May 07, 2008
Top 100 Amazon Reviewer Favorably Compares "Awake at the Wheel" to "Who Moved My Cheese?"

This just in from Thomas Duff, Top 100 Amazon reviewer:

Awake at the Wheel: Getting Your Great Ideas Rolling (in an Uphill World) can, in my opinion, be compared to the classic "Who Moved My Cheese?". Ditkoff does for creativity what Johnson and Blanchard did for living with change... It gives the reader a short, humorous story loaded with meaning and concepts that hit the reader right where they live.

Ditkoff explores the world of ideas and creativity though the story of Og. Og is a caveman who spends more time thinking than the average Neanderthal. He stumbles upon the concept of a circle, and becomes obsessed with what it could mean to the group. Of course, most of his fellow cavemen are more concerned about maintaining the status quo... hunting, eating, staying warm.

Og takes a journey to talk with a wise one, and from that trip the wheel is born. But even then, others in his clan are more interested in shooting it down as something that will never work. But one person does figure out the practical application, and pretty soon everyone is "rolling along" with the greatest thing since dried mammoth...

I really did like this book.

Taking the concept of ideas and putting them in caveman terms freshens up what could be just another book on creativity. At the end of the book are 35 "tools" you can use to spur your own idea machine, as well as how best to make sure these fleeting thoughts don't disappear like smoke from a campfire.

Like many companies have done with "Cheese", this should be a mass purchase, handed out to all employees, and then discussed in team meetings. Those who are into this genre will love it, and the Neanderthals who are cynical will likely spend the 30 minutes or so it should take to read it.

And they might even come out of that experience as the new Og of your organization.

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 03:11 PM | Comments (0)

May 05, 2008
Synchronicity, Cavemen, Beer, and the Invention of the Wheel

I've always been fascinated by the concept of "synchronicity" -- the phenomenon of things happening at the same time for no apparent reason. Some people think of this as mere "coincidence" -- the chronological equivalent of a thousand monkeys typing on a thousand typewriters and eventually coming up with a good book. Others see more esoteric forces at work. Carl Jung, for example.

No matter what your point of view, I still think it's pretty cool that there's been an explosion of caveman ads (and tv shows) in recent months -- just in time to set the scene for the appearance of my new book. Bud Lite, Geico, and Fedex have all gotten into the act. I'd like to tip my hat to all these fine organizations for getting cavemen into the consciousness of the book buying public in time for the May release of Awake at the Wheel.

Take a look at the most recent example: Bud Lite's superbowl ad.

Of course, all my philosophizing about synchronicity, Carl Jung, beer, and thousands of monkeys could simply be the work of a modern day Neanderthal -- me -- an over-caffeinated biped with a highly mortgaged home in Woodstock, New York, instead of a cave on the plains.

But who cares? The book is still good -- a great way to get out of the cave and radically increase your chances of manifesting your most inspired ideas.

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 02:22 PM | Comments (0)

April 30, 2008
INNOVATION is an INSIDE JOB

These days, almost all of my clients are talking about the need to establish a sustainable culture of innovation.

Some, I am happy to report, are actually doing something about it. Hallelujah! They are taking bold steps forward to turn theory into action. My hat is off to all of them -- and sometimes, my head. Nevertheless, the challenge remains the same for them as it does thousands of other forward-thinking companies and that is, to find a simple, authentic way to address the challenge from the inside out -- to water the root of the tree, not just the branches.

In other words, to get down to the essential DNA of what drives innovation.

In today's process-driven, OD-centric, Six-Sigma savvy organization, the tendency is to focus on systems as opposed to people -- as if systems were sufficient to guarantee change. Guess what? Systems are not sufficient to guarantee change. In the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes, "Systems die. Instinct remains."

One only has to tune into the latest Democratic or Republican TV debate to see the folly of our national addiction to systems. Every candidate promising change has a plan, a strategy, and a well-conceived policy. But history has shown that these are never sufficient.

This is not to say that organizations should ignore systems and structures in their effort to establish a culture of innovation. They shouldn't. Indeed, this is a big part of what Idea Champions does -- help its clients think through the kind of systems and structures that support the creation of a culture of innovation.

But alas, systems and structures all too often become the Holy Grail -- much in the same way that Six Sigma has become the Holy Grail.

Unfortunately, when the addiction to systems and structures rules the day, an organization's quest for a culture of innovation all too often degenerates into nothing much more than a cult of innovation.

Organizations do not innovate. People innovate. Inspired people. Fascinated people. Creative people. Committed people. That's where innovation begins. On the inside.

The organization's role -- just like the individual manager's role -- is to get out of the way. And while this "getting out of the way" will undoubtedly include the effort to formulate supportive systems, processes, and protocols, it is important to remember that systems, processes, and protocols are never the answer. They are the context, not the content. They are the husk, not kernel. They are the menu, not the meal.

Ultimately, organizations are faced with the same challenge that religions are faced with. Religious leaders may speak passionately, on Sundays, about the virtues their congregation needs to be living by, but sermons only name the challenge and remind people to experience something -- they don't necessarily change behavior. Change comes from within the heart and mind of each individual. It cannot be legislated.

What's needed, quite simply, in organizations who aspire to a culture of innovation, is an inner change. InnerVation is what I call it. People need to experience something within themselves that will spark and sustain their effort to innovate -- and when they experience this "something," they will be self-sustaining. They will think about their projects in the shower, in their car, and in their dreams. They will need very little "management" from the outside. Inside out will rule the day -- not outside in. Intrinsic motivation will flourish. People will innovate not because they are told to, but because they want to. Open Space Technology is a good metaphor for this. When people are inspired, share a common, compelling goal and have the time and space to collaborate, the results become self-organizing.

In the case of my clients, the change they are seeking is "more robust innovation" -- the kind that favorably impacts the bottom line. What does this require? A favorable change within each individual employee. As above, so below. The "Holographic Universe," it has been called.

You can create all the reward systems you want. You can reinvent your workspace until you're blue in the face. You can license the latest and greatest idea management tool, but unless each person in your organization OWNS the need to innovate and finds a way to tap into their own INNATE BRILLIANCE, all you'll end up with is a mixed bag of systems, processes, and protocols -- the husk, not the kernel -- the innovation flotsam and jetsam that the next administration or next CEO or next key stakeholder will mock, reject or change at the drop of a hat if the ROI doesn't show up in the next 20 minutes.

You want culture change? You want a culture of innovation? Great. Then find a way to help each and every person in your organization come from the inside out. Deeply consider how you can awaken, nurture, and develop the primal need all people have to create something extraordinary.

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 10:58 AM | Comments (3)

April 18, 2008
24,000 Year Old Cave Man Invites You to a Book Signing in Woodstock

See that Neanderthal to your left? That's Og, the mythical inventor of the wheel and the hero of Mitch Ditkoff's new book which hits the book stores on May 1.

In honor of Og, I am inviting you to the book signing at the Golden Notebook in Woodstock, NY, Saturday, April 26th, 5:00 - 7:00 pm.

Here's what Og has to say about the book signing:

Morkel noophpa umphh! Kiaww noofti agu. Brrpp. Obama! Rok. Remu! Ditkoff sumphfta jabu.

Translation?

"Hey bipeds with Blackberries and cash flow problems! You don't even need to know how to read to enjoy a book signing! Free wine! Free cheese! The tribe reconvenes! And Mitch Ditkoff, who has recently developed full use of both opposable thumbs, will be signing books. Or eating crackers. Or talking too much.

Bring a friend. Bring two. Really, you don't have to buy a single book if you don't want to. Just come and be part of the fun.

And support the fabulous Golden Notebook!

If you want to listen to Mitch's two minute rap about the book, click here.

PS: If you can't make it to the book signing, so be it. You can still buy a copy here.

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 07:58 PM | Comments (0)

April 10, 2008
If You Want a Breakthrough, Take a Break

True innovators rarely follow the straight and narrow path. Not only do they march to a different drummer, they're often not even on the same playing field as most people.

Take Seymour Cray, for example, the legendary designer of high-speed computers.

According to John Rollwagen, ex-chairman of Cray research, Seymour Cray used to divide his time between building the next generation super computer and digging an underground tunnel below his Chippewa Falls house.

Cray's explanation of his tunnel digging behavior is consistent with the stories of many other creatives -- inner-directed, boundary-pushing people who understand the need to go off-line whenever they get stuck.

Bottom line, whenever they find themselves struggling with a thorny problem, they walk away from it for a while.

They know, from years of practical experience, that more (i.e. obsession, analysis, effort) is often less (i.e ideas, solutions, results).

Explained Cray, "I work for three hours and then get stumped. So I quit and go to work in the tunnel. It takes me an hour or so to dig four inches and put in the boards. You see, I'm up in the Wisconsin woods, and there are elves in the woods. So when they see me leave, they come back into my office and solve all the problems I'm having. Then I go up (to my lab) and work some more."

Explained Rollwagen, "The real work happens when Seymour is in the tunnel."

Many thanks to Chuck Frey for linking to our 100 Simple Ways to Be More Creative on the Job list on his excellent InnovationTools blog.

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 09:55 PM | Comments (0)

April 07, 2008
100 Simple Ways to Be More Creative on the Job

Have you ever noticed America's strange fascination with lists? Cruise any supermarket magazine rack and you will invariably notice some version of the following:

"5 Sure-Fire Ways to Find Your Soul Mate"
"10 Ways to Profit from the Recession"
"50 Ways to Retire Before 40"
"The 100 Best Companies to Work For"

For years I ignored this phenomenon. Then I mocked it. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Perfect sense.

Lists simplify.
Lists cut to the chase.
Lists help people make sense of the world.

And in today's world, where the collective sum of printed knowledge is doubling every four years, anything that helps simplify life -- without oversimplifying it -- is a good thing.

And so, in honor of America's love of lists, the little known patron saint of the phenomenon, and your own commitment to innovation, I cheerfully present to you Idea Champions' time-tested, easy-to-read, highly compelling, imminently practical 100 Ways to Be More Creative on the Job.

1. Find the most creative people at work and ask for their ideas.
2. Brainstorm daily with a co-worker.
3. Tape record your ideas on your commute to and from work.
4. Present your biggest challenge to a child.
5. Take your team off-site for a day.
6. Listen more carefully to your inner muse.
7. Play music in your office.
8. Go for a daily brainstorming walk.
9. Ask someone to collaborate with you on your favorite project.
10. Exercise during your lunch break.
11. Turn on a radio at random times and listen for a "message."
12. Invite your customers and vendors to brainstorming sessions.
13. Think of five other ways to define your challenge.
14. Assign a "fun fairy" to each of your meetings.
15. Reward yourself, in specific ways, for small successes.
16. Introduce odd catalysts into your daily routine.
17. Get out of the office more regularly
18. Play with fun toys in your office whenever you get stuck.
19. Take more naps.
20. Take the train, instead of driving to work.
21. Work in cafes.
22. Transform your assumptions into "How can I?" questions.
23. Write down as many ideas as you can think of in five minutes
24. Redesign your office.
25. Take regular daydreaming breaks.
26. Dissolve turf boundaries.
27. Initiate cross-functional brainstorming sessions.
28. Arrive earlier to the office than anyone else.
29. Turn a conference room into an upbeat "think tank" room.
30. Read odd books -- having nothing to do with your work.
31. Block off time on your calendar for creative thinking.
32. Take a shower in the middle of the day.
33. Keep an idea notebook at your desk or in your briefcase.
34. Decorate your office with inspiring quotes and images.
35. Create a headline of the future and the story behind it.
36. Choose to be more creative.
37. Recall a time in your life when you were very creative. Feel it.
38. Wander around a bookstore while thinking about a challenge.
39. Trust your instincts more.
40. Immerse yourself in your most exciting project.
41. Open a magazine and free associate off of a word or image.
42. Write down your ideas when you first wake up in the morning.
43. Ask yourself what the simplest solution is.
44. Get fast feedback from people you trust.
45. Conduct more experiments.
45. Ask yourself what the market wants or needs.
46. Ask "What's the worst thing that could happen if I fail?"
47. Pilot your idea, even if it's not completely ready.
48. Work "in the cracks" -- small bursts of creative energy.
49. Incubate (sleep on it).
50. Test existing boundaries -- and then test them again.
51. Schedule time with the smartest people at work.
52. Visit your customers more frequently.
53. Benchmark your competitors -- then adapt their successes.
54. Enroll your boss or peers in your most fascinating project.
55. Imagine you already know the answer. What would it be?
56. Create ground rules with your team that foster new thinking.
57. Ask stupid questions. Then ask some more.
58. Challenge everything you do.
59. Give yourself a deadline -- and stick to it
60. Look for three alternatives to every solution you originate.
61. Write your ideas in a notebook and review them regularly.
62. Make connections between seemingly disconnected things.
63. Use creative thinking techniques.
64. Play with the Free the Genie cards.
65 Use similes and metaphors when describing your ideas.
66. Have more fun. Be sillier than usual.
67. Ask "How can I accomplish my goal in half the time?"
68. Take a break when you are stuck on a problem.
69. Think of how your biggest hero might approach your challenge.
70. Declare Friday afternoons a "no-email zone."
71. Ask five people how they would improve your idea.
72. Create a wall of images that inspires you.
73. Do more of what already helps you be creative off the job.
74. Laugh more, worry less.
75. Remember your dreams -- then write them down.
76. Ask impossible questions.
77. Eliminate all unnecessary bureaucracy and admin tasks.
78. Create a compelling vision of what you want to accomplish.
79. Work on hottest project every day, even if only 5 minutes.
80. Do whatever is necessary to create a sense of urgency.
81. Go for a walk anytime you're stuck.
82. Meditate or do relaxation exercises.
83. Take more breaks.
84. Go out for lunch with your team more often.
85. Eat lunch with a different person each day.
86. Ask for forgiveness, not permission.
87. Invite an outside facilitator to lead a brainstorming session.
88. Take more risks outside of the office (i.e. surf, ski, box etc.)
89. Ask for help when you need it.
90. Know that it is possible to make a difference.
91. Find a mentor.
92. Acknowledge all your successes at the end of each day.
93. Create an "idea piggy bank" and make deposits daily.
94. Have shorter meetings.
95. Try the techniques in Awake at the Wheel
96. Don't listen to or watch the news for 24 hours.
97. Make drawings of your ideas.
98. Bring your project or challenge to mind before going to bed.
99. Divide your idea into component parts. Then rethink each part.
100. Post this list near your desk and read it daily.

NOTE: If your favorite way to be more creative on the job is not included on the above list, you may want to enter Idea Champions' First Annual 100 Ways to Be More Creative on the Job contest by clicking on the comment link below.

Prizes will be awarded in the following FIVE categories:

1. Most Intriguing Suggestion
2. Funniest
3. Most Likely to Start a Revolution
4. Wished We Thought of It First
5. Biggest Bang for the Buck

KIND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS TO: Anne Howe, David Beath, Jim Aubele, Gary Kvistad, Howard Moody, Farrell Reynolds, Hector Cruz Rosa, Jill Peckinpaugh, and Marcy Turkington for their wonderful suggestions.

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 01:16 AM | Comments (4)

April 02, 2008
The Romance of Creativity

For those of you trying to bring something new and original into the world, know this:

The creative process is very much like a relationship.

And like most relationships, it usually begins with fascination -- that curious state of mind (and heart) that keeps us spellbound, charmed and aroused.

Bottom line, whenever a person gets a new idea, a kind of romance begins. We become absorbed. Intoxicated. Smitten. Indeed, for many of us, just thinking about a new idea is an aphrodisiac. It turns us on, psyches us up, and otherwise makes it very hard to eat, sleep, or obsess about cash flow.

While some people involved in a new relationship are able to sustain the accompanying excitement for months, most of us are less fortunate. Indeed, it's the rare person who knows how to savor and expand upon this feeling for years.

Ditto with the creative process.

After the intoxication of the initial encounter wears off, a less-than-incredible reality sets in. Where once we saw only beauty and possibility, now we see only blemishes on our high ideal. To make matters worse, some people, at this stage of the process, begin to experience a crippling kind of performance anxiety.

"Will I be good enough to achieve my goal?" they ask. "Do I have what it takes?" "Can I really pull it off?" Call it doubt if you like, but any way you slice it, the honeymoon is over.

What routinely follows (as it does in most romances) is a painful period of re-evaluation.

"Is this really what I want to be doing with my time?" we ask ourselves on the way to the refrigerator. "Is this really worth all the effort?"

Long-buried fears of being consumed by the "other" surface, driving us into withdrawal and self-analysis. Instead of enjoying the outpouring of creative energy that accompanies a new idea, we study it. We talk about it. We control it. Anything but let go to it.

Before you know it, the ever popular approach/avoidance stage is upon us. On Monday we're totally absorbed in our new venture. On Friday, we're sure it's a humongous waste of time.

But that's not all. The plot, like an unattended bowl of oatmeal, soon thickens. Instead of maintaining our commitment to our new idea, we begin having flings. We flirt with other ideas, other possibilities, and other new loves. We get into everything and anything -- whatever it takes not to sustain our ongoing relationship with our original inspiration.

Is there hope? Is there any possibility for all the creative thinkers on planet Earth to actually manifest their inspired ideas?

You bet there's hope. And something a lot more powerful -- awareness. Simply by paying attention to the games you play to protect yourself (from failure or success) will go a long way towards making magic happen.

To begin with, understand that all romances, no matter how inspiring, are temporary. The trivial ones simply end. The good ones mature, often growing into committed relationships -- even marriages.

If you are really serious about your current hot idea or venture, be willing to get closer to it. Be willing to go from the romance stage to an intimate relationship. Understand what the creative process is -- an impossible-to-deny encounter with yourself -- your fears, your power, your vision, and what drives you to play the game of life.

Be willing to see your new venture as it is -- with all its blemishes, quirks, and vagary. Know that you will have your falling out periods and your disagreements. Know that you will sometimes feel like a fraud. Know also that the fuel for many creative breakthroughs has not only been passion, purpose, and power, but also confusion, conflict, and collapse.

It's normal. It's human. It's part of the process.

So please, be gentle with yourself. Be patient. Breathe deep. And above all, do whatever you can -- day or night, rich or poor, male or female, manager or managee -- to put the elation back into your relationship to creativity.

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 07:09 AM | Comments (0)

March 29, 2008
Managers Need to Become Innovation Coaches

The root of the word "manager" comes from the same root as the words "manipulate" and "maneuver", meaning to "adapt or change something to suit one's purpose".

Although these words may carry a pejorative meaning for some of us, there is nothing inherently wrong with them. Indeed, into each life a little manipulation and maneuvering must fall. For example, if the door to your office gets stuck, a handyman might need to manipulate it to get it working again. If there is a log jam at the elevator, you might decide to maneuver around the crowd and take the stairs. No problem there.

However, there is another kind of manipulation and maneuvering that is a problem -- when managers use their position to bend subordinates to their will. While short-term gains may result, in the end the heart is taken out of people. Your staff may become good soldiers, but they will lose something far more important in the process -- their ability to think for themselves. General George Patton said it best, "Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity."

Unfortunately, ingenuity in many corporations has gone the way of the hula-hoop. "Intellectual capital" is the name of the game these days -- and it is the enlightened manager's duty to learn how to play. Only those companies will succeed whose people are empowered to think for themselves and respond creatively to the myriad of changes going on all around them.

Simply put, managers must make the shift from manipulators to manifesters. They must learn how to coach their people into increasingly higher states of creative thinking and creative doing. They must realize that the root of their organization's problem is not the economy, not cycle time, not strategy or outsourcing, but their own inability to tap into the power of their workforce's innate creativity.

Where does this empowerment start? First, by recognizing what power is: "the ability to do or act". And second, by realizing that power is intimately connected to ideas. Clearly, one's ability to "do or act" depends on there being something worth doing or acting upon. What is an idea? Where does it come from? And how can a manager increase the chances of a good one showing up?

Most managers, unfortunately, perceive new ideas as problems -- especially if the ideas are not their own. Bottom line, they don't pay enough attention to the ideas of the people around them. They say they want to innovate. They say they want "their people" to do something different. But they do precious little to support their subordinates in their efforts to do so. They foist their ideas on others and can't figure out why things aren't happening faster.

That's not how change happens. If people are only acting out somebody else's ideas, it's only a matter of time before they feel discounted, disempowered and... well...just plain dissed. People are more than hired hands; they are hired minds and hearts, as well.

Let's start with the basics.

Everything you see around you began as an idea. The computer. The stapler. The paperclip, the microchip and the chocolate chip. All of these began as an idea within someone's fevered imagination. The originators of these ideas were on fire. Did they have to be "managed?" No way. In fact, if they had a manager, he or she would have done well to get out of the way.

If you want to empower people, honor their ideas. Give them room to challenge the status quo. Give them room to move -- and, by extension, move mountains. Why? Because people identify most with their ideas. "I think therefore, I am" is their motto. People feel good when they're encouraged to originate and develop ideas. It gives their work meaning, makes it their own, and intrinsically motivates.

Who has the power in an organization? The people who are allowed to think for themselves and then act on their ideas! Who doesn't have power? The people who have to continually check-in with others.

Think about it. The arrival of a new idea is typically accompanied by a wonderful feeling of upliftment and excitement -- even intoxication. It's inspiring to have a new idea, to intuit a new way of getting the job done. Not only does this new idea have the potential to bring value to the company, it temporarily frees the idea originator from their normal habits of thinking. A sixth sense takes over, releasing the individual from the gravity of status quo thinking.

In this mindset, the idea originator is transported to a more expansive realm of possibility. All bets are off. The sky's the limit. All assumptions are seen for what they are -- limited beliefs with a history, but no future.

If you are a manager, you want people in this state of mind. It is not a problem. It is not the shirking of responsibility. It is not a waste of time. On the contrary, it's the first indicator that you are establishing a company culture that is conducive to innovation.

This is not to say, of course, that you have to fund every idea that comes your way. On some level, ideas are a dime a dozen -- and only a handful of them are ever going to amount to much. But if you treat all ideas as if they are worthless, you will never find the priceless ones. Creativity, you see, is often a numbers game. Einstein had plenty of bogus theories. Mozart wrote some crap. But they continued being prolific. And it was precisely this self-generating spirit of creation, which enabled them to access the good stuff.

You, as a manager, want to increase the number of new ideas being pitched to you. It's that simple. You want to create an environment where new ideas are popping all the time. If you do, old problems and ineffective ways of doing things will begin dissolving. This is the hallmark of an empowered organization -- a place where everyone is encouraged and empowered to think creatively. Within this kind of environment managers become coaches, not gatekeepers.

"Coaching", of course, has been widely written about and there are many fine books on the subject. What hasn't been written about very much is how to become an "innovation coach" -- how to create the kind of environment that elicits the hidden genius of the people around you. It's one thing to tell people "you want their ideas", it's quite another to create the kind of environment that makes this rhetoric real.

Creativity cannot be legislated. It cannot be sustained by mission statements and pep talks. What needs to happen is you, as a manager, need to change the way you relate to people. Each encounter you have with another in the workplace needs to quicken the likelihood that their unexpressed ideas will get a fair hearing -- enabling a far greater percentage of them to eventually take root.

How does a manager do this?

First off, by expressing a lot of positive regard. Get interested! Pay attention! Be present to the moment! This is not so much a technique as it is a state of mind. Simply put, if your head is always filled with your own thoughts and ideas, there won't be any room left to entertain the thoughts and ideas of others. It's a law of physics. Two things cannot occupy the same place at the same time.

Here's an example: Let's say someone comes up to you in the middle of the day and says something like, "I have this great idea for a new product that will generate over $200 million for our company."

The first thing you need to do is realize the opportunity you have. An idea is about to be shared, one that may herald a breakthrough or, at the very least, solve a problem, capitalize on an opportunity, or make your life easier. Your willingness to sit up and take notice needs to be just as strong as if a customer were to call and complain. If possible, drop what you're doing, focus all of your attention on the idea generator, take a deep breath, and begin a series of questions that demonstrate your interest. If you cannot drop what you are doing, schedule some time -- as soon as possible -- for the idea originator to pitch you.

And whether the pitch is now or later, your response -- in the form of exploratory questions -- needs to be as genuine as possible. Consider some of the following openers:

* "That sounds interesting. Can you tell me more?"
* "What excites you the most about this idea?"
* "What is the essence of your idea - the core principle?"
* "How do you imagine your idea will benefit others?"
* "In what ways does your idea fit with our strategic vision?"
* "What information do you still need?"
* "Who are your likely collaborators?"
* "Is there anything similar to your idea on the market?
* "What support do you need from me?"
* "What is your next step?"

Basically, you want the idea originator to talk about their idea as much as possible in this moment of truth. An idea needs to first take form in order to take root, and one of the best ways of doing this is to encourage the idea originator to talk about it -- even if their idea is not yet fully developed. The telling of the idea, in fact, is not unlike someone telling you their dream. The telling helps the dreamer flesh out the details of what they imagined and the subsequent hearing of it firmly installs it in their memory -- and yours -- so the idea does not fade quite as quickly.

Most of us, however, are so wrapped up in our own ideas that we rarely take the time to listen to others. Your subordinates know this and, consequently, rarely share their ideas with you. But it doesn't have to be this way. And it won't necessarily require a lot of time on your part. Some time, yes. But not as much as you might think.

Bottom line, the time it takes you to listen to the ideas of others is not only worth it -- the success of your enterprise depends on it. Choose not to listen and you will end up frantically spending a lot more time down the road asking people for their ideas about how to save your business from imminent collapse. By that time, however, it will be too late. Your workforce will have already tuned you out.

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 07:14 AM | Comments (0)

March 17, 2008
Are You an Idea Addict?

There are lots of things in this world that people get addicted to: alcohol, nicotine, heroin, sex, and Blackberries just to name a few. But perhaps the biggest addiction, one that often flies in under the radar, is the addiction to OUR OWN IDEAS.

Here's how it works: We think something up. We feel a buzz. We embrace the idea. We think about it some more. We tweak it, we name it, we pitch it, and POOF, the addiction begins.

At first, like most habits, it's subtle, harmless, a seemingly casual pursuit with a thousand positive side effects: increased energy, renewed focus, a feeling of well-being, a heightened sense of awareness.

Like wow, man.

First we have the idea. But then the idea has us.

We think about it in the shower. We think about it in the car. We think about it when we don't want to think about it. We even dream about it. Soon we want EVERYONE to know about our idea. We want them to feel the buzz. We want them to nod in agreement. We want them to recognize just how pure our fixation is.

If this is where it ended, it wouldn't be that big a deal. If this is where it ended, I wouldn't be calling it an addiction. Maybe I'd be calling it an "inspiration," or a "commitment" or a "visitation from the Muse." But it doesn't end here. It goes on and on and on and on -- and often, to our own detriment.

If you have a business, of course, you WANT to conjure up cool ideas that turn you on. That's a good thing. But if you cling to ideas just because they're YOURS, or just because they are FAMILIAR, or just because you've invested major amounts of TIME in them, then it's definitely time to rethink where you're coming from.

It may even be time to get help.

The story behind the creation of the iPhone is a good example of what I'm talking about. Steve Jobs and his Apple team had to face the music and back off their own addiction to what they had created in order to create something even greater. Here's what Steve had to say about the matter...

"There always seems to come a moment (when what you're doing) is not quite working. Take the iPhone. We had a different enclosure design for the iPhone until way too close to the introduction to ever change it. And I came in one morning, and I said 'I just don't love this. I can't convince myself to fall in love with this. And this is the most important product we've ever done.'

"So we pushed the reset button. We went through all the zillions of models we made and ideas we'd had... It was hell because we had to go to the team and say, 'All the work you've done for the last year, we're going to have to throw it away and start over, and we're going to have to work twice as hard now because we don't have enough time.'

"And you know what everybody said, 'Sign us up.'

That happens more than you think because this is not just engineering and science. There is art, too. Sometimes when you're in the middle of one of these crises, you're not sure you're going to make it to the other end. But we've always made it, and so we have a certain degree of confidence, although sometimes you wonder."

Fortune Magazine (p. 72), March 17, 2008

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 08:20 PM | Comments (1)

March 10, 2008
Google: Huge Idea, Simple Insight

In the spirit of picking a veteran player to throw out the first pitch at a game, I'll quote the title of a blog post at Search Engine Watch to remark that, "Discovery's Science Channel Has Good New Series On (the) Internet."

Download: The True Story of the Internet, by former editor and writer for Wired, John Heileman, "is no softball show.. . the series gives it to you 'warts and all' and does not hold back the punches on how things have developed so far. The last show I watched discussed the development of search, and told how Excite turned down the chance to buy Google for a million dollars."

The Discovery Channel's page says, "From the founders of eBay, Yahoo, Amazon, Netscape, Google and many others, we hear amazing stories of how, in ten short years, the Internet took over our lives. The style of the story-telling is up close and personal.. . with first-hand testimony from the people that matter."

I've been along for the ride and was very familiar with the story's timelines, but of course here you get to hear about it from the principals, and in their own words. There's always so much more to any story, and this one's very well told.

I also was watching that episode on search, one of four. To me, the most arresting observation was that while the original, breakthrough idea at the root of Google's effectiveness and success came from a programmer, cofounder Larry Page, it was a very simple thought. Page was not crouched over a keyboard or remembering any computer code in order to come up with this construct.

The billion-dollar insight was just this: that a link to a site from another is like a vote for that destination. The more sites link to yours (and the more linked-to their sites are), the better yours must be.

So the most useful search engine will give its results from the sites where the most people look for information or connections on that subject, the ones which the most visitors have "voted for with their feet," or in this case, their eyeballs. (Adwords, the next step in Google's still-astronomical success, was someone else's brainstorm, but they eventually settled. Fascinating story.)

I was working at AltaVista, though on the biz dev/marketing side in Mass., when Google first surfaced. At the time AltaVista was the standard in search, coming from R&D and its creation at their research office in Palo Alto, and put up on the Web as a free demo in the research-lab spirit of, "look at this cool thing we've got!"

But it quickly became evident that Google had a better solution: I remember my friend Don Bradley, AV's genial spokesguy, showing how when you typed "Cadillac" as a search query there, cadillac.com came up first(!). AltaVista had not yet attained that level of algorhythmic hipness (or you might simply say, usefulness), and didn't get it in time to catch the strong updraft from the explosion of online searching that swept Google to its current exalted position.

Technical insight and chops aside, Google, with two guys, the garage, and a VC or two, had the little-guy's advantage of quick response and manuverability. AltaVista, on the other hand, was then a sort of semi-autonomous division of Digital, aka DEC, and still had to get around a dozen people to agree on any action.

(I'd say, in the words of this earlier post here of Mitch's, such a company should "Create In-House Start Ups," but in this case they had started to spin off AV from Digital. The senior board changed directions, though, as they set their sights on eventually selling the whole company, which had been founded by Ken Olsen, a great innovator of his generation.)

On March 15th, The Discovery Channel is beginning a cable run of one of the four one-hour episodes each week. Schedule

Video clips of the show on Science Channel

Posted by Bill Ross at 08:15 PM | Comments (0)

March 04, 2008
Forget About the Box, Get Out of the Cave!

See the caveman to your left? That's Og. He's the protagonist of my new book, Awake at the Wheel: Getting Your Great Ideas Rolling (in an uphill world). The word "protagonist" is not in Og's vocabulary. Never was, never will be. Even I don't use the word "protagonist" all that much -- though I have used it three times in this paragraph.

Hmmm... That's pretty odd.

Then again, the experience of inventing the wheel was pretty odd, too. Which is what Og did. 24,000 years ago. Long before Game Boy, i-Pod, or Starbucks. And yes, long before the Mesopotamians -- the people who usually get all the credit for the wheel -- some 20,300 years after my main man, Og.

(Hey, when was the last time you used the word "Mesopotamian?" That's another word not in Og's vocabulary.)

Actually, Og didn't need a big vocabulary. He had something else going for him: Neanderthalic genius. Stone age brilliance. Originality. Og, you see, was the first innovator. Intrinsically motivated, he was. Fascinated. Inspired. Mojo-driven. And while he was not without imperfections, he needed no attaboys, cash awards, or stock options to follow his muse.

Back in Og's time, when men were men, and stones were stones, even the idea of an idea was unthinkable. And yet... somehow, he had one -- an IDEA, that is -- and not just your dime a dozen variety. Nope. A GREAT idea, a BIG idea, or what I like to call an "out of the cave" idea: The wheel.

Ah... but I go on too long. If Og were here, he'd be frowning by now, shrugging his stooped shoulders, wondering in his delightfully pre-verbal way what other new ideas and discoveries awaited his wonderfully hairy touch.

Want to order the book now? (Og gets 10% of every sale). Go ahead. Help him put bear meat on the table.

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:37 AM | Comments (0)

February 28, 2008
Outsourcing Best Practices Revealed!

This just in!

In an extraordinary move, destined to be "best practiced" by forward thinking CEOs around the world, I've just outsourced all my sleep to a guy named Namdev in New Delhi. Yes, it's true. I no longer need to sleep. Namdev does it for me. It's astounding how much more productive I've been this week. And, as if my sleep breakthrough wasn't enough, I've also outsourced all my exercise to a guy named Sung Lee in Malaysia. God bless Sung Lee! He's been on the treadmill three hours today, as I understand it, and will be working on our delts and pecs tomorrow. Needless to say, I'm feeling exceptionally buff at this moment.

I was just about to have a big piece of cherry cheesecake to celebrate my innovative, time-saving enhancements, but I've...er... outsourced my eating to a woman named Min Yung in Taiwan. I'm down to about 145, but I'm feeling absolutely psyched about the new contract we just got from GE. Starts next month.

The only thing I haven't outsourced this week was this blog and a visit to my dentist. (Do any of you know someone willing to get a root canal on my behalf?)

(Image from images.businessweek.com)

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:30 AM | Comments (0)

February 22, 2008
The Sweat that Eureka demands

Serious about doing something innovative? Be prepared to spend many long, focused hours working on it (and working and working and reworking...)

"We want to believe that creativity and innovation come in flashes of pure brilliance," Janet Rae-Dupree writes in the New York Times. But, "Innovation is a slow process of accretion, building small insight upon interesting fact upon tried-and-true process. Just as an oyster wraps layer upon layer of nacre atop an offending piece of sand, ultimately yielding a pearl, innovation percolates within hard work over time."

"'The most useful way to think of epiphany is as an occasional bonus of working on tough problems,' explains Scott Berkun in his 2007 book, The Myths of Innovation. 'The goal isn't the magic moment: it's the end result of a useful innovation.'"

The article also quotes Jim Marggraff, creator of an interactive world globe called the Odyssey Atlasphere, and the LeapPad reading platform for children, among others. "The 'aha' moments grow out of hours of thought and study," he says. "If you look at my innovations, there's a common theme. I take something familiar, intuitive and ubiquitous, and recast it in a manner that will redefine its use to drive profound change."

Of course, which famous inventor explained this to us early in the 20th century? Who else but Thomas Edison. A bit of quick research gives us his famous quote in an expanded context:

"None of my inventions came by accident. I see a worthwhile need to be met and I make trial after trial until it comes. What it boils down to is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration."

(From a 1929 press conference, quoted by James D. Newton in Uncommon Friends; Newton knew Edison personally.)

In an interview in Harpers magazine, February 1890 (stay tuned here at Heart Of Innovation as we present the latest, greatest breakthroughs! ; ) , Edison explained his method:

"I would construct a theory and work on its lines until I found it was untenable. ... I speak without exaggeration when I say that I have constructed 3,000 different theories in connection with the electric light, each one of them reasonable and apparently likely to be true. Yet only in two cases did my experiments prove the truth of my theory."

====
"Eureka! It Really Takes Years of Hard Work" (NYT, 2/3/08)

Related, here:
"Innovation: It's About Time!"

Posted by Bill Ross at 12:37 PM | Comments (0)

February 20, 2008
INNOVATION: It's About Time!

During the past few years I've noticed a curious paradox heading its ugly rear among business leaders tooting the horn for innovation. On one hand they want the rank and file to step up to the plate and own the effort to innovate. On the other hand, they are unwilling to grant the people they are exhorting any more TIME to innovate.

Somehow, magically, they expect aspiring innovators to not only generate game-changing ideas in their spare time, but do all the research, data collection, business case building, piloting, project management, idea development, testing, report generation, and troubleshooting in between their other assignments.

Tooth fairy alert!

This is not the way it happens, folks! Not only is this approach unreasonable, it's unfair, unbalanced, and unworkable. You cannot shoehorn game-changing innovation projects into the already overcommitted schedules of your overworked workforce. If you do, it won't be innovation you'll get, only half-finished projects and a whole lot of cranky people complaining to you in between meetings.

Aspiring innovators don't need pep talks. They need TIME. Time to think. And time to dream. Time to collaborate. And time to plan. Time to pilot. And time to test. Time to tinker. And time to tinker again.

That's why Google and 3M give its workforce 20% of their time to work on projects not immediately connected to its core business. That's why W.L. Gore gives its workforce a half day a week to follow their fascinations. That's why Corel instituted it's virtual garage program.

"Dig where the oil is," Edward deBono once said. Indeed! And where is the oil? Right beneath the feet of each and every employee who is fascinated by the work they do, aligned with their company's mission, and given enough time to make magic happen.

Need proof? 50% of Google's newly launched features were birthed during this so-called "free time" -- midwived by engineers, programmers, and other assorted wizards happily following their muse.

The fear? If you give people "freedom" they'll end up playing video games and taking 3-hour lunches. Alas, when fear takes over, folks, (the same fear Peter Drucker asked us all many years ago to remove from the workplace), vision is supplanted by supervision and all his micromanaging cousins.

Time to innovate is not time wasted. It is time invested. Freedom does not necessarily lead to anarchy. It can lead to breakthrough just as easily. Remember, organizations do not innovate. People do. And people need time to innovate. Time = freedom. Freedom to choose. Freedom to explore. Freedom to express. And yes, even freedom to "fail."

If you've hired the right people, communicated a compelling vision, and established the kind of culture that brings out the best in a human being, you are 80% there.

Now all you need to do is find a way to give your people the time they need to innovate.

(And hey, if you've found a way to do this successfully, let us know and we'll share the results with Heart of Innovation readers some time soon.)

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:36 AM | Comments (0)

February 14, 2008
Humanizing the Workplace

It's really not my nature to be this effusive about other people's books, but Gary Hamel's newest offering, The Future of Management, is a 15 on a scale of 1-10. Lucid. Authentic. Compelling. And very well-written. Gary and his co-author, Bill Breen, have built a very compelling case for WHY management needs to change its stripes if they expect their organizations to grow or, more specifically, establish the kind of corporate culture that is conducive to real innovation.

Here's an example of Hamel's straight talk:

"As human beings, we are amazingly adaptable and creative, yet most of us work for companies that are not. In other words, we work for companies that aren't very human.

"There seems to be something in modern organizations that depletes the natural resilience and creativity of human beings, something that literally leaches these qualities out of employees during daylight hours. The culprit? Management principles and processes that foster discipline, punctuality, economy, rationality, and order, yet place very little value on artistry, non-conformity, originality, audacity, and elan."

"To put it simply, most companies are only fractionally human because they make room for only a fraction of the qualities and capabilities that make us human. Billions of people show up for work every day, but way too many of them are sleepwalking. The result: organizations that systematically underperform their potential."

Exactly.

Innovative organizations know how to elicit a creative response from their workforce, not a reactive response. They know how to establish the kind of conditions that nurture growth, instead of mechanically extracting it. They choose to water the root of the plant, not tug on the stalk or harangue the leaves. And they choose this approach because somewhere, deep, down inside, they respect the innate creativity and integrity of each and every employee.

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 02:25 AM | Comments (0)

February 08, 2008
Brainstorm or Braindrizzle?

Allow me to make a wild guess here and postulate that you have participated in more than a few brainstorm sessions in your life. Yes? And allow me to make yet another wild guess and state that many of these sessions left you feeling underwhelmed, over-caffeinated, disappointed, disengaged, and doubtful that much of ANYTHING was ever going to happen as a result of your participation. Yes, again? I thought so.

There's a ton of reasons why most brainstorming sessions under-deliver, but the main reason -- the Mount Olympus of reasons (drum roll, please....) is the brainstorm facilitator.

Armed with a short list of ground rules, a flipchart marker or two, and a muffin, most brainstorm facilitators miss the mark completely. The reason has less to do with their process, tools, and techniques than it does with their inability or lack of willingness to adapt. In an all-too-professional attempt to be one-pointed, they end up being one-dimensional, missing out on a host of in-the-moment opportunities to spark the ever-mutating, collective genius of the group.

If only our well-intentioned brainstorm facilitators could abide by the words of Walt Whitman, when he confessed that he "contained multitudes." Translation? If you or anyone you know is going to lead a disparate group of time-crunched, opinionated, multi-tracking, high bandwidth people through a process of originating and developing breakthrough ideas, DON'T BE A ONE TRICK PONY! Be a multitude -- or, at the very least, be multi-faceted. Let it rip. Hang ten. Pull out the stops. Use your right brain and your left. Let all the cats out of the proverbial bag -- and by so doing, exponentially increase your chances of sparking brainpower, brilliance, and beyond-the-obvious ideas.

OK. Enough bloggy pep talk. Let's get down to business.

Take a few minutes now to rate yourself, on a scale of 1-10, for how skillful you think you are at embodying the following personas of a brainstorm facilitator, all of which you will need to call on at just the right time if you expect to play your role to the max. Then tune into your biggest strength and ask yourself how you can amplify that quality. Then identify your biggest weakness and figure out how you can improve in that arena.

While it may seem counter-intuitive, a well-facilitated creative thinking session is less about WHAT than it is about HOW and WHO.

1.CONDUCTOR
A skilled brainstorm facilitator knows how to orchestrate powerfully creative output from a seemingly dissonant group of people. In the conductor mode, the facilitator includes everyone, evokes even the subtlest contributions from the least experienced participant, and demonstrates their commitment to the whole by offering timely feedback to anyone who "gets lost in their own song."

2.ALCHEMIST
A good brainstorm facilitator is able to transmute lead into gold -- or in modern terms -- knows how to help people "get the lead out." This talent requires an element of wizardry -- the ability to see without looking, feel without touching, and intuitively know that within each brainstormer lives a hidden genius just waiting to get out.

3.DANCER
Light on their feet, brainstorm facilitators move gracefully through the process of sparking new ideas. Able to go from the cha-cha to the polka to the whirling dervish spinning of a brainstorm group on fire, savvy facilitators take bold steps when necessary, even when there is no visible ground underfoot. "The path is made by walking on it," is their motto.

4. MAD SCIENTIST
Skillful brainstorm facilitators are bold experimenters, often taking on the crazed (but grandfatherly) look of an Einstein in heat. While respecting the realm of logic and the rational (the ground upon which most scientists build their homes), the enlightened facilitator is willing to throw it all out the window in the hope of triggering a "happy accident" or a quantum leap of thought. Indeed, it is often these discontinuous non-linear moments that produce the kind of breakthroughs that logic can only describe, never elicit itself.

5.DIAMOND CUTTER
Fully recognizing the precious gem of the human imagination (as well as the delicacy required to set it free), the high octave brainstorm facilitator is a craftsman (or craftswoman) par excellence -- focused, precise, and dedicated. Able to get to the heart of the matter in a single stroke without leaving anything or anyone damaged in the process.

6. ACTOR
Brainstorm facilitators are "on stage" whether they like it or not. All eyes are upon them, as well as all the potential critical reviews humanly possible. More often than not, the facilitator's "audience" will only be moved to act (perchance to dream) if they believe the facilitator is completely into his or her role. If the audience does not suspend this kind of disbelief, the play will close early and everyone will be praying for a fire drill or wishing they were back home eating a grilled cheese sandwich.

7.ENVIRONMENTALIST
Brainstorm facilitators are the original recyclers. In their relentless pursuit of possibility, they look for value in places other people see as useless. To the facilitator in full mojo mode, "bad ideas" aren't always bad, only curious indicators that something of untapped value is lurking nearby.

8. OFFICER OF THE LAW
One of the brainstorm facilitator's most important jobs is to enforce "law and order" once the group gets roaring down the open highway of the imagination. This is a fine art -- for in this territory speeding is encouraged, as is running red lights, jaywalking, and occasionally breaking and entering. Just as thieves have their code of honor, however, so too should brainstormers. Indeed, it is the facilitator's task to keep this code intact -- a task made infinitely easier by the ritual declaration of ground rules at the start of a session.

9.SERVANT
Some brainstorm facilitators, intoxicated by the group energy and their own newly stimulated imagination, use their position as a way to foist their ideas on others -- or worse, manipulate the group into their way of thinking. Oops! Ouch! Aargh! Brainstorm facilitating is a service, not a personal platform. It is supposed to be a selfless act that enables others to arrive at their own solutions -- no matter how different they may be from the facilitator's.

10. STAND-UP COMIC
Humor is one of the brainstorm facilitator's most important tools. It dissolves boundaries, activates the right brain, helps participants get unstuck, and shifts perspective just enough to help everyone open their eyes to new ways of seeing. Trained facilitators are always on the lookout for humorous responses. They know that humor often signals some of the most promising ideas, and that giggles, guffaws, and laughable side-talk frequently indicate a rich vein of possibility to explore. Humor also makes the facilitator much more "likable" which makes the group they are facilitating more amenable to their direction. Ever wonder why the words "Aha!" and "Ha-Ha" are so similar?

Interested in learning how to facilitate breakthrough brainstorming sessions? Click here.

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:11 AM | Comments (0)

January 17, 2008
The Good Thing About Bad Ideas

"You can only be as good as you dare to be bad." - John Barrymore

One of the inevitable things you will hear at a brainstorming session is something like "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." It happens all the time. Do you think that War and Peace was written in one sitting? Madame Butterfly? The Idiot's Guide to Volkswagen Repair? No way. There were plenty of earlier drafts that were horrid, but eventually led to the final outcome. Even diamonds begin as coal.

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: Getting Your Great Ideas Rolling (in an Uphill World) shows you how to do this. It's a particularly effective method for naysaying, skeptical groups to use when they are committed to sparking a breakthrough idea. Oh, I forgot to mention, it's also a hoot and a great way to make boring brainstorming sessions come alive.

1. Bring your challenge or problem to mind.
2. Conjure up a really bad idea in response to it. Like really.
3. Jot down anything that is good about this bad idea -- an essence that is redeemable.
4. Using this redeemable essence as a trigger, generate at least three new ideas you can actually do something about -- then brainstorm those further. (Then watch the expressions on people's faces.)

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 06:59 AM | Comments (2)

January 12, 2008
Innovation Ninjas

Every once in a while I come across a quote or excerpt from an article that I want to immediately post on the windshield of every client of mine. It cuts to the chase and lucidly states what I've been trying to say, in various Neanderthalic ways, all these many years.

Take Einstein for example: "Not everything that counts can be counted; and not everything that can be counted counts." Bingo! Bullseye! What a perfect way of explaining to a left-brained addicted world that metrics and analysis is not the only game in town.

And then there's Gary Hamel. He takes a bit more time than Albert to make his point, but hey, it's all relative isn't it? Check this out from the man behind one of my favorite business books of all time:

"Today, innovation is the buzzword du jour in virtually every company, but how many CEOs have put every employee through an intensive training program aimed at boosting the innovation skills of the rank and file? Sure companies have electronic suggestion boxes, slush funds for new ideas, elaborate pipeline management tools, and innovation awards -- but in the absence of a cadre of extensively trained and highly skilled innovators, much of the investment in these innovation enablers will simply be wasted."

"Imagine that you coaxed a keen, but woefully inexperienced golfer onto the first tee at Pebble Beach. After arming the tyro with the latest titanium driver, you challenge him to split the fairway with a monster drive. You promise the neophyte a $100 bonus every time he hits a long bomb that stays out of the rough, and another $100 for every hole where he manages to break par. But what you don't do is this: You don't give him any instruction -- no books, no tips from Golf Digest, no Dave Pelz and Butch Harmon, no video feedback, and no time off to perfect his swing on the practice range. Given this scenario, how many 200-yard drives is our beginner likely to land in the fairway? How long is he likely to stay avidly devoted to the task at hand? And what kind of return are you likely to get on the $2,000 you spent on a bag full of high tech clubs and the 450 bucks you shelled out for a tee time? The answers are: Not many, not long, and not much. And no one who knows anything about golf would ever set up such a half-assed contest.

"That's why I'm dumbfounded by the fact that so few executives have invested in the innovation skills of their frontline employees. The least charitable explanation for this mind-boggling oversight: senior managers subscribe to a sort of innovation apartheid. They believe that a few blessed souls are genetically equipped to be creative, while everyone else is a dullard, unable to come up with anything more exciting than spiritless suggestions for Six Sigma improvements. A more charitable reading: CEOs and corporate HR leaders simply don't know how to turn on the innovation genes that are found in every human being"

"Obviously, you can't teach someone to be an innovator unless you know where game-changing ideas come from. In other words, you need a theory of innovation -- like Ben Hogan's theory of the golf swing. This is why, a few years back, I and several colleagues analyzed more than a hundred cases of business innovation. Our goal: to understand why some individuals, at certain points in time, are able to see opportunities that are invisible to everyone else. Here, in a pistachio-sized shell, is what we learned. Successful innovators have ways of seeing the world that throw new opportunities into sharp relief. They have developed, usually by accident, a set of perceptual "lenses" that allow them to pierce the fog of "what is" in order to see the promise of "what could be." How? By paying close attention to four things that usually go unnoticed:"

"1. Unchallenged orthodoxies -- the widely held industry beliefs that blind incumbents to new opportunities.

2. Underleveraged competencies -- the "invisible" assets and competencies, locked up in moribund businesses, that can be repurposed as new growth platforms.

3. Underappreciated trends -- the nascent discontinunities that can be harnessed to reinvigorate old business models and create new ones."

4. Unarticulated needs -- the frustrations and inconveniences that customers take for granted, and industry stalwarts have thus far failed to address."

Thanks Gary! Clearly, what's needed these days are organizations full of "Innovation Ninjas." Skillful, agile, perceptive, courageous, and highly trained individuals who know how to find their way through the seeming obstacles in the way in order to get a result. These obstacles might be "internal" -- as in the outdated assumptions, paradigms, and habits of people with three letter acronyms after their name. OR the obstacles might be "external" -- as in an organization's funkadelic infrastructure, protocols, and processes. But whatever the obstacles encountered (not counted!), our nimble ninjas of necessity manage to find their way to the goal. Imagine if you had hundreds of these people working in your company. Imagine you had thousands.

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:57 AM | Comments (0)

January 09, 2008
Innovation Slush Funds

Nortel, the fiber optics giant, allocates pools of money (or "innovation slush funds") at different organizational levels for any idea a manager thinks has great potential, but doesn't want to be accountable for the bottom-line result. Very cool.

A client of mine, at Michelin, does a similar thing. He is authorized to distribute as much as $10,000 to aspiring innovators who have done their homework and are able to convince him that their high potential projects need a bit funding to get untracked. Also very cool.

What I like about this approach is that it sidesteps the bureaucratic hokey pokey, run-it-up-the-flagpole, command and control, funky chicken shuffle that all too often scuttles powerful new ideas in need of a timely infusion of capital to get them rolling.

Of course, these "innovation slush fund" scenarios require some trust and clearly defined evaluation criteria to keep things on the up and up -- but that is simply done. No Six Sigma required. It's such a simple thing to do and can radically reduce the time it takes for breakthrough ideas and aspiring innovators to make magic happen in your organization.

In what ways can YOU establish some kind of innovation slush fund this month? And if you have already done so, click "comments" below and let us know how it's working out.

And remember, as one wise pundit put it, "It's not the money that starts the idea, it's the idea that starts the money."

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 09:30 PM | Comments (1)

January 03, 2008
View from a Creative Mind

Although we are by no means a locally-focused company, with consultant/trainers traveling very widely to lead sessions, we are based in the mid-Hudson Valley of New York State, and one similarly local-but-far-reaching event caught my eye which I thought was very much worth sharing.

That would be a nearby exhibition of the work of Saul Steinberg, titled "Illuminations," the artist most famously known for his frequent appearances over six decades in The New Yorker magazine. He was the clever fellow who gave us the much-imitated 1976 cover illustration of how New Yorkers see the world, "The View from 9th Avenue," where a couple of blocks of the city dominate, and the rest of the country occupies a small square of land in the distance.

But so much of his work displayed such a fresh, wonderfully creative mind that, for me, it "illustrates" an essential attitude that successful innovators have. This is the habit of looking to see things newly, as opposed to how we usually see, which is through a haze of existing thought patterns; and, freely associating, to find useful connections between things that were hidden until then.

In the words of the Saul Steinberg Foundation's page on his life and work, "fingerprints become mug shots or landscapes; graph or ledger paper doubles as the facade of an office building; words, numbers, and punctuation marks come to life as messengers of doubt, fear, or exuberance; sheet music lines glide into violin strings, record grooves, the grain of a wood table, and the smile of a cat."

"Saul Steinberg: Illuminations" will be on view through February 24 at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College, 124 Raymond Avenue, Poughkeepsie. (845) 437-5632;

(...which I found in Chronogram magazine.)

Gallery of Steinberg art

(All works © by The Saul Steinberg Foundation)

Posted by Bill Ross at 12:00 PM | Comments (2)

December 23, 2007
Millions and Billions: The Probability of Terrestrial Life

The late science popularizer Carl Sagan once urged his readers and viewers to contemplate the millions of galaxies in the universe and consider the probability of extraterrestrial life existing somewhere outside our own planet. Today we live in a revised era, increasingly aware of humanity's impact on mothership Earth. So to shed light on our local dilemma, an innovative artist has been building a body of work that asks us to contemplate a different kind of vastness - the vastness of industrially stimulated consumerism.

Chris Jordan is a photo-montagist who creates vast wall-size panels which from a distance seem to be no more than interesting textures. Upon closer inspection though, they turn out to be created from tens of thousands of a single kind of consumable object we use and throw away: cigarettes, plastic bags, beverage bottles, aluminum cans, Vicodan tablets, cell phones. He packs these objects so tightly together that they merge into unified pointillist fields.

In one three panel set, a giant portrait of Ben Franklin turns out to be composed of 125,000 $100 bills. This number, it turns out, represents how much the United States spends each HOUR on the Iraq war - $12.5 million. Similar short clips of "consuming time" characterize most of Jordan's work: five SECONDS of plastic bags used and discarded by US Consumers (60,000 ; detail image above); a DAY's worth of cell phones discarded by US consumers (426,000, detail image below).

Because of the short time samples Jordan's montages represent, his work can convey the speed and staggering scale of industrial consumption in a way no other visualization has until now. We can grasp intuitively that these beaches of discarded goods are expanding daily, or hourly, by similar spatial units. (Four football fields of plastic bottles every five minutes. More plastic floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean than zooplankton.)

Like grains of sand on a beach, the individual objects in Jordan's images disappear. You search for a "subject" but nothing appears in the foreground. All the objects fuse into one vast background, a disorienting blur of granular overwhelm.

Then it dawns on you: YOU'RE the subject; YOU'RE the foreground. One of those plastic beverage bottles is MY water bottle. One of those cell phones is YOUR cell phone. Each one of us, easing through a supermarket checkout line on any given day, answers the question "Paper or Plastic?" WE are the subject, the foreground.

Chris Jordan creates flat backgrounds we have to place ourselves "in front of." And this helps us intuitively comprehend our interconnectedness and our impact on our LOCAL universe. Unlike Carl Sagan's CETI vision, Jordan lets us step back and contemplate the probabilities for life - not in space but HERE, on this fragile and finite planet. He asks us to consider where the superhighway to "prosperity" as we've defined it ultimately leads.

Here's a short interview with the artist.

Posted by Tim Moore at 08:33 PM | Comments (0)

December 10, 2007
AWAKE AT THE WHEEL: Getting Your Great Ideas Rolling (in an uphill world)

Ta da! After seven years, 22 rejections, 20 rewrites, 2 agents, and a whole lot of looking at myself in the mirror, here it is: the publication of my new book, AWAKE AT THE WHEEL. Part fable, part creative thinking toolbox, the book is a wake up call for all aspiring innovators -- a simple way to help people "get out of the cave" and manifest BIG ideas in a world not always ready for the new and the different.

If you have an inspired idea that is lingering in your mind and needs a fresh jolt to see the light of day, this book is for you.

Until it's appearance in bookstores on May 1, 2008, you can order it from www.awakeatthewheel.info.

Tim Gallwey: "A superb catalyst for anyone with the urge to bring their best ideas into reality."

Donna Fenn: "Og may have invented the wheel, but Mitch Ditkoff has created a GPS for the innovation process. Awake at the Wheel is a witty and inspiring roadmap for the journey from ideas to invention."

Jay Conrad Levinson: "Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come. The time has come for this book and Mitchell Lewis Ditkoff has put it into words. He has done a masterful job."

Jack Mitchell: "Go ahead and 'hug' your employees by giving them Awake at the Wheel and creating a company culture that fosters, develops, and celebrates the best of their ideas."

Joyce Wycoff: "A highly accessible alchemist's stone for aspiring innovators."

Melinda McLaughlin: Awake at the Wheel illuminates! It's the perfect book for those of us who have felt the excitement of the 'aha' moment only to experience the frustration that comes when no one sees the brilliant lightbulb above our head. Mitch Ditkoff takes us on an engaging journey that re-imagines how to turn an idea into great success and makes it suddenly seem easy.?

Chuck Frey: "Entertaining and inspiring."

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 06:05 AM | Comments (0)

November 01, 2007
Absurd Collisions: No Breakthroughs Without Them

You say your kid's starting to crawl AND your floor's dusty? This handy pre-toddler mop garment was "invented" by Kenji Kawakami, a Japanese inventor and writer who works in a parallel innovation universe he calls Chindogu.

Chindogu translates as "strange tools," but a Chindogu invention isn't really a tool. It's a humorous insight into how two unrelated things might do something useful. Its visual punnery relies on a certain something two things have in common, a shared intersection. Crawling kids and mops have the floor in common, and floors get dusty...so why not a mop suit for baby? Silently, in our heads, we add the caption: "Hell, honey. Put the kid to work." Shazam! Baby as time-saving device.

What does Chindogu's absurd universe have to do with real world innovation? Well, think about it. The insight process is the same. What was the undiscovered intersection shared by music filesharers and early mp3 music players? Single song downloads. So not only did Steve Jobs launch the Apple iPod in 2001; he thought two sales ahead and had his team design the record store to go with it. Armed with rocketing i-Pod sales, Jobs was able to finalize deals with all the major labels the next year and launch Apple's iTunes music store in April of 2003.

Get it? Catching links and intersections, like dusty floors and single-song downloads depends on the same kind of insight. It makes no difference whether the resulting invention is absurd, like Chindogu, or highly strategic, like the iPod/iTunes-store disruption. The point is to keep exercising the mental muscle that crosses wires, tries absurd combinations, and associates the previously unassociated.

Some artists and designers (like yours truly) use tools to spark these happy collisions. Randomizing oracles, lists, cards and computer programs can all be used to force pairs and triads of things together that wouldn't normally be near each other. And once the muscle is working, no aids are needed at all.

The visual pun long predates Kawakami. Dadaist Meret Oppenheim did it in 1936 with her Objet: dejeuner en fourrure (Luncheon in Fur).
Magritte, Dali, Man Ray - the list is huge. Rock bands, too, have collided words absurdly since the sixties. And the inventions in Philip Garner's 1982 Better Living Catalog, now out of print, were as funny as Kawakami (and debuted more than a decade earlier).

Try giving yourself a regular absurdity workout. For a few minutes, just stop making sense, collide two or three unconnected things and see what impractical AND practical ideas arise. Think of Chindogu-like thinking as yoga for keeping the creative mind flexible, receptive and original.

You'll have plenty of company, by the way. Kawakami's two Chindogu books have sold close to half a million copies in Japan alone.

Oh, before you go (and while our increasingly spammed comments are still open): What's your favorite absurd band name? Let us know. We'll add it to this post. And if you're already into Chindogu, drop us links to pictures of your favorite and funniest Chindogu inventions. I'll share a few in future posts.

Posted by Tim Moore at 11:20 PM | Comments (0)

October 23, 2007
Owning Your Own Knowledge

One of the guiding principles of Idea Champions is that any large enough group of people who work in any organization already has the requisite knowledge to deal with the majority of the issues and challenges facing them. There may be issues where they need additional information from outside experts but, in general, they know their business, industry, and market and what they have to do to grow their bottom line.

Why they can't easily access this knowledge on a regular basis and act upon it is another story, however, and why, I imagine, we are in the business we're in.

The issue of not being able to act on the knowledge one already has does not exist because of organizations, of course. It exists because this phenomenon is a major issue for many human beings, and has been, it seems, for as long as there have been human beings. I have a psychologist friend who once confided that when he came across a patient who embraced this syndrome, he recommended other therapists to them as quickly as possible because he found their denial of their own knowledge, and subsequent lack of corrective action, totally exasperating.

Books have been written about the phenomenon of the tragic characters of Shakespeare "disowning knowledge" leading directly to their inevitable demise. Hamlet knows what he needs to know in order to act very early on in that play, but does not, requiring ever greater "burdens of proof" which delay action until it is too late. King Lear knows that he will create a power vacuum if he abdicates his crown that will lead to strife and confusion among his daughters and discord in his kingdom, yet he does so anyway, etc.

Speaking of vacuums... a simple example of this phenomenon occurred to me only recently.

Fourteen years ago, I purchased a fine, expensive vacuum cleaner. This machine cost over a thousand dollars back then and it's been worth every penny, as it is so well made that it probably will outlast me on this planet. During those years, I've often come across a warning in manuals and brochures that if one persisted in dragging the machine around by its hose, or lifting it by same, one would eventually loosen the electronic connections that give signals from the body of the vacuum to its end attachments and it would cease to function properly. The result: $300 to replace the hose and attachments.

Well, after 14 years of dragging the machine around by its hose and lifting it by same, the inevitable has occurred. I need to replace the hose and attachments.

D'OH!

Why didn't I simply use the knowledge I had instead of ignoring it? Well, for the first 14 years everything seemed fine, reminding me of the joke about the guy who wanted to see what it was like to jump off a tall building and thinking to himself during his descent, "so far, so good."

The very same goes for organizations and the people within it.

What knowledge of our organization, its processes, its people, its products and services, our customers, our markets, and our society are we choosing to ignore because, "so far, so good?"

One good way to check this collective syndrome of disowning our own knowledge in organizations is to conduct regular brainstorm sessions that use a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis or Environmental Scan as a starting off point. This tactic forces us to see what's going on in and around our organization, assess the level of threat or opportunity, and to consciously go about doing something about it.

Look around you. Check all your mirrors. Exercise your peripheral vision. What's sneaking up on you in your environment that you hadn't noticed before? What is the market telling you about your products and services? What are your customers telling you every single day in their words and actions, and even more importantly, in what they don't say and don't do? What threats or opportunities right there in front of you have you not taken the time and effort to act upon?

What do you already know to be true that you haven't shared with others or acted upon yourself?

Don't end up in your own self-made tragedy like Hamlet or Lear, or be like that poor guy falling from the skyscraper thinking everything is going to work out just fine, or that dolt in upstate New York staring at a sea of dust bunnies armed only with an expensive vacuum cleaner which no longer works.

Act now on what you know to be true. It's why you're alive.

Posted by Val Vadeboncoeur at 07:28 PM | Comments (0)

October 17, 2007
Just a Great Idea

(Occasionally we'll run little quickies like this one, examples of remarkably creative thinking that we found irresistible, just for the purpose of passing along a small flash of inspiration that may help raise your own efforts up a notch.)

Parent-Child Dancing Shoes

These shoes are meant to be worn by a father and a young daughter for dancing together.

Titled "Tanssitossut" or Dance Shoes, they were designed by Finnish artists Huopaliike Lahtinen and Haraldin Kenka. If you can think of anything sweeter than this (or "these"?), please let us know.

Found it on: Boing Boing
Who got it from: Neatorama
originally from Salakauppa / Secret Shop

Posted by Bill Ross at 04:18 PM | Comments (1)

October 09, 2007
SIX SIGMA UNRAVELLED: The Gotta Have a Process Blues

One of my favorite clients of all time was a key manager in a very prominent Fortune 500 company. She was smart. She was funny. She was creative. And she was kind. Then her company adopted Six Sigma. I couldn't help but notice that soon after this she started becoming uncharacteristically cranky, not unlike the way an artist gets upon filling out a tax form. When I asked her how the Six Sigma initiative was going, she rolled her eyes and mumbled something about "going through the motions."

Intellectually, of course, she understood its value. But her longstanding success as a manager and business leader went far beyond the intellect. Intuitively, she knew what Einstein -- the master of the intellect -- had said years ago when he noted that, "Not everything that counts can be counted; and not everything that can be counted counts."

In a recent online Business Week posting, Brian Hindo lucidly deconstructs some of the flawed assumptions of the Six Sigma approach:

"The very factors that make Six Sigma effective in one context," explains Hindo, "can make it ineffective in another. Traditionally, it uses rigorous statistical analysis to produce unambiguous data that help produce better quality, lower costs, and more efficiency. That all sounds great when you know what outcomes you'd like to control. But what about when there are few facts to go on -- or you don't even know the nature of the problem you're trying to define?

"New things look very bad on this scale," says MIT Sloan School of Management professor Eric von Hippel, who has worked with 3M on innovation projects that he says 'took a backseat' once Six Sigma settled in. "The more you hardwire a company on total quality management, the more it is going to hurt breakthrough innovation," adds Vijay Govindarajan, a management professor at Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business. "The mindset that is needed, the capabilities that are needed, the metrics that are needed, the whole culture that is needed for discontinuous innovation, are fundamentally different."

And so, dear Heart of Innovation readers... in honor of all people who have ever questioned the long-term value of Six Sigma... in honor of all the people who have understood that increasing -- not decreasing -- variability is often the key to success, it is my utmost pleasure to make my graceful exit from this latest blog posting with the immortal, finger-snapping, toe-tapping, knee-slapping, put-on-your-blues-hat-and-sunglasses lyrics to....

THE GOTTA HAVE A PROCESS BLUES

I woke up this morning,
put both feet on the floor,
but I didn't have a process
to find the bathroom door,
so all I did was shuffle,
first the left foot, then the right,
forgot to count the tiles,
(hey boss, I ain't too bright.)

We got green belts, black belts,
corporate karate,
and soon we'll need a process
for going to the potty.
Lord, I need a chart and graph to help me choose
just what to name this song about the Six Sigma blues.

Back when we were kids
the only processed thing was cheese,
now we need a process
every single time we sneeze,
I say "achoo," I blow my nose,
I try to get it right,
my Black Belt says my charts don't flow,
not once a gesundheit.

I make no mistakes,
I do everything right --
to make sure nothing breaks,
I stay up all night,
I'm a Six Sigma cowboy
cutting cycle time in half,
I measure every joke
and the way it makes me laugh.

We got green belts, black belts,
corporate karate,
and soon we'll need a process
for going to the potty,
a fishbone diagram would be so cool to help me choose
just what to name this song about the Six Sigma blues.

I barely make a boo boo, I rarely blow a deal,
you might call it voo doo, but that's just how I feel,
I'm one in a million
though my defects number three,
I log on while I'm sleeping
and I've changed my name to "E."

We got green belts, black belts,
corporate karate,
and soon we'll need a process
for going to the potty.

Blind Willy Nilly
AKA Mitch Ditkoff

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 10:10 PM | Comments (0)

September 30, 2007
In Your Dreams

Well, there it is again.

I've discovered an amazing, arts-centered television channel, Ovation TV. They screen an impressive array of high quality programming on music, film, dance, painting, etc., the artists and their processes (quite a lot of it being BBC productions from the late 90's, interestingly enough).

It was specifically a trio of programs on music hosted by the legendary producer of the Beatles, George Martin, that gave me the jolt to write this. Together they're titled, "The Rhythm of Life," one lengthy show each on Rhythm, Melody, and Harmony. For those who love music, these programs are an unparalleled feast, with Martin listening to friends from Stevie Wonder to Michael Tilson Thomas playing and talking about the marvels and mystery of music.

In the one on melody, he talks with Paul McCartney about "Yesterday," Paul's greatest hit and what I remember reading is the most recorded song of all time. (That sounds more impressive than it really is, though, since the ability to record sounds and music is only around 100 years old. It's not even close to nominating the greatest books, or ships, or bridges, for instance.)

Martin asked his old partner McCartney how he came up with that famous melody; and Paul simply said, "I dreamed it." He explained that he woke up from a dream, with that melody playing itself in his imagination.

One of the projects I've been working on here this year, and among the most inspiring and energizing, has been editing the updated version of the workbook for one of Idea Champions' most fundamental courses, the Creative Thinking Training, "Banking on Innovation" (in the process of rebirth as "Freeing The Genie").

One segment (adapted into this article, "AHA! Great Moments in Creativity,") dealt all of the breakthroughs in art, science and technology that came as unexpected gifts to the practitioner, who would later be credited with their discovery. It turns out that the ideas for many great inventions came to the "inventors" in their dreams.

My favorite, easily the most amazing of all, was how Rene Descartes came up with The Scientific Method: that's right, he dreamt of it. And, fundamentally via that moment of insight, he would become known as "the father of modern science." (Ah, sweet paradox.)

We have a level of awareness that we walk around in all day, thinking about and trying to juggle all the conflicting thoughts and needs that living presents us with. But we all possess an entirely other level of awareness, far deeper and more connected.

All the techniques of creative thinking, on an individual level, are about learning different ways to trick yourself out of that everyday, crazybusy mode of thought... so that you can connect with your own inner resources.

The summary: if you're looking for a better way to accomplish what you need to do -- a plain language translation of "innovation" -- leave a line open so you can hear from your own subconscious mind, when it has something it would like to share with you.

Of course, we are not suggesting that you immediately get busy dreaming your day away! As the article takes great pains to point out, "Great creative breakthroughs usually happen only after intense periods of struggle. It is sustained and focused effort towards a specific goal - not luck, not wishing, not caffeine - that ultimately prepares the ground for great creative insights." Once you get the big idea, now it's up to you to put it into action.

These paired principles are an essential part of "the heart of innovation."

This in turn directly relates to our current poll (open through October): How and where do you get your best ideas?

Posted by Bill Ross at 02:43 PM | Comments (0)

September 11, 2007
The Best Ideas Poll: 2007

Einstein got his best ideas while shaving. Mozart used to exercise before composing. Rene Descartes came up with the Scientific Method in a dream. Three geniuses. Three totally different catalysts for breakthrough thinking.

How about you? Where and when do you get your best ideas? In the shower? Late at night? On vacation? Brainstorming?

Three years ago, I polled 200 people on this very same topic -- a poll that consisted of 34 items and one other category. What astounded me was how many other responses I received -- a veritable Jerry Lewis Telethon of times and places I never once considered as having anything to do with the act of creative thinking.

Which is why our 2007 BEST IDEAS POLL is way more comprehensive. (Notice I did not use the word robust to describe our poll. The word robust is hereby banned from this blog for all eternity). Where was I? Oh, yes -- this year's Best Ideas poll. Interested in taking it? Of course you are. All you need to do is click here. The whole thing will take you less than seven minutes. Its simple. Its fun. And it will likely spark at least a few insights into where and when YOU get your best ideas.

NOTE: The results of our research will be posted here sometime in November, so be sure to check back.

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 10:37 PM | Comments (1)

September 07, 2007
Seeding Is Believing

I have recently been accused, by one of my colleagues, of writing overly long blog entries. At first I got a bit defensive, but then I realized how right he was. And so, it is with great respect to the blogospheric code of brevity, that I ask you all to contemplate one, simple, non-hyperlinked question today: Where do you find the seeds to grow seedless watermelons?

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:49 PM | Comments (2)

September 02, 2007
True Blue Sky Thinking

Where everyone else saw only buildings overhead, one innovator saw a new font.

Lisa Reinermann, a University of Duisburg student, had this Aha! insight while exploring the narrow streets of Barcelona. Suppose you were Lisa. How would you notice the font-ness of sky-shapes contained by rooflines? First, ignore size. Don't let the fact that fonts are small but these sky-shapes are building-sized distract you from the visual reality. (Lisa's camera probably helped her flatten, rescale and reframe her perception.) Second, reverse figure and ground. Make the usual background (the sky) the foreground and the usual foreground (the closer buildings) background. Role reversals are common in many innovations. Weaknesses (like inferior glue) often reframe as strengths and become the breakthroughs (Post-It Notes) of the future.

To Lisa's credit, once she had her breakthrough she stuck with it, searching, walking and neck-craning to find other locations to complete every letter in the alphabet. Her photo-typographic alphabet is now a font set published by German Type Foundry Slanted called Type The Sky. The collection comes as a type face and a photo book.

Posted by Tim Moore at 03:28 PM | Comments (1) <