Airbus A380 Part 1

The Story of Airbus A380

Fosbury Flop - Do the Opposite of what is expected

Cultivating Innovation in the workplace

How can we go about cultivating innovation in our workplace? Get some inspiration and new ideas from the articles at:

Cultivating Workplace Innovation - Lessons from Google

Finding Opportunities for Innovation

Building Innovation Culture

What Innovation Is?

What's Wrong With the Traditional Thinking?

Learning to think rationally is critical but there are limitations with such thinking when we continue to depend on it when managing all our situation.However, once we recognise how to manage the process to our advantage you are in a winning position. Read the document below written by:Matthew E. May: Mind of the Innovator: Taming the Traps of Traditional Thinking


Mind of the Innovator

Managing Innovation

Diann Daniel who writes and edits CIO.com, argues that innovation requires a lot of planning and hard work. Her article titled 'Five steps to Managing Innovation' provide some interesting insight on how to manage innovation.


Five Steps to managing Innovation

Creativity & Innovation Video Clips

Creativity is about thinking new ideas for your products, services or process. Innovation is about making those ideas adding value to your business. Get a dose of creativity and innovation from the following link:


Creativity and Innovation

Creativity & Innovation Video Clips

Intersting video clips from UCTV. You will find useful.


Innovation & Creativity


Video clips on creativity and innovation from Standford

Creativity

Expanding the Innovation Horizon - IBM's The Global CEO Study 2006 report

According to the IBM Global CEO study 2006 is an document every manager should read. The document based on the study by IBM with Economist Intelligence Unit is based on interviews with 765 Chief Executives from around the world. The report offers a number of suggestions, including the following considerations that can help the business organizations to become more effective when embracing innovation:

• 'Think broadly, act personally and manage the innovation mix'.
• 'Make your business model deeply different'.
• 'Ignite innovation through business and technology integration'
• 'Defy collaboration limits'
• 'Force an outside look ... every time'.

In the past innovation was recognized as a critical strategy for developing products, services & new markets, as well as innovation that enhances operational efficiency. The Report citing the findings highlight the importance of business model innovation. Successful business corporations pay attention to all three areas of innovation . Business model, Operation and products/services & markets.

Anyone who is serious about incorporating innovation as a corporate strategy, must recognize the need to introduce systems in place that will encourage collaboration. The collaboration does not stop with team structure, an element of the new organisation design but extends to other critical stakeholders - customers and busines partners as well. The IBM report cites the customers and business partners as the main source for innovative ideas.

The changes in the organizational structure and establishing new strategic partnership are the two major areas of innovation under the business model of innovation. Why should anyone be interested in adopting business model of innovation? According to the report, the innovators of the business model enjoy a number of benefits, including cost reduction and strategic flexibility.

The operational innovations were generally aimed at making the business operations more responsive to ever customers. Operations that are slow, costly and that are no longer relevant are dumped. Successful operational innovators use IT and technology for optimum performance efficiency. The repost cites a number of successful corporate examples.

The life span of products and services are getting shorter. This would mean, organizations are under pressure to continue to innovative their products and services.

Anyone who want to survive, grow and continue to thrive in the global business environment should read the IBM report.

Expanding the Innovation Horizon

Happy reading.

John

Arul John Peter, co-owner of Centre for Creative Thinking, a training agency based in Singapore (www.creativityasia.com), facilitates training workshops on creativity and related soft skills for clients in Asia and Middle East. As a Trainer, John facilitates management seminars and workshops in the areas of Creative Thinking, Supervisory Skills for new managers, EQ Skills for Team Leaders, Customer Service Excellence, Managing Difficult Customers, Communication Skills, Change Management, Personal Development Workshops, and Public Speaking Skills. He holds an MBA and majored in strategic human resource management. He is a member of the American Creativity Association.

Creative Thinking - A Powerful Tool To Sustain Organisational Success

Since the publication of Thomas Friedman’s book ‘The World Is flat’ with accounts of the major changes that are happening at present, there is a renewed interest among business organizations about gaining and sustaining competitive advantage. Rapid changes in the IT, technology and communication put pressure on business firms to respond more promptly to the challenges. Managers and employees at all levels need to respond effectively to the threats and opportunities. It is the ability to think creatively on the part of the employees that is going to make all the difference.


To cope with the challenges created by the ‘World is Flat’ phenomenon, managers and employees need to become innovative in their thinking when seeking possible solutions to problems. There are several barriers we need to overcome when traveling on the road to success. The barriers relating to systems and people can be managed successfully only when we are prepared to tackle them through creative approaches. In the past we believed that knowledge is power. In the present flat world, it is the ability to imagine and seek creative and innovative solutions using the knowledge is the power. That is the way to sustain business success.


Organisations that are serious about becoming and sustaining their competitive advantage must be prepared to train and develop their employees to think creatively so that they can work on innovating the process, system, product and practices. Managers must incorporate the creative problem solving approach as part of their decision making process.


Creative thinking enables business organizations to think and merge information, existing ideas and practices into new ideas. Only then business firms can move on to convert the ideas into practical product or services. Creating the right work environment requires lot of effort and planning on the part of managers. Creative thinking is the powerful tool to garner and sustain your competitive advantage.

Creativity Test

We believe that we are creative. Is it possible to measure one's creativity? Despite the controversy, a number of tools are available to emasure your creativity. The follwoing site provides a FREE tool to measure your creativity.

Try it.

http://www.creax.com/csa/

After obtaining your score, please share your thoughts in this blog. We look forward to your comments.

If you want a more comprehensive along with suggestions on how to manage more creatively (and willing to spend US$70.00) then send an email to: info@creativityasia.com with your contact details. Request for a sample report (FREE) to find out more about the assessment. The US$ 70.00 assessment is offered FREE for in-house Creativity & Innovation workshop. For details email info@creativityasia.com


Enjoy the assessment.

Make Way For New Ideas

You are creative by nature. To bring out the creativity to the open you need to make an effort. Unless we learn how to take advantage of our creativity that lies within us, we will not be able to generate innovative ideas at our work.

We should be prepared to put the logical thinking on a hold, to take full advantage of our creative potential. To be creative also requires a different mindset. It is not necesary to be always be serious when seeking solutions. That is how we make way for new ideas.

Arul John
www.creativityasia.com

Go Here 4 More Ideas & Innovation

MoreInspiration( http://www.moreinspiration.com/) gathers innovations in products and technologies from all possible sectors and domains.The site lists almost 920 innovations from a whole range of industries. Access to the list requires a simple registration and it is worth the effort

Enjoy your visit. Who knows you may become inspired and that may lead to a new innovation.

John
http://www.creativityasia.com

Innovating the workplace through creative thinking

Every organisation need to change. Without change you will disappear. The question is after convincing the people in the organisation for the need to change, how do we go about bring in new ideas. It is at that point creative thinking becomes useful.It is going to be difficult to Think of new ideas. In situations such as this bring in an outside trainer/facilitator will be a good option.

Creative juice exists in all organisation. The ability to think creatively is a potential force that exists in all organisation. The challenge is to bring this out to the open. How do we go about making way for new ideas@the workplace.

Employees should be trained on creative thinking process, so that they are better equipped to bring our both novel and useful ideas. Ideas and processes developed need to be unique and offers a fresh perspective.

To make that possible managers should conduct training workshops for all their emploees on creative thinking skills. Only then the potential can be harvested to the full. bring out a shift in the mindset. You can make creativity at work successful.

Learning from the Experts

Roger Von Oech is a well known author on creativity. A whack on the side of the head is a must read if you want to reorientate your mindset. He uses fun ideas to stimulate creativity. You will find his blog
http://blog.creativethink.com/ a wonderful site to visit.


Another useful site one should visit to learn more about creativity and innovation is:
http://www.thinksmart.com

Are You Creative?

The author, Thomas W Dombroski in his book titled 'Illustrated Creative Problem Solving - The Door to progress and Change', states that creative people have certain traits in common. Some of these common characteristics of creative people include the following:

- don't give up easily and persistent in their efforts.
- works with goals and operate as doers
- Has insight over issues
- have driving force
- Don't worry about what other people think

A quick personal reflection is all you need to find out if you are creative. If you can identify with the above qualities or traits then you are creative. After all, all of us are creative.

A Creative person doesn't care what other people think. Creative person knows that once you are afraid of how others will see you, you will loose the ability to think creative. Normally people who are concerned about 'looking silly' tend to have certain fixed ideas and operate on assumptions. How about you?

John
www.creativityasia.com

Why are we reluctant to Think Creatively?

While most of the organisations recognise the power of creative thinking, most of are equally reluctant to take the first step towards thinking creatively. Ernie Schenck, in his book titled 'The Houdini Solution: Put Creativity and Innovation to Work by Thinking INSIDE THE BOX' list 5 fears that keep us frombeing creative. They are:

- Fear of failing

- Fear of succeeding

- Fear of Change

- Fear of going broke

- Fear of Time

We need to manage one fear at a time. That will make it easier. Accept the fact that it require some effort on your part to see meaningful result.

John
www.creativityasia.com

Thinking Creatively in the Box

Almost most trainers and workshop facilitators emphasise the need to think outside the box. In reality, that is not possible. If you are an employee in an organisation, you have not much choice but to follow its process, procedures and policies. In other words, you have to THINK while remaining INSIDE that box. Is it possible to THINK creatively and INNOVATE while still remaining in the box. The answer is YES.

We offer creativity workshops and facilitation sessions to employees in Asia and Middle East. For a complete list of courses we offer visit

www.creativityasia.com

New Way of THINKING for New IDEAS

Is it possible to bring out new ideas, while still thinking in your normal style? Unless you adopt a new innovative approach in your thinking style, you will not experience new ideas. The real competitive advantage comes from the people - employees in the organisation make all the difference. Unless we train the employees to view, interpret and respond their day-to-operation, we will not experience any progress.

The Centre for Creative Thinking, a Singapore based training service provider is offering workshops on creativity and related soft skills for clients in Asia and Middle east.

Visit my website: www.creativityasia.com

John

Thinking Creatively

We are trained to think straight. Rational and logical thinking dominates our decision making. Is there a place for thinking differently when managing problems? Should employees and managers learn to think creatively? Is it possible to think clearly and remain focused when our thinking style shifts from the logic to creative level? If we wish to see meaningful changes in the way we manage our organisations and our work, we should be prepared to think creatively. Our day-to-day thinking can benefit from creative thinking.

Can we learn to think creatively?

John
www.creativityasia.com