Is the Twin Cities metro really a haven for the creative class?

[5 July 2005 - Minnesota Public Radio] Economist Richard Florida has declared the Twin Cities a world leader in attracting creative people. Florida draws a connection between the health of cities and their ability to attract what's defined as "the creative class." He describes the creative class as an increasingly mobile, educated and well-paid section of society. But a Minnesota economist says while it's a nice idea, the creative class theory just doesn't hold water. Listen to the story; read the story

In Praise of Play (audio)

[30 June 2005 - American Public Media's "Speaking of Faith"] If sport is an American religion, is that bad for us? What is the metaphysic of baseball? Hear from a theologian and sports fan who has spent much of his career studying the religious character of rituals in sporting events and the spiritual significance of fans' attention to sports. More

Academic Creativity: Its Own Worst Enemy?

[1 June 2005 - Campus Technology] Higher ed boards, executives, and faculties must work together to create differentiated academic management and governance models. ... ALONG WITH A GROUP of academic, cultural, and business executives who’ve managed creative people, I recently participated in an organized but robustly interactive smallgroup discussion about creativity. When the meeting leader started the discussion by noting that being creative is not the same as managing creative people, I wondered how his observation applies to the leaders of nonprofit colleges and universities, and the intellectually creative faculty they “manage.” I wondered particularly about such faculty’s use of technology in teaching and learning. More

Do today's kids have "nature-deficit disorder"?

[31 May 2005 - Salon] A new book argues that children desperately need to be able to play in the woods -- and that our culture's sterile rejection of nature is harming them in body and soul. More

Creative thinking: try lying down

[9 May 2005 - PhysOrg] Keep that pen and paper by the bed: new research by an ANU PhD graduate suggests it may be that our most creative thoughts come when we’re lying down. Dr Darren Lipnicki, from the School of Psychology in the Faculty of Science at ANU, found that people solved anagrams more quickly when they were lying down compared to standing up. More

New findings support a central role for NMDA receptors in learning and memory

[11 April 2005 - EurekAlert!] Learning and memory are processes that link experience with behavior and therefore play central roles in our daily experience. That there exists a physical basis for these processes seems at first hard to imagine--except for the fact that physical disruptions in the brain, such as stroke or disease, can make them go wrong. This week, researchers report that by making targeted genetic disruptions that disable a key neurotransmitter receptor in the fruit fly, they have uncovered an important clue to the physiological mechanisms at work in learning and memory. The subject of the study was the so-called NMDA receptor--a neurotransmitter receptor possessing special properties that could make it especially useful in learning and memory. In particular, past work has shown that NMDA receptors can respond in a special way to concurrent events on both sides of a synapse. Acting in this way as "coincidence detectors," NMDA receptors may help neurons form stronger or weaker connections with each other depending on whether they are repeatedly stimulated together. Neuroscientists strongly suspect that this process--called synaptic plasticity--of modulating the strength of synaptic connections on the basis of experience forms an elemental, neuron-level basis for learning and memory. More

Disorganisation: Why future organisations must 'loosen up'

[2004 - Demos] Changing expectations of working life have created a new tension at the heart of organisational strategy. Employees want more human organisations with greater autonomy and flexibility. They want an experience of work that fits with their values. They want a greater say in the future of the organisations they work for. In short, they want organisations to ‘disorganise’. At the same time, organisations are facing external pressures. Competition shows no sign of waning, new demands for accountability and growing concern about security are all forcing organisations to take greater control, ‘hyper-organising’ to cut costs or guard against potential failure. So far there are only case studies of organisations experimenting with ‘disorganisation’. While these ‘case study companies’ may represent a relatively small part of the corporate sector, they can be seen as surface manifestations of an underlying desire for employees to feel just a bit less organised. This report looks at how organisations can manage the desire among employees for a greater sense of ‘disorganisation’ in an ever more competitive and complex environment. Based on new data from polling of employees and business decision makers, Disorganisation argues that to stay organised in the deep sense of engaging their employees in a shared project, organisations may have to disorganise to allow people more freedom to express their personal values and individual identity. Download and read the full report

About Learning

[2005 - Demos] Future excellence in learning depends on greater collaboration between leading edge schools and education researchers. Teachers are adopting new approaches to help students learn more effectively and some of these methods are better than others. Moreover there is room for developing yet better methods if practical developments in schools and the most promising advances in cognitive science could be brought together to ensure speedy and trustworthy new ways of ensuring that students learn more effectively. This report, published by the Learning Working Group and Demos, was commissioned by the Department for Education and Skills. The Group was chaired by David Hargreaves, Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge. The report proposes the establishment of a Commission on Learning, with its own small permanent staff and budget. It would be tasked with improving the exchange of ideas between schools and cognitive scientists, and driving forward collaboration between the two communities. Independence in learning is identified as one of the key areas where greater collaboration between education scientists and practitioners is required to promote excellence and raise standards. Download and read the full report

IBEC: Ireland must encourage innovation

[4 May 2005 - Ireland On-Line] Ireland needs to encourage innovation rather than rely on the comfort zone left by the Celtic Tiger boom years, it was claimed today. With experts at the Economist Intelligence Unit in London warning a failure to innovate was one of the top three risks to business, IBEC chiefs called on firms to use their creativity to bring new products to the marketplace. More

Collective Creativity Exhibition

[3 May 2005 - OneWorld Southeast Europe] On May 1, the team of art curators ”What, How and for Whom?” (Ivet Curlin, Ana Devic, Natasa Ilic and Sabina Sabolovic), opened the “Collective Creativity” international exhibition at the Kunsthalle Fridericianum in Kasselu. The exhibition will be open for visitors until July 17, 2005.

Using their own experience of daily functioning in a collective, the members of the WHW curator team, under the “Zagreb – European Cultural Capitol 3000”, started a series of events in 2003 (lectures, debates and exhibitions), under the “Collective Action” name. The events were designed to explore the subject of specific aspects of working in art groups and collectives.

The invitation to exhibit at the Kunsthalle Fridericianum, being outside the established paths of bilateral state and institutional cooperation, is a unique opportunity for an independent collective of curators to work in one of the centres of the Western visual arts scene, and is immensely important for the promotion of non-institutional cultural practice in Croatia and a proof of its presence on the international scene.

”Collective Creativity” deals with diverse forms of collective artistic creation with a common programme, lifestyle, methodology and political positions shared by all protagonists. The exhibition addresses specific social tensions that are used as an axis around which the different activities of the group are organized.

The exhibition deals with various emancipation aspects of collective action, while the collaborative creativity is not just a form of resistance to the dominant arts system and capitalist demand for specialization, but also a productive and performing criticism of the social institutions and policies. More

Multi-million dollar foundation for global cultural development to be launched

[3 May 2005 - BBC] A UK arts centre will be created by a new multi-million pound foundation for global cultural development, backed by artists Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst. The Louise T Blouin Foundation, named after its Canadian arts publisher founder, will be based in London, New York and Paris. ... "Culture is the ultimate democracy," said Louise T Blouin MacBain. "We believe that culture can enhance creativity, which is the nervous system of society." More

See also the New York Times piece about this launch.

Creativity—How Can I Get Some?

[25 April 2005 - Harvard Business School Working Knowledge] Creativity is the lifeblood of innovation and marketing, but where does it come from and how should a company nurture this elusive trait? How does one explore creativity on the job—and use it to one's advantage? More

Change or Die

[May 2005 - Fast Company] All leadership comes down to this: changing people's behavior. Why is that so damn hard? Science offers some surprising new answers -- and ways to do better. More

The Business of Creativity Media Conference on 4/26

[15 April 2005 - The Graduate Media Association] The Graduate Media Association of Metropolitan College of New York (MCNY) announces its plan to hold its first media conference, “The Business of Creativity”, which is set to take place on Tuesday, April 26, 2005 at MCNY’s Manhattan campus on the 12th floor. The conference will assemble a program of today’s top professionals to give hands-on workshops, lectures, and panel discussions, covering topics that are in the forefront of today’s media world. More

Encouraging Creativity in Children

[15 April 2005 - AccessNorthGa] Creativity is the ability to see things in a new way, to see problems that no one else may even realize exist, and then come up with new, unique, and effective solutions to these problems. Standard intelligence tests measure convergent thinking - the ability to come up with a single correct answer. But creativity involves divergent thinking - the ability to come up with new and unusual answers. More

Modern management tools 'vital for progress'

[18 April 2005 - Gulf Daily News] Effective leadership which can focus on proper management tools can contribute substantially towards the success of any organisation, says Bapco president Dr Mustafa Al Sayed. Changing business environment in an era of globalisation calls for a change in the style of leadership and management methods, he told the conference. Dr Al Sayed spoke on the Role of Leadership in Turning Companies into Successful Organisations. He focused on the combined effect of creativity, motivation and organisational culture on the success of companies. More

Build on creativity, architect urges

[18 April 2005 - Richmond Times-Dispatch] Frank Gehry, the architect known for such wildly inventive buildings as the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, designed himself a new office a few years ago. Once he moved in, he realized "it looks exactly like my old office." That's his daily reminder that it's comfortable to "remain static, to hide in the past," Gehry told a Richmond Forum audience. More

Working with creativity: Day marks office innovation

[19 April 2005 - Metro] Creativity is Marci Segal's middle name. With a graduate degree in creativity from the International Center for Studies in Creativity at Buffalo State University and over two decades of experience, Marci Segal is the co-founder of International Creativity day, which occurs on Thursday. The day, which aims to help people find new solutions to old problems and break down barriers in their workplace and their communities, marks the end of Toronto's own Creativity and Innovation week which is currently taking place. More

Youthful creativity is vital for progress

[20 April 2005 - Daily Yomiuri On-Line] The United Nations has declared this year the World Year of Physics, in celebration of the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein's "miraculous year" in 1905 when he published multiple seminal papers describing ideas that marked the change from classical to modern physics. These ideas were born, not under the leadership of prominent figures in the academic community, but through exchanges with cosmopolitan friends in a climate filled with revolutionary ideas. Einstein's amazing intelligence pinpointed core issues in the world of physics at that time, skipping over peripheral problems and unflinchingly challenging ideas to find out answers. It may be a surprise to learn that Einstein was only 26 years old in 1905. But it also might be this very youth that made him challenge existing ideas and achieve creative results. Einstein's theories forced changes from conventional ideas in the world of physics. More

Creativity is core value, key to Jensen's success

[20 April 2005 - Daily Nebraskan] It takes more than a college diploma to start a company and become an owner of a Major League Baseball team. According to Dale Jensen, it takes a little creativity as well. More

Beta-Test a Mind-Map Tool

[24 April 2005 - Topicscape] Roy Grubb is a beta-team member in a small group of developers who have been building a 3D mind-mapping tool for a couple of years. The tool is Topicscape and they are looking for people interested in trying out this tool. Topicscape uses a mind-mapping approach, which allows for freedom from linear thinking and provides a great way to tap creativity. Each mind-map node in Topicscape can have files, URLs, e-mails and parts of files dropped on it. You can have many files on a node if you want (or none). Topicscape has been designed in 3D because mind maps get too big if you use them on big projects. Plus, 3D itself can be stimulating and exciting. Using 3D on a computer screen can help users take in and understand much more and, as a result, help lateral thinking and creativity. This beta tools is available in personal editions (for installing on one PC). Check it out at www.topicscape.com, where you'll also find screen shots and stories from users showing how they use Topicscape in their work and personal lives.

Applied Imagination e-News - March 2005 - Links

[March 2005 - Applied Imagination e-News] CPSI 2005 to Explore Why "Creativity Matters"; Details and Registration Available Online ... Excitement is growing for CEF's 51st annual Creative Problem Solving Institute 2005 - to be held June 26 to July 1 in St. Paul, Minnesota. People from business, education, government and nonprofits will explore why "creativity matters." Ten featured presenters will stimulate insight and discussion through their CPSI keynote and spotlight sessions. Here's what some of these thought leaders have been doing lately:

• Register now for CPSI 2005



• CPSI 2005 Keynotes and Spotlights



• CPSI 2005 Keynote - Richard Florida's new book:
  The Flight of the Creative Class: The New Global Competition for Talent



• CPSI 2005 Spotlight - Richard Leider's new book:
  Claiming Your Place at the Fire: Living the Second Half of Your Life on Purpose



• CPSI 2005 In-Depth Immersion Program:
  "Creativity in the Third Age: Finding Purpose in Transition, Retirement and Aging"



• CPSI 2005 Keynote - Mary Catherine Bateson's new book and article:
  - Willing to Learn: Passages of Personal Discovery
  - Harvard Business Review Breakthrough Ideas for 2005:
  "#17 Getting Time on Your Side" by Mary Catherine Bateson



• CPSI 2005 Spotlight - Coleen Rowley on PBS's NOW Program:
  - About Coleen Rowley
  - Transcript of NOW interview



• Gallup Management Journal article on well-being and what it means to business:
  - "Are You Happy Now?", an interview with Princeton Psychology and Public Affairs Professor Daniel Kahneman, winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in economics

Cultures of Creativity: The Centennial Exhibition of the Nobel Prize is on Display at The New York Hall of Science

[8 March 2005 - New York] What is creativity and how can creative activity be encouraged? Which is more important to the creative process: the individual or the environment? The Centennial Exhibition of the Nobel Prize that will be on display in the Great Hall at the New York Hall of Science from March 12 to May 30, 2005. This exhibition examines these questions by presenting selected Laureates and atmospheres from the 100-year history of the Nobel Prize. This traveling exhibition doesn’t provide specific answers, but gives visitors the chance to think about the questions themselves. It encourages you to think in a new way, to question the world as it is and to strive for a better world, however an individual chooses to define that world. ... Among the Hands-on Discovery Tables is "Roger Sperry – left and right brain functionalization" where you can examine a realistic model of a brain, guess which animal each brain picture belongs to, and view various optical illusions. More

Experimental test focuses on creativity

[6 March 2005 - Lexington Herald-Leader] Critics of the SAT say there's more to intelligence than finding grammatical errors and solving geometry problems -- or even, this year, than showing you can write an essay. But how to measure those other abilities? Robert Sternberg, a Yale University psychologist, says he's developed a test that does just that. The test, dubbed "The Rainbow Project," evaluates creativity and problem-solving rather than analytical skills. Instead of multiple choice questions, it asks students to write captions for cartoons, outline how they would solve a problem or write stories with unusual titles like The Octopus's Sneakers or 35,381. More

HoustonChronicle.com - We can open mind to creativity, experts say

[9 March 2005 - Houston Chronicle] Creativity is all around us -- from the technology that makes it possible to carry our favorite tunes in something the size of a pack of gum to the vision that drew more than 4 million people to see saffron-colored gates across 23 miles of New York City's Central Park. Without creativity, Apple's iPod would be nothing more than a microprocessor with memory, not the digital device that has transformed the way we experience listening to music. And Christo and Jean-Claude's The Gates would be nothing more than fabric and steel. No wonder researchers are studying creativity, academics and business people are teaching courses on it and authors are writing books about it. ... "Much of the standard of living is the result of inventiveness, the act of creativity in developing new things, new devices, new ways to live," says Merton Flemings, an engineering professor at MIT in Boston, where he heads an annual contest for aspiring inventors that includes a single $500,000 prize. More

Creativity urged at business conference

[28 January 2005 - The Californian] With a picture of a dinosaur projected behind him, Monterey Institute of International Studies associate professor Frederic Kropp said Friday business owners can learn a valuable lesson from the prehistoric animals. “You have to adapt or die,” Kropp said. “The moral of this is that innovation is really important.” Kropp and other speakers addressed listeners at the 11th Annual Tri-County Economic Conference, held at the Embassy Suites Hotel. This year’s event, “Catching the Next Wave of Entrepreneurship in the Monterey Bay Region,” targeted business owners looking for innovative ways to attract consumers. Fostering a creative environment can help businesses earn a competitive advantage, Kropp told the audience of about 100 business owners and city leaders from Monterey, Santa Cruz and San Benito counties. More

Lessons taught by Muskie desperately needed today

[30 January 2005 - Portland Press Herald]
Today, as a conference of experts at Princeton University concluded in December, a decline in comity, bipartisanship and cooperation is hurting the nation's ability to address the nation's needs and create solutions that serve the public well. What can we learn from Muskie's leadership model for accord and bipartisanship? Gov. Muskie believed in reaching public policy decisions by a process based on facts, broad participation by those with different opinions and vigorous but civil debate. The object was not to beat the representatives of the other party, but to reach agreement on policies and actions that would benefit the people of Maine. ... For Muskie, creating policy was like weaving a rug with a complex pattern, rather than patching together a quilt. It took time, creative thought, strong collaboration with Republican leaders, and help from everyone willing to do their homework and contribute. Some legislators do not have the patience for this. More

Studies find arts have ripple effect: Art education develops many cognitive skills

[23 January 2005 - Democrat & Chronicle] When school budgets are trimmed, arts courses often wind up as expendable frills. But a decade ago, arts teachers around the nation found an unexpected ally. Researchers at the University of California-Irvine discovered that students aced spatial-reasoning tests after listening to Mozart's music. Some scientists even predicted that the so-called "Mozart Effect" could spur brain development in children younger than 3. Tens of thousands of Mozart albums were sold to schools, hospitals and hopeful parents. Then, six years ago, the study was debunked by the journal Psychological Science and several independent scientists who found no lasting cognitive benefit in listening to music. More

"Creative class" Guru Richard Florida and Writer Mary Catherine Bateson Among Keynotes at 51st Annual CREATIVE PROBLEM SOLVING INSTITUTE (CPSI) 2005

[18 January 2005 - Creative Education Foundation] "Creative class" guru Richard Florida and anthropologist and educator Mary Catherine Bateson to keynote the world's longest-running creativity event - the Creative Education Foundation's 51st Annual CREATIVE PROBLEM SOLVING INSTITUTE (CPSI) 2005.

Mark your calendar for CPSI 2005 - to be held June 26-July 1, 2005, at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA. Registration will be available in the next several weeks, with an early-bird deadline of April 30!

Plan now to be at the event where "applied imagination" is just the beginning. Learn why creativity matters ... in business, in education, in communities, in aging and retirement, in arts, and in society.

For 51 years, CPSI has helped you learn to intentionally apply creativity to get results. At CPSI 2005, you'll find abundant opportunities for further professional and personal development:

Don't miss the keynote and spotlight sessions that showcase some of the best thinking about "why creativity matters" in the world right now. Confirmed featured presenters (with more to be added) include:
* Richard Florida, Hirst Professor of Public Policy, George Mason University; and author, "The Rise of the Creative Class" - with Don Samuels, Minneapolis City Council Member
* Mary Catherine Bateson, anthropologist and author, "Willing to Learn"; "Composing a Life"; and "With a Daughter's Eye: A Memoir of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson"
* Mike Morrison, dean, University of Toyota
* Coleen Rowley, agent (retired), FBI; and Time magazine's "Person of the Year 2002"
* Efiong Etuk, author, "Great Insights on Human Creativity"

More

The New Science of Happiness

[17 January 2005 - Time Magazine] What makes the human heart sing? Researchers are taking a close look. What they've found may surprise you. Explore this Special Mind & Body Issue in which Time magazine presents an important series of articles that anyone interested in creativity should not miss. The nearly 70 pages of articles introduce the lay reader to "positive psychology (PP)," an emerging field that focuses on strengths and well-being and how to maintain these positive states, as opposed to psychology's tendency to focus on treating unhealthy or pathological problems. Creativity, as a strengths-based approach to development and engagement, is an important strand within PP. PP topics with relevance for creativity research and application include: happiness, optimism, joy, laughter, biology, thriving, spirituality, resiliency, trust, satisfaction, and positive emotions. More

How KLA-Tencor yields innovation

[1 January 2005 - Electronic Business] A culture of innovation: The products, including a services unit and the expert systems, and the need to stay two steps ahead of the chip industry's march toward smaller geometries (KLA-Tencor currently is developing products for 65 nanometers, generating ideas for 45 nm and researching 32 nm) are the innovative hallmarks of the company. But the culture that produces this innovation is where the management lessons are found. More

Lessons on Innovation From Microsoft

[December 2004 - Fast Company] There are plenty of internal reasons why Microsoft's record of innovation is so lackluster. Not to mince words, Bill Gates's researchers have placed a bunch of expensive bets on technologies that haven't panned out. But the company's failure also points to three much bigger lessons about innovation. More

Brattleboro Reformer - Headlines

[10 December 2004 - Brattleboro Reformer] The key to understanding how Vermont can compete and grow in a global marketplace might be found in the storefronts, galleries and people of downtown. And more than 75 people from around the state came to Bellows Falls on Thursday to get a first-hand look. More

First Creative Economy Conference Reaches Out to Regional Creative Community

[8 December 2004 - Innovation Philadelphia] "The creative economy is based on ideas that are generated by human capital," said Richard A. Bendis, president and CEO of Innovation Philadelphia before a room of 300 attendees at its first Creative Economy Conference in December. "The creative economy generates $44 billion in revenue a year .... This is an important sector of the Greater Philadelphia Region that needs to be cultivated." ... Carol Coletta, president of Coletta and Company, gave a comprehensive overview of the findings of the Innovation Philadelphia-commissioned report, "Young and the Restless: How Philadelphia Competes for Talent." She described how the young and the restless - those in the 25 to 34 age category with four-year degrees - are an HR director’s dream. "They are adaptable, flexible, productive and reasonably paid." But she tempered this with the warning, "they are also the most mobile - and tend to move the furthest." More

Creativity After the Election

[December 2004 - Applied Imagination E-news - Creative Education Foundation] The United States campaign season and election that ended last month did not end the division of thought and ideas that exists in this country. There are roughly 60 million people on each side -- many of whom say about the other 60 million people -- "I don't understand how 'those people' think, feel, vote, act and believe how they do." Many of you in the creativity world have expressed a desire to see more of a direct impact from applied imagination effecting a new kind of politics, community and policy. There are several ways to begin translating your hopes for creativity to transform the world:

1. Plan now to participate in CPSI 2005 where you will find a featured, in-depth Immersion program on creative communities and cities, as well as a keynote and Extending breakout sessions. This theme will include topics such as creative class, creative communities, creative peace, imagination and politics, etc.


2. Tell us what you are doing with creativity to transform your community. Share how you promote creative communities where you live. Respond to this story in our Applied Imagination blog by clicking "Post a Comment" below.


3. Read the Memphis Manifesto and then work locally to get it adopted in your own city.


4. Check out the Creative America initiative -- whose goal is to inspire and train creative professionals to run for local office in 2006 and beyond. "We want creative professionals to stand up for creativity as a national value and priority."


5. Create a CEF Affiliate in your community to build a local network of people to help you accomplish these mutual goals of promoting the value of creativity and applied imagination.

What are you doing with creativity to transform your community? Click "Post a Comment" below and tell us about!

The 6 Myths Of Creativity

[December 2004 - Fast Company] Where do breakthrough ideas come from? What kind of work environment allows them to flourish? What can leaders do to sustain the stimulants to creativity -- and break through the barriers? Teresa Amabile has been grappling with those questions for nearly 30 years. Amabile, who heads the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at Harvard Business School and is the only tenured professor at a top B-school to devote her entire research program to the study of creativity, is one of the country's foremost explorers of business innovation. [Editor's Note: Amabile is a also a member of the Creative Education Foundation's Journal of Creative Behavior editorial board.] Eight years ago, Amabile took her research to a daring new level. Working with a team of PhDs, graduate students, and managers from various companies, she collected nearly 12,000 daily journal entries from 238 people working on creative projects in seven companies in the consumer products, high-tech, and chemical industries. She didn't tell the study participants that she was focusing on creativity. She simply asked them, in a daily email, about their work and their work environment as they experienced it that day. She then coded the emails for creativity by looking for moments when people struggled with a problem or came up with a new idea. "The diary study was designed to look at creativity in the wild," she says. "We wanted to crawl inside people's heads and understand the features of their work environment as well as the experiences and thought processes that lead to creative breakthroughs." Amabile and her team are still combing through the results. But this groundbreaking study is already overturning some long-held beliefs about innovation in the workplace. In an interview with Fast Company , she busted six cherished myths about creativity. (If you want to quash creativity in your organization, just continue to embrace them.) Here they are, in her own words. More

Scientists track footprints of thoughts

[29 November 2004 - ABC News Online] Australian scientists have discovered a way to track the electronic footpath of a single thought travelling through the human brain. The discovery has implications for everything from education to planning the safest way to undertake brain surgery. The latest developments in scanning techniques allow brain experts to track responses in the brain from particular movements and thoughts, in real time. "If we ask them to read a sentence we can actually look at them processing a single sentence. In other words we can look at the footprint of a single thought," Professor Keith Thulborn, from Chicago's Centre for Magnetic Resonance Imaging, said. More

Suits can profit from a spell in the sandpit

[17 November 2004 - The Australian] CREATIVITY and innovation in business are no longer the sole domain of the pony-tailed staff in the ideas tank. Corporate executives playing in sandpits, acting in theatre pieces and brainstorming radical ideas are moving in as businesses see the benefits of bending rigid rules to let in inventive thinking. Open-plan offices and the suit-free Friday are just two of many relaxations taken on by the corporate world under the weight of the popularity of masters programs promoting creativity and innovation, according to one management academic. Director of the Australian Graduate School of Entrepreneurship at Swinburne University of Technology, Adolph Hanich, says he encourages his charges to avoid the stifling nature of the corporate credos of productivity and efficiency. More

Creativity Central cNews Mention of Creative Education Foundation

Thanks to fellow e-newsletter, Creativity Central cNews, for the mention this month ...

[November 2004 - Creativity Central cNews] From Steve Dahlberg, General Manager, Creative Education Foundation "Imagination and ideas are the social capital that grows economies, integrates differences and changes individuals ... ideas can transform the world. There is a global urgency for deliberate creativity -- whether it's the 9/11 Commission citing the intelligence community's 'faliure of imagination,' the head of GE calling for innovation to enable continual corporate growth, a political pundit pointing out the 'war of ideas' between differing groups or an urban planner advocating for creative communities." More

Creating a Global Society: Separation Without Separateness

[November 2004 - Center for Creative Leadership e-Newsletter] In an increasingly interdependent world, hierarchical authority is proving fundamentally inadequate for getting things done – and that has major implications for our understanding of leadership, according to Peter Senge, a senior lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and renowned expert on organizational change. More

Nominations Wanted for the Center for Creative Leadership 2004 Walt Ulmer Applied Research Award

[Center for Creative Leadership] Established in honor of Walter F. Ulmer, Jr., retired CCL President and Chief Executive Officer, this award recognizes outstanding, career-long contributions to applied leadership research. The Center for Creative Leadership is currently looking for external candidates for the 2004 award. All submissions are due by Dec. 1, 2004. More

Full-time kindergartens see less play, more work

[31 October 2004 - Detroit News] The school's curriculum - called "integrated" because it allows children to explore knowledge in various subjects in connection to their environments - stresses early reading and math skills to prepare them for the rigors of first grade. A key goal is for as many children as possible to leave kindergarten with basic reading skills. "It's no longer playing and just socialization," Benezra said. "Everything has an academic bent. The tooth chart isn't really to track lost teeth - it's to help them count." Kindergarten, which is German for "children's garden," is serious stuff these days. With half-day programs giving way to full days in state after state, the curriculum once saved for first grade has been pushed down to 5- and 6-year-olds. Nearly 98 percent of youngsters in the United States attend kindergarten, 60 percent of them in full-day programs, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. More

The Innovation Economy

[11 October 2004 - BusinessWeek] We've walked on the moon, built the Net, and decoded the genome. Have we run out of worlds to conquer? No. As a matter of fact, we're on the cusp of a fresh innovation boom. More

A Milestone for BusinessWeek
Since 1929, we've been chronicling innovations and the people who make them. Here are some of the best from the past 75 years. More

The business of creativity

[31 October 2004 - Boston Globe] What thriving industry employs more workers than the computer software sector or communication services, and twice as many as the health care technology cluster? The answer: the "creative economy." In hopes of promoting the North Shore as an enclave for arts and culture businesses, the Enterprise Center at Salem State College this month launched a creative economy incubator. Today, half of the 28 businesses housed at the center are members of the creative industry. The start-ups range from a marketing and advertising company to a drama coach and a handbag designer. More

Artists reach troubled kids via creativity

[31 October 2004 - Grand Rapids Press] Last May, when Marty Arnold asked local artists to conduct classes for residents of St. John's Home in Grand Rapids, she didn't expect the response she got. Arnold, a development associate at this residential treatment center for abused and neglected kids, knew there would be some interest, but the level of enthusiasm surprised her. By the end of summer, 11 artists in St. John's Home's Visiting Artists Program had led regular 90-minute sessions with 30 children ages 7-17, often donating the supplies as well as their time to the cause. More

Don't Let 'Creativity Crisis' Drain U.S. Work Force

[20 October 2004 - eWeek] Outsourcing and immigration are two hot-button political issues that divide the tech community, making it difficult for the industry as a whole to find common approaches to the economic changes that everyone, more or less, agrees are inevitable. It's not just tech folks who are at a loss over what to do, however. Taking their cues from the traditional divide between labor and management, politicians have come up with ham-handed solutions. ... A clearer path between these issues—one that treats them as symptoms of a larger problem, not as isolated trends—is starting to emerge. Anyone who is interested in the intersection between economic growth, politics and policy in the coming century should read "America's Looming Creativity Crisis" by Richard Florida in this month's Harvard Business Review. More

Notes from Bushnell 2004 Education-Creativity Conference: Elliot Eisner and Robert Sternberg

[11 October 2004 - 2004 Education-Creativity Conference - The Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts - Hartford, Connecticut]
Steve Dahlberg, Creative Education Foundation

"The Nature of Creativity"
featuring presentations by:
Dr. Elliot Eisner, Stanford University: "Creativity and the Culture of Education"
Dr. Robert Sternberg, Yale University: "Creativity is a Decision"
discussions facilitated by
Dr. Joseph S. Renzulli, University of Connecticut

===

Renzulli: It's a "very important time in our nation's history as it comes to promoting creativity and the arts."

===

Elliot Eisner:

* author of "The Educational Imagination: On the Design and Evaluation of School Programs"
* development of creative thinking skills has not been high on our agenda
* conditions for development of creativity
- schools --> 53 million students in the U.S.
- creativity has been side-lined in our pursuit of higher test scores
* creative thinking comes in different forms
- boundary pushing; expanding the limits
- inventing
- boundary-breaking; problemitizing -- the given is made problematic
- aesthetic organizing -- putting things together that work -- somatic knowledge
* "inquiry trumps achievement ... in our schools, typically, achievement trumps inquiry"
* skills provide power; but need to also lose control
- losing control opens up yourself to possibility
- allows yourself to be in dialogue with what you are working on
- "flexible purposing" - John Dewey
* surprise is interesting and important
- "there is no educational policy that I'm aware of that is interested in promoting surprise"
* too many classrooms that look more like an assembly line than a studio
* creativity as exploring other ways of seeing
- "the world is what we make of it"
- move away from "one right answer"
- the whole enterprise is geared toward isomorphic relationship ...
* state standards are about production of uniform outcomes (often out of any context)
* creativity is a process without moral valence
- people can be creative in doing evil
- the direction in which creativity moves is not a trivial issue
* working creativity requires courage
- risk-taking
- moving toward "A" precludes inquiry, risk-taking
* the importance of pursuing surprise
- create the conditions under which surprise is possible
- open-ended outcomes
* the well-posed question is important for intellectual development -- "telling questions"
* "what we need to be doing is not 'covering the material,' but 'uncovering the material'"
- the importance of questions
* creating a culture of education that creates conditions for imagination
- culture: in biology, culture as medium for growing things; in education, culture for growing minds; in anthropology, culture as means for creating connections between people and creating meaning
* creativity in a deep sense is part of an artistic activity -- making something -- has aesthetic properties
- therefore, long-term function of education is the production of artists = people who make anything (not just painters, etc)
- the artistry is in the application of imagination
* creativity is part of the artistry of human existence
- this ideal as a regulative ideal in schools and education is not a bad ideal to embrace
* will Americans accept a culture where improv, creativity and imagination are embraced?
* you can't fatten cattle by putting them on a scale ... you fatten them by feeding them.

===

Robert Sternberg:

* "creativity is a decision" versus an ability that you are born with
* what are the component decisions that you make?
- why doesn't everyone make the decision to be creative?
* investment theory of creativity
* creative people defy the crowd
- external pressure to do what everyone else is doing
- internal pressure
- both work toward conformity and against being creative
* assessing creativity
- when you add creativity measures to conventional measures --> more predictive
- gives ALL students opportunity to demonstrate what they know
- creativity matters for success for school: achievement goes up if you teach in ways that enable them to display their creativity
* "creativity can be developed"
- therefore, teach kids to make certain decisions
- creativity is an attitude toward life
* Csikszentmihalyi: really good artists are better problem finders
* an attitude that there may be another way to define a problem
* analyze the problem: explore best possible outcomes? worst possible outcomes? most likely outcomes?
* sell creative solutions: creative ideas rarely sell themselves
- this is a decision, too
* realizing limitations of knowledge
- need knowledge to be creative
- knowledge also has its limitations to seeing newness
- we all get stuck
- if we want to be good role models, we should learn from the people we teach
* if you defy the crowd, you have to surmount obstacles
- there is a cost
* see Pushcart's Complete Rotten Reviews & Rejections book
* need to be willing to take sensible risks
- safe stuff doesn't tend to be creative; it tends to get you A's
* find something you really love to do
- it's really hard to find what you -- or your kids -- love to do
- don't quit trying to find what they -- and you -- love to do
- this is where they can make a contribution
* have more than one major creative idea
- an attitude to constantly come up with creative ideas
- people pigeon-hole you then you pigeon-hole yourself
* creativity as a way of life
* having the courage to be creative; creativity is an act of courage
- it's really hard work; it's a decision; it's an attitude

===

Sternberg:
* technology is good when it's in the service of ideas
- can be amplifier or suppressor of ideas
* wisdom - intelligence - creativity - synthesized

===

Eisner:
* function of education is to create minds
* effective education increases differences
* effective education creates a culture that is intellectually evocative

===

Sternberg:
* teaching for creativity improves both creative thinking and traditional measures of academic achievement
- leads to better test scores and being happier about what they are doing and learning

===

Renzulli:
* "enrichment clusters" as model
- role of just-in-time knowledge
- standards may come at the end of the learning endeavor

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Research Effort Studies How Arts Affect Learning: Dana Arts and Cognition Consortium Founded; Dartmouth College Coordinates $1,850,000 Grant

[26 July 2004 - Dana Foundation] The Board of Directors of the Dana Foundation announced today a $1,850,000 grant over three years to Dartmouth College as part of the newly created Dana Arts and Cognition Consortium, to study the affect of the arts on learning. Michael Gazzaniga, the David T. McLaughlin Distinguished University Professor, Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, as well as a member of the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives, will serve as director of the Consortium and has brought together six institutions and nine principal investigators to shape the research. "This is an innovative line of research," said Gazzaniga. "It is the first extensive scientific attempt to provide a comprehensive picture of the role of arts education in changing the brain. Up till now there have always been good correlations between children who take part in the arts and their academic performance. Now we hope to see if the relationship is causal. If it is, there will be a strong case for reintroducing the performing arts back into our schools. We shall see where these new studies take us." More

IdeaFisher Systems releases their eXpert Comedy Writer package

[13 October 2004 - PRWEB] IdeaFisher Systems today releases their eXpert Comedy Writer's package. Combining the patented 65,000 word IdeaFisher 6.1 Word Association and Creativity Engine with the Creative Writing, Story & Scriptwriting, General Problem Solving, Name Development and Speech and Presentation modules, the new eXpert Comedy Writer's program is becoming a boon to comics and presenters who need a smile in their entrance and exit. More

IdeaFlow: Who Will Be The 'Innovation President'?

[4 October 2004 - Corante] How you call this one depends a lot on what you think innovation is, and what you think nurtures it, nationally and globally. My take is that whoever will focus not on the jobs already lost to outsourcing, but on education, training and R&D, is probably the better choice, innovation-wise. Which candidate that is depends a lot on whether you believe Kerry's promises and whether you like what Bush has already done in this regard. It's very easy to promise these kinds of things and hard to deliver. Too bad there's not going to be a debate focused on innovation! More