GOOD NEWS! I've just been nominated as a "Top 5 Speaker" in the field of innovation & creativity by a prestigious speaker's bureau. Now the fun begins... and the voting.

If you have 30 seconds and feel that I have made a meaningful contribution to this field, click the link below, scroll down to #7, and check the box next to "Mitchell Ditkoff." Thanks!

Vote here

My bio

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 08:39 AM | Comments (0)

This is a mind blower -- the winner of Ukraine's "You Got Talent" award expressing the history of her country via sand animation. (Thanks to my son, Jesse, for the heads up).

Kseniya Simonova

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:19 AM | Comments (0)

One of the inevitable things you will hear at a brainstorming session is "there are no bad ideas." Well, guess what? There are plenty of bad ideas. Nazism, for instance. Arena football. Bow ties.

What well-meaning "keep hope alive" brainstorming aficionados really mean is this: Even bad ideas can lead to good ideas if the idea originators are committed enough to extract the meaning from the "bad."

Do you think that War and Peace was written in one sitting? No way. There were plenty of earlier drafts that were horrid, but eventually led to the final outcome.

The key for aspiring innovators? To find the value in what seems to be a "bad idea" and then use that extracted value as a catalyst for further exploration. The following technique, excerpted from Awake at the Wheel, shows you how...

HOW IT WORKS:

1. Bring a challenge, question, or problem to mind.
2. Conjure up a really bad idea in response to it.
3. Tell another person about your bad idea.
4. The other person thinks of something redeemable about your bad idea -- and tells you what it is.
5. Using this redeemable essence as a catalyst, the two of you brainstorm new possibilities.

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 06:59 AM | Comments (4)

Here are the top 100 netcentric learning tools as compiled by Jane Hart, social learning consultant and all around bright light.

Jane surveyed 278 top learning professionals to generate this list, so a good deal of thought and consensus has gone into it. Some of these tools you already know about. Some you don't.

And while you're at it, check out Idea Champions' Free the Genie (which...um...er...uh... didn't quite make the list this year).

Illustration

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 05:28 PM | Comments (0)

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 05:32 PM | Comments (0)

Tom Peters once said that unless 20% of a company's workforce was under the age of 20, they didn't have a chance.

I totally agree -- especially now that my kids, Jesse and Mimi, are 15 & 12.

Their creativity and resourcefulness blow my mind. See the image above? Photoshopped by Jesse, my son. If you have a photo or illustration that needs to be tweaked, repaired, refined, improved, or manipulated in any way, he's your guy. Forget about outsourcing to a 30-year old from Mumbai. How about a 15-year old from Woodstock? Faster, cheaper, and cooler.

Contact Jesse today: yumyum@hvc.rr.com.

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

Here are 14 ways to get breakthrough ideas, excerpted from my ChangeThis Manifesto, available here for downloading.

1. Follow your fascination
2. Immerse
3. Tolerate ambiguity
4. Make new connections
5. Fantasize
6. Define the right challenge
7. Listen to your subconscious
8. Take a break
9. Notice and challenge existing patterns and trends
10. Hang out with diverse groups of people
11. Brainstorm
12. Look for happy accidents
13. Use creative thinking techniques
14. Suspend logic

Additional catalysts for generating breakthrough ideas can be found here.

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 02:53 PM | Comments (1)