves here rather than there – or in wishing ourselves to be there instead of here.
This habit/impulse is not inherently good or bad, right or wrong. Yet it seems to me that it can be engaged in, in more or less skillful ways -- which brings us back to our new planetary flag. This dance of choosing positions, striking a posture and then dissolving it, etc. can, potentially, be a playful, joyous manifestation of our creative impulses. It can express the insight represented visually in the yin-yang symbol: that each side only exists in relation to, and actually contains, its opposite. We can then allow the categories, the positions, and our “selves” to be what they necessarily are: fluid and relational.
A Dance Of Mutual Enhancement
Such a view makes all the difference in the world in terms of how we relate to the “others” (including past and future versions of our “selves”) who are currently occupying the “opposite” positions. Does our “success” depend upon someone else’s “failure”? Does our being “good” require someone else’s being “bad”?
At a purely linguistic level, the concept of “success” does indeed depend upon the concept of “failure”; as does the concept of “good” depend upon the concept of “bad.” They are interdependent, and because they are interdependent, it’s never an either/or situation. Either both are present, or neither is.
Yet to the extent that we develop and maintain a flexible mind -- in allegiance with the insights of our new yin-yang flag -- we can dance with these pairs of opposites in a way that is both individually empowering and mutually beneficial; which allows for each of us to be improving our individual circumstances, while at the same time remaining rooted in a paradigm of cooperation instead of competition. How does this work?
Lucky!
In terms of individual empowerment, moment by moment we can notice, for instance: If I’m feeling unlucky because I have a slight headache, or because I’m ten pounds overweight, it’s only because I’m comparing myself (consciously or unconsciously) to someone who doesn’t have a headache, or who is at their ideal weight. If instead I compare myself to someone who suffers from a migraine, or who is fifty pounds overweight, I could instead be feeling very lucky indeed!
A Continuum Of Devotion & Compassion
This might seem like an insignificant or obvious point, but in terms of generating a momentum of positive energy within our bodymind, it can be an extremely useful practice. Eventually, as we become more attuned to paradigms of cooperation and mutual enhancement, we’ll also be able to feel good about the good fortune of others. We’ll learn that:
(1) In relation to those who are currently occupying more desirable positions than our own, we can cultivate feelings of devotion, inspiration and sympathetic joy; rather than resentment or jealousy.
(2) In relation to those who are currently occupying less desirable positions than our own, we can cultivate feelings of compassion and a dedication to somehow share our good fortune; rather than repulsion, judgment or arrogance.
This is possible because we understand that the positions are not fixed, forever -- prisons within which we're perpetually trapped -- but rather are just playful (or playful-serious) points of view. And not only is change possible, but it is both inevitable and, in a sense, has already happened -- if we translate the spatial metaphor implied by the yin-yang symbol into its temporal equivalent.
One Body
We can be continually inspired by and devoted to (in the sense of appreciation and sympathetic joy) those who we see as somehow “better” than we are now. And at the same time, continually compassionate toward and willing to support those who we see as somehow “worse” than we are now. In this way, a continuum of energy – the life-blood of our shared Body of Truth (in which all pairs of opposites have found ultimate satisfaction in their mutual extinction) – flows and flows, supporting each of us in our unique and ever-unfolding manifestation.

WOW IDEAS #8 - Sounds, Piano, YinYang

2009-12-06T16:43:00.004-05:00

- THE 4 WAYS SOUND AFFECTS US - Playing sound effects both pleasant and awful, Julian Treasure shows how sound affects us in four significant ways. Listen carefully for a shocking fact about noisy open-plan offices.
http://www.ted.com/talks/julian_treasure_the_4_ways_sound_affects_us.html (6 min)

- PIANO-STAIRS (Video) How to get people to use the stairs and have FUN!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXh2n0aPyw (2 mins)

- THE WORLD’S 18 STRANGEST BRIDGES
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/transportation/4335705.html

- PLAYING FOR CHANGE – Music that can unites us worldwide.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xjPODksI08

- YIN YANG - Carl Jung and Neils Bohr (Article)

- DOG FOR SALE (Joke ...Fun)

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Julian Treasure: The 4 ways sound affects us

Playing sound effects both pleasant and awful, Julian Treasure shows how sound affects us in four significant ways. Listen carefully for a shocking fact about noisy open-plan offices.

Julian Treasure is the chair of the Sound Agency, a firm that advises worldwide businesses -- offices, retailers, hotels -- on how to use sound. He asks us to pay attention to the sounds that surround us. How do they make us feel: productive, stressed, energized, acquisitive? Treasure is the author of the book Sound Business and keeps a blog by the same name that ruminates on aural matters (and offers a nice day-by-day writeup of TEDGlobal 2009). In the early 1980s, Treasure was the drummer for the Fall-influenced band Transmitters.

http://www.ted.com/talks/julian_treasure_the_4_ways_sound_affects_us.html (6 min)

YIN YANG - Carl Jung and Neils Bohr
http://poeticinterconnections.org/2009/05/19/yin-yang-jung/

This classic Taoist emblem illustrates the dynamic relationship between yin and yang. Fundamental metaphysical compliments, these archetypes of passivity and activity, rest and energy, constantly flow into and back out of one another. And even when either one is dominating, a spot of the other remains—right in the middle. Together, yin and yang characterize the fundamental Tao: the full circle, ever in fluid motion.

Carl Jung was a pioneering psychologist who believed that the human personality was characterized by two similar elements: anima and animus. Anima is the Feminine, Connective and Passive element of the psyche, and animus is the Masculine, Discriminative and Active element. Jung taught that men’s psyches are balanced and “compensated” by their anima, and women’s by their animus. He further theorized that neither anima nor animus are directly perceivable on their own—only in interaction with a member of the opposite sex does a person’s corresponding gender archetype activate, coming clearly into view.

Jung thought anima and animus to be timeless expressions of the collective unconscious—the part of the psyche that transcends personal identity. He believed dream symbols, myths and other common human characteristics and patterns come from this shared field of consciousness. Anima and animus seem to me to be smoothly analogous with yin and yang. And Jung’s collective unconscious can be likened to the fundamental tao.

Let’s re-imagine the Tai Chi symbol, then, as an emblem depicting the human psyche—anima and animus swirling and interpenetrating, the full circle symbolizing the complete self in dynamic balance!

Neils Bohr, a primary architect of quantum theory, similarly re-imagined the Tai Chi in his Danish coat-of-arms, using it to represent another totality characterized by interdependent opposites: the quantum. Bohr’s principle of complementarity asserts that all quantum phenomena require two simultaneous types of description — one appropriate to waves, and one appropriate to particles. He developed this principle after experiments revealed that quanta display characteristics of both, which is an ongoing mystery, as waves and particles were previously thought to be mutually exclusive modes of matter.

Waves passively intermix when they encounter one another, making them analogous to yin and anima. Particles actively bounce off one another when they meet, or they break up into smaller particles. Either way, they remain discrete, like yang and animus.
Contemporary physicists theorize that all quanta spring from and share in a foundational field of physical energy known as the Zero Point Field. This field can be visualized either as a dense tapestry of interweaving waves, or a boiling body of water from which particles bubble up. The quantum ZPF is thus another wholeness with dual characteristics—like the tao, like Jung’s collective unconscious.

And so I’m led to ask these questions: Is science only recently discovering a fundamental reality that mystics and philosophers have intuited and experienced for millennia? Is physics confirming metaphysics?! And if so, should that strengthen our trust in less empirical ways of interpreting the world?

DOG FOR SALE

A guy is driving around the back woods of Montana and he sees a sign in
front of a broken down shanty-style house: 'Talking Dog For Sale ' He rings
the bell and the owner appears and tells him the dog is in the backyard.

The guy goes into the backyard and sees a nice looking Labrador retriever sitting there.

'You talk?' he asks.

'Yep,' the Lab replies.

After the guy recovers from the shock of hearing a dog talk, he says 'So, what's your story?'

The Lab looks up and says, 'Well, I discovered that I could talk when I was
pretty young. I wanted to help the government, so I told the CIA. In no time
at all they had me jetting from country to country, sitting in rooms with
spies and world leaders, because no one figured a dog would be eavesdropping.'
'I was one of their most valuable spies for eight years running. But the
jetting around really tired me out, and I knew I wasn't getting any younger
so I decided to settle down. I signed up for a job at the airport to do some
undercover security, wandering near suspicious characters and listening in.
I uncovered some incredible dealings and was awarded a batch of medals.' 'I
got married, had a mess of puppies, and now I'm just retired.'

The guy is amazed. He goes back in and asks the owner what he wants for the
dog.

'Ten dollars,' the guy says.

'Ten dollars? This dog is amazing! Why on earth are you selling him so cheap?'

'Because he's a liar. He never did any of that stuff.

WOW IDEAS #7 - Ad Man, Accidental Inventions, 40 Seconds

2009-11-13T22:54:00.004-05:00

RORY SUTHERLAND: LIFE LESSONS FROM AN AD MAN

Advertising adds value to a product by changing our perception, rather than the product itself. Rory Sutherland makes the daring assertion that a change in perceived value can be just as satisfying as what we consider “real” value -- and his conclusion has interesting consequences for how we look at life.

Rory Sutherland stands at the center of an advertising revolution in brand identities, designing cutting-edge, interactive campaigns that blur the line between ad and entertainment.

http://www.ted.com/talks/rory_sutherland_life_lessons_from_an_ad_man.html (16mins)

TOP 10 ACCIDENTAL INVENTIONS
http://science.discovery.com/brink/top-ten/accidental-inventions/inventions.html

WATCH “ONE YEAR IN 40 SECONDS” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmIFXIXQQ_E

EVOLUTION OF DANCE by Comedian JUDSON LAIPPLY
One of the most viewed YouTube videos ever ...128,205,135 views (128 millions)
The funniest 6 minutes you will ever see! Remember how many of these you have done!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMH0bHeiRNg&feature=related

WOW IDEA # 6 - Tribal, Singing Tree, Stuff

2009-10-10T12:42:00.003-04:00

DAVID LOGAN - TRIBAL LEADERSHIP
At TEDxUSC, David Logan talks about the five kinds of tribes that humans naturally form -- in schools, workplaces, even the driver's license bureau. By understanding our shared tribal tendencies, we can help lead each other to become better individuals.
David Logan is a USC faculty member, best-selling author, and management consultant
http://www.ted.com/talks/david_logan_on_tribal_leadership.html (16 Min)

DISCOVERY - A SINGING COTTONWOOD TREE

Dr. Bernie Krause, creator of Wild Sanctuary, demonstrates that every living organism produces sound. This presentation focuses on the symbiotic ways in which the sounds of one organism affect and interrelate with other organisms, local and regional, within a given habitat.

Learn about unusual soundscapes and their relevance to preserving natural sounds worldwide. Biophony--the notion that all sounds in undisturbed natural habitats fit into unique niches--will be used to illustrate the ways in which animals taught humans to dance and sing.
http://fora.tv/2009/09/22/Dr_Bernie_Krause_The_Great_Animal_Orchestra#Dr_Krause_Discovers_a_Singing_Cottonwood_Tree (2min)

THE STORY OF “STUFF” by Annie Leonard: The Material Economy of
1.Extraction 2.Production 3. Distribution 4. Consumption to 5. Disposal to Sustainable Production and Consumption.

Annie Leonard is the author and host of the online film, The Story of Stuff, a fast paced, fact filled expose on the hidden environmental and social costs of current systems of production and consumption. The film has become an internet phenomenon, generating over 6.5 million views in 200 countries and territories since its launch in December 2007. She is now working on a book version of the film, to be published by Free Press of Simon and Schuster in March 2010.

Annie is currently the Director of The Story of Stuff Project. Prior to this, most recently, Annie coordinated the Funders Workgroup for Sustainable Production and Consumption, a funder collaborative seeking to address the hidden environmental and social impacts of current systems of making, using and throwing away all the stuff of daily life.
She has also worked with GAIA (Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives), Health Care Without Harm, Essential Action and Greenpeace International.
Annie is currently on the boards of International Forum for Globalization and GAIA and has previously served on the Boards of the Grassroots Recycling Network, the Environmental Health Fund, Global Greengrants India and Greenpeace India. She did her undergraduate studies at Barnard College, Columbia University and graduate work in City and Regional Planning at Cornell, both in New York. She is currently based in the Bay Area, California.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLBE5QAYXp8&feature=fvst (21 min)

WOW IDEA # 5 The Business Logic of Sustainability

2009-09-30T11:02:00.000-04:00

RAY ANDERSON - THE BUSINESS LOGIC OF SUSTAINABILITY

At his carpet company, Ray Anderson has increased sales and doubled profits while turning the traditional "take / make / waste" industrial system on its head. In a gentle, understated way, he shares a powerful vision for sustainable commerce.
Ray Anderson's company makes Flor, the line that made modular carpet tile sexy. But behind the fresh design is a decades-deep commitment to sustainable ways of doing business –
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/ray_anderson_on_the_business_logic_of_sustainability.html 15 min

JOHN LLOYD - INVENTORIES THE INVISIBLE

Nature's mysteries meet tack-sharp wit in this hilarious, 10-minute mix of quips and fun lessons, as comedian, writer and TV man John Lloyd plucks at the substance of several things not seen.

John Lloyd helps make some of the cleverest television in the UK

http://www.ted.com/talks/john_lloyd_inventories_the_invisible.html (10 minutes)

KAMAL MEATTLE - HOW TO GROW FRESH AIR

Researcher Kamal Meattle shows how an arrangement of three common houseplants, used in specific spots in a home or office building, can result in measurably cleaner indoor air.

With its air-filtering plants and sustainable architecture, Kamal Meattle's office park in New Delhi is a model of green business. Meattle himself is a longtime activist for cleaning up India's air.

http://www.ted.com/talks/kamal_meattle_on_how_to_grow_your_own_fresh_air.html (4 minutes)

BRILLIANT 360-DEGREE PANORAMA OF THE MILKY WAY

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/panorama/

BEAUTIFUL-BLACK-AND-WHITE-PHOTOGRAPHY

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/09/09/beautiful-black-and-white-photography-2/

WOW IDEA # 4 A Kinder, Gentler Philosophy of Success

2009-09-30T11:00:00.001-04:00

A KINDER,GENTLER PHILOSOPHY OF SUCCESS

Alain de Botton examines our ideas of success and failure -- and questions the assumptions underlying these two judgments. Is success always earned? Is failure? He makes an eloquent, witty case to move beyond snobbery to find true pleasure in our work.
Through his witty and literate books -- and his new School of Life -- Alain de Botton helps others find fulfillment in the everyday.

http://www.ted.com/talks/alain_de_botton_a_kinder_gentler_philosophy_of_success.html (16 minutes)

WOW IDEA # 3 The Science of Motivation

2009-09-30T10:48:00.004-04:00

THE SURPRISING SCIENCE OF MOTIVATION

Career analyst Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don't: Traditional rewards aren't always as effective as we think. Listen for illuminating stories -- and maybe, a way forward.

Bidding adieu to his last "real job" as Al Gore's speechwriter, Dan Pink went freelance to spark a right-brain revolution in the career marketplace

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html 18 minutes

CONTEXTUAL-COMPARATIVE DECISION MAKING

Behavioral economist Dan Ariely, the author of Predictably Irrational, uses classic visual illusions and his own counterintuitive (and sometimes shocking) research findings to show how we're not as rational as we think when we make decisions.

It's become increasingly obvious that the dismal science of economics is not as firmly grounded in actual behavior as was once supposed. In "Predictably Irrational," Dan Ariely tells us why. (Fascinating – Informative - Funny ...)

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_asks_are_we_in_control_of_our_own_decisions.html 17 minutes

WOW IDEA # 2 A Stroke of Insight (a real stroke)

2009-09-30T10:46:00.004-04:00

This “WOW Idea” is about Jill Taylor, a brain scientist who lost her “Left-Brain” in a stroke and gained the “Bliss” of the “Right-Brain” at a price.

It shows that we need the “Left-Brain” as a MEANS to an End (to Function in the world effectively) but the GOAL seems to be the “Right-Brain” (Bliss, Wonder, Awe, Love ... all the things that make life worth living).

We seem to be a living “Dialectic”. Some of us are more “Right” and others of us more “Left”. Is the answer again ... “Balance”?

On the left, nothing's right, and on the right nothing is left :-)

Hope you enjoy this talk. Keep in touch

Andre de Zanger
212 289-8856
creativityinstitute@juno.com
Call me on Skype or Yahoo Messager

MY STROKE OF INSIGHT by JILL BOLTE TAYLOR:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html

About this talk

Jill Bolte Taylor got a research opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: She had a massive stroke, and watched as her brain functions -- motion, speech, self-awareness -- shut down one by one. An astonishing story.

About Jill Bolte Taylor

Brain researcher Jill Bolte Taylor studied her own stroke as it happened -- and has become a powerful voice for brain recovery

One morning, a blood vessel in Jill Bolte Taylor's brain exploded. As a brain scientist, she realized she had a ringside seat to her own stroke. She watched as her brain functions shut down one by one: motion, speech, memory, self-awareness. Amazed to find herself alive, Taylor spent eight years recovering her ability to think, walk and talk. She has become a spokesperson for stroke recovery and for the possibility of coming back from brain injury stronger than before. In her case, although the stroke damaged the left side of her brain, her recovery unleashed a torrent of creative energy from her right. From her home base in Indiana, she now travels the country on behalf of the Harvard Brain Bank as the "Singin' Scientist."

"How many brain scientists have been able to study the brain from the inside out? I've gotten as much out of this experience of losing my left mind as I have in my entire academic career."
Jill Bolte Taylor

WOW IDEA # 1 The difference between Liberals and Conservatives

2009-09-30T10:44:00.001-04:00

We have come across some fascinating “WOW” ideas on Creativity, Science, Philosophy, Sociology and Psychology, that I thought you might find interesting and useful in your life. Consider yourself a member of the new “WOW Idea” club.

Besides being interesting ideas, we think they need to be SIMPLE, USEFUL and be REMEMBERED . So, I have tried to synthesis and simplify these ideas down to 3 basic concepts: 1-2-3 or A-B-C.

Here is an example of the Dale Carnegie course. Many people have taken the Dale Carnegie course on “How to Win Friends and Influence People”. His book has sold over 12 Million copies and has been translated into 39 languages since 1929. So it must have some useful and valuable ideas in it. But when I ask people, who have taken the course, about its essence or the things they have learned from it, they go blank or can’t remember.

So, here is the “WOW Idea” for Dale Carnegie, in a simple acronym “I - AS”. Here are the three things, according to Dale Carnegie, that everybody wants and needs, and does not get enough of. Everybody wants to feel IMPORTANT, be APPRECIATED and get SYMPATHY. So try to practice “I – AS” with people by telling them that what they are doing is IMPORTANT to you. That you APPRECIATE what they are doing and that is it not easy to do “.........” or to be in that “........” situation (SYMPATHY). This, I think, is the bases of Dale Carnegie’s insights. “Give people what they want and need and you will win friends and influence them”.

Below is your first “WOW Idea” via a Video with a web Link and a short description about the Topic, Author and some of my Notes... Enjoy!

I would love to hear from you to discuss these ideas and keep in touch, so give me a call (212.289.8856 or Skype me at ... andre de zanger) or send an e-mail creativityinstitute@juno.com

If you come across a “WOW Ideas”, please send it to me so we can share them with others.

Of course, if you would rather not get these “WOW Ideas”, just e-mail me and I’ll remove you from the list.

I do hope to hear from you.

All the Best

Andre and Judy de Zanger

Here is a video/talk by Jonathan Haidt (18:42 min) on “The Moral Mind” - real difference between Liberals and Conservatives

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html

www.YourMorals.org (take the Test)

About this Talk:

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt studies the five moral values that form the basis of our political choices, whether we're left, right or center. In this eye-opening talk, he pinpoints the moral values that liberals and conservatives tend to honor most.
1. Harm 2. Fairness 3. Ingroup 4. Authority 5. Purity

About Jonathan Haidt:

Jonathan Haidt studies how -- and why -- we evolved to be moral. By understanding more about our moral roots, his hope is that we can learn to be civil and understanding of those whose morals differ from ours.

“WOW Idea” Notes: “5 Morals Foundations” of the Moral Mind

1. Harm / Care
2. Fairness / Reciprocity
3. Ingroup / loyalty
4. Authority / Respect
5. Purity / Sanctity

Or simplified into: (FA-PHI)

FAIRNESS
HARM
INGROUP
AUTHORITY
PURITY

Liberals value:

FAIRNESS
HARM
and
discount
INGROUP
AUTHORITY
PURITY

Conservatives value

FAIRNESS
HARM

And include

INGROUP
AUTHORITY
PURITY

Liberals Counter:
Ingroup ... Celebrate Diversity
Authority ... Question Authority
Purity ... Keep your laws off my body

The Answer or Solution is ... “Oneness” the integration of opposites ...Yin/Yang CHANGE (Shiva-destroyed) / STABILITY (Vishnu-preserver)

“If you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against. The struggle between “for” and “against” Is the minds worst disease”
Sent-ts’an 700 C.E.
(The same as Gnostic Gospel “When the two become one” Thomas 22)

Our Righteous Minds were “designed” to
-unite us into teams
-divide us against other teams and
-blind us to the truth

Andre and Judy

Idea: TRIZ Principle - "Action coordination"

2006-08-01T07:47:00.000-04:00

This trend describes the coordination of actions between components, systems, and their environments towards a common goal. Evolution is from non-coordinated action between subsystem, system, and super-system elements to increasing coordination and synergy between them. This measuring cup uses Action Coordination to allow you to measure and pour the liquid at the same time.

Source: http://www.creax.com/mailing/2006_02/newsletter.htm

Innovation: Angled Measuring Cups

2006-08-01T07:45:00.000-04:00

The company OXO has revolutionized liquid measuring with their new cups. A patented angled surface lets you read measurement markings by looking straight down into the cup and eliminates the need to fill, check and adjust the amount of liquid you are measuring. The handle is soft and non-slip for a firm grip. The bright measurement markings in convenient cup, ounce and millilitre denominations accommodate any recipe. They are available in 1/4 cup, 1-cup, 2-cup and 4-cup versions and they are dishwasher safe.

http://www.oxo.com