The app is called Next Bus available on the iTunes store.  It’s description goes something like this:   Ever wonder when the next bus is coming or what route to take? No more, with this free app you can visually pinpoint the location of  every incoming bus on a map as well as see an accurate estimate of arrival time. 

I’ve used it for a week now, works like a charm. Frees up my movement to walk a few extra blocks, or ten, rather than wait in the bus shelter on these cold winter days.

Wouldn’t it be great if life were like that, that there was an app that told you exactly what to expect and when in all spheres of your life?  One that pointed out routes from which to choose how to get to your desired destination? No guesswork, instead offering utter certainty and dependability and a guaranteed end location?

What do you think, would that be a blessing or curse?  Would having an app for your business or life’s destination help or hinder your creativity?

I’ve been struck by the amount of money we spend to support our carbon consuming habits – car, gas, new technology toys, etc. and wonder if the more money a person has, the more he or she uses carbon resources.

Imagination Experiment – take this quiz to see what your carbon footprint is now, then take it again imagining your income is, let’s say, cut by a third, just for fun. Then, find ways to creatively step through the carbon saving portal by choice. Post comments about what you discover.

Have project ideas for World Creativity and Innovation Week April 15 – 21?
Post them to: worldcreativity at groups.facebook.com

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• Reduce Your Carbon Footprint (davidsuzuki.org)
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• Himachal Pradesh in India To Be Carbon Neutral By 2020-DSDS 2012 (chimalaya.org)
• March on green warriors (thehindu.com)

Image via Wikipedia

The best time to use your imagination is when you feel confused.  Confusion occurs when familiar boundaries disappear.

The word confusion comes from two Greek words:  Con meaning with and fusion meaning two things melting together. Normally we know where one thing ends and another begins. We get confused when those separating lines or boundaries blur. That’s happening a lot these days.

Children have access to all the information they need without having to consult their elders for the first time in history.   Elders used to censor what the youth heard and saw, no longer though. The kids just go online. There’s a great deal of confusion among parents and governing bodies about how to watch and protect children.  The lines of educating them are a blur.

Anyone can to take tuition-free courses from post-secondary institutions.  Confusion over quality of education?  You bet. More lines are blurring.

We can use imagination to move forward instead of struggling to fit the new into the mold of the old. Wouldn’t it be great to redefine and/or create new definitions to replace ones used years ago that no longer serve. (Did you know our system of education was created 300 years ago?  Think it’s time for an upgrade?)

What’s great about all the confusion we’re experiencing right now is that we are all in it together. 

(I’ve a hunch that people who say they know for sure what’s coming next are putting on a brave face to mask the confusion they feel as certainties from the past tumble topsy-turvy.  No one is exempt. My favourite is when politicians say, “let me be perfectly clear” and promise a certainty in these boundary-blurring times.)

So let’s use our imagination to create new clarity, new understandings and new ideas. In doing so we’d drop the barriers that separate and collaborate as if we are all part of a whole system, representing different and valuable perspectives. We’d leverage collective and varied strengths to make the [world, organization, school, business, family, community, government]  a better place and to make our place in the [world, organization, school, business, family, community, government] better too.

World Creativity and Innovation Week is coming – April 15 – 21.  Wouldn’t that be a great time to use imagination to create something new?

Time and again the largest obstacle to moving innovation forward is getting people to say yes

• Books like the 1981 bestseller Getting to Yes show how to negotiate to achieve an affirmative response.
• New-idea handling strategies like the Angel’s Advocate show how to receive new thinking to harvest their intended and unintended value exist
• Television programs like Dragon’s Den (Canada) or Shark Tank (US) show how some entrepreneurs successfully pitch new products for investor worthiness.
  

  united states currency eye- IMG_7364_web (Photo credit: kevindean)

People keep saying no.  It’s like the story when I asked my anthropology professor Dr. Jill Nash how anthropologists would define creativity, “it’s bad manners,” she said. “Do something creative at the dinner table and you get your hand slapped.”

Are you familiar with responses people use that embody ‘the handslap’?  Some call them killer phrases:  cost too much, no room in the budget, it’ll get me fired, won’t work, tried that before, not intriguing enough, not well thought through, etc.

Many reasons for no, agree?  Values, frameworks, standards, ethics, identity, education (what people have learned is true), upbringing, taking care of family, lack of adequate details, the effort it would take, maintaining relationships, fear of loss, spiritual beliefs, measurement standards, peer pressure, and unconscious factors.  People may say no because to say yes would be irresponsible, boring, show incompetence, or subtract from one’s person meaning and significance.  The proposal may not fit other people’s vision of the future, their sense of safety and belonging, may detract from their sense of self-worth or belonging to a community.  All reasons are honourable; every one is absolutely right.

On one level when people say no, they are really saying, “We like status quo and want to keep things the way they are.”  Trouble is there ain’t no way status quo stays.  There’s too much evidence to prove the case. Consider shifts in social  (social networking), technological (smart phone anyone?), environmental (climate change), economic (where’s the US dollar at?) and political (Arab Spring) areas.  Take a look at your industry and name five new things that have come about in the recent past, also consider what’s coming in the next three years or so.  What new business models have emerged?  What new directions are you considering to met the challenge of external change mixing with internal drive?

With all the ‘no’ saying going on, how will the future we want to create emerge? What do you think it takes to get a yes?  Or is it even that cut and dry.

Might there be a third option we haven’t used or considered that lies somewhere outside of the yes/no conundrum? A place where creative ideas and proposals (aka new ideas and new decisions) might safely exist?

Have you ever wondered what the world would be like if the ratio of ‘no’ to ‘yes’ shifted?  Suppose more people said yes than no.  What might happen as a result?  What does that look like?

Suppose the reason you go to school, or to work, or to do anything is for you use your creativity and to contribute your unique gifts, talents, insights and skills in novel and appropriate ways.  What might that mean for you, your teachers, your employers, your clients, your governments?

Let’s pretend that creativity is what life is all about, and you want to stir your juices for an even fresher perspective than the one you have now, that you want to feel even more creative than you already are.  Here’s a simple tip: treat your brain.

Brains love exploring and connecting, making patterns and imitating, making new connections, being challenged and having a diversity of experience.  What’s one thing you can do to indulge your brain?  How might you help others treat their brains too?

World Creativity and Innovation Week is coming.  It’s April 15 – 21. Since 2002, people from all over the world celebrate in their own ways.  What might your celebration be in 2012?

Interesting Links

• The Creativity of Dual Process “System 1 Thinking (blogs.scientificamerican.com)
• Seven Strategies to Inspire and Nurture Creativity in Ourselves (psychologytoday.com)
• The Introversion-Creativity Link and the Role of “Alpha Power” (psychologytoday.com)
• 7 Deadly Sins of Creativity (marcandangel.com)

Enjoy

sourced from: The Psychology of Conformity from the Atlantic Magazine online

Related articles

• An easy way to understand innovation (creativityland.ca)

Here’s last year’s winner. Got me thinking about a creator’s high, wondered if the sensations are the same as the high runners experience. Ideas? Thoughts? Recollections? Insights?

For more info on the Getty Mishmash challenge Jan 19 – Feb 29, 2012

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• Get global bragging rights in Getty’s mashup contest (news.cnet.com)

Happy viewing.