This is my daughter, Mimi.
She is 12 years old
and very flexible.
I'm guessing your business
is more than 12.
I'm also guessing
your business
is not as flexible
as my daughter
(even if it's less than 12).

Ah, flexibility --
nature's way of saying
"Loosen up, adapt, relax."

What can YOU do, today,
to be more flexible,
more adaptive,
more able to stretch?

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 01:39 AM | Comments (0)

Other cool factoids about the internet.

Thanks to Jane's E-Learning for the heads up.

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:02 AM | Comments (1)

"From rock star engineers like Mark Lucovsky to whiz entrepreneurs like Dick Costolo, Google seems to lose a top tier employee every week. Why are so many talented people fleeing such a successful company?" More

Illustration

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 05:25 AM | Comments (2)

We interrupt this blog to bring you the most recent manifesto from my 15-year old son. If you have a teenager (or will), the following epistle will be worth the 3 minutes it will take to read.

"There are a couple of main rules for parents to live by in order to have a happy teenage child:

Let them live, but not unsafely.

Trust them. Keep in contact, but let them contact you, not the other way around.

Accept mistakes, but the second time around give them something so they regret it.

In your generation, staying out until midnight wasn't exactly the cool thing to do, but for some reason it is now. Once your kid has a cell phone, let them stay places late as long as they call you when you ask them to. How late completely depends on their age.

Raise them so they know that lying is wrong, so they can talk to you about sex, drugs and alcohol without feeling the need to hold things back.

Let them have parties, and don't insist on being in the house. Just say that whatever is broken when you get back, or whatever is not cleaned up they will have to pay for or have consequences for.

They can choose their own friends, only if they can control them when at your house or in public.

Let your teens express themselves. If that means wearing chains and listening to heavy metal, so be it. If it means painting their own room and writing poetry you don't understand, that's also fine.

One random tip: when they start listening to music you don't like, soundproof their room. It's no fun having to turn down the volume. The best way to listen to music is when you can feel it in your ribcage.

Talk to them, but don't force them to talk back.

Don't introduce them to caffeine, they'll discover it in time.

Buy them one amazing present every one or two years because even though you both know love isn't shown through exchanging possessions, it feels great to get something you know your parents had to put aside money for, and they did it for you.

Don't force your religion or political beliefs on them."

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:39 PM | Comments (1)

We are happy to announce that Online College Degree has chosen to feature two of Idea Champions' creative thinking tools as #1 and #2 on their list of 100 Excellent Online Tools to Feed Your Creativity.

There's lots of other useful tools on the list, as well. Check it out.

Another cool creative thinking tool on the Idea Champions site that you may not have seen yet is Free the Genie.

All of these are featured on IngenuityBank, our enterprise-wide, idea management software program which we have recently overhauled to make even easier to use. (Oh, by the way, that's me juggling and providing the introductory rap.)

Illustration

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 07:44 AM | Comments (0)