Nine Notable Innovators for 2010

    

The Year of Living Exponentially

I’m a collage artist. I enjoy scissors, paper and glue. Always, I am trying to communicate something through my collage pieces.

Not all of my collages have a name, but this one does: It is “The Year of Living Exponentially.” It illustrates my tribute to nine notable innovators.

It’s a valentine, a winter bouquet, a gift for my readers and a tribute to my muses, leaders, and mentors. For me, it was a winter meditation.

I also practice another art: Cloud Alchemy. It is described in my manifesto by that name. The alchemy is putting people together in dynamic ways, talking about them with my readership, juxtaposing different energies in the “global brain.” In this collage, I’ve taken the nine notables and put them together as an art piece along with the stories I’ll tell about them.

The Nine Notables

The following are nine among many who have lit my path:

Janet Tokerud:

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A web professional since the early 80s, Janet continues to inform her audience in a multitude of ways. I enjoy her intelligent reviews of new products, her enthusiasm about the culture of the web, and her grounded support of my own projects. Janet attended the first meeting of B.A.B.S. (Bay Area Bloggers Society) and is one of the reasons I went forward with it. Follow her on Twitter as @tokerud, and her blog on http://tokerud.com.
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Dr. Ellen F. Weber

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Dr. Weber is a neuroscientist I have come to know on Twitter. She shares amazingly useful concepts about the brain and how to create leadership and learning environments which are most productive and human. Ellen contributes so much love and wisdom to the global brain through her continual high-level communication, she is like a one-person web of connective tissue. Everyone should follow Ellen. Find her on Twitter as @ellenfweber, and see her blog at http://BrainLeadersandLearners.com.
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Barbara Bonardi

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Barbara was one of my students in a new media class in early 2009. She has progressed at an astonishing rate, while continuing with her own art, journaling, and the process of earning a green MBA. Barbara is just getting her blog started and I am so curious to see how she will inform us all. She’s a superb example of a mature mind grabbing these tech tools and running with it. Barbara is an original member of B.A.B.S. Follow her on Twitter as @barbarabonardi.
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Michael Phillips

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Michael is one of my early influences. I read his book, “The 7 Laws of Money,” in the late 70s. His classic, “Marketing Without Advertising,” (now being revised for the 7th edition), taught us the culture of marketing at the deepest human level. It stands today as the best guide for marketing and led the culture of “the conversation” long before we had the tools to converse. Among his unique qualities is the ability to trigger the brain to think in a new direction. He does this on his blog, http://phillips.blogs.com/. Put your thinking cap on and take a look! Follow Michael on Twitter as @phillips1938.
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Valeria Maltoni

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Valeria Maltoni is another communication professional I met online. I think I was reading her vastly informative blog, Conversation Agent, before I knew her on Twitter. Every time I read something on her blog I think I should just drop everything and spend the next month reading everything she’s written. Valeria carries “the conversation” with elegance and a deep understanding of what is productive and true. You can find her on Twitter as @conversationage, and see her blog at http://conversationagent.com.
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Catherine Grison

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Catherine is one of the new friends I’ve made through interacting on Twitter. She has a warmth and style you just have to experience. A Parisian ex-pat, she is a Feng Shui artist who embraces the Twitter community with humor and humanity. When I need an uplifting moment, I just go look at her website. It’s a tonic for the soul, in living color. You can follow her on Twitter as @catherinegrison, and see her website at http://YourFrenchAccent.com.
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Mark McGuinness

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Mark is one of the creators of Lateral Action, which began as a great animated series about the role of creativity and innovation in successful business today. Before Lateral Action, I read his work on Copyblogger. Mark speaks the language of creativity and business, which makes him a potent contributor to the global brain. His art and his writing convey concepts in a simple, straightforward way that I find as reassuring as it is informative. You can follow him on Twitter as @MarkMcGuinness, and see more of his work on http://LateralAction.com.
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Chris Brogan

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Chris Brogan knows at least as much as anyone on the planet about how to live in a social media world with fairness and integrity. He talks about this openly in all of his material. If you want to see something really refreshing, look at his Disclosures and Relationships on the About tab of his website. When someone talks to me about values in leadership today (usually complaining that there are no values in leadership today), I point them to Chris Brogan. Chris is one of the reasons I believe we are creating a more civilized world through the employment of online communication tools. You can follow him on Twitter as @ChrisBrogan, and see his website at http://ChrisBrogan.com.
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Liz Strauss

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It makes me smile just to type her name. To me, Liz is a mastermind of the giant hive of minds contributing their best to “the conversation.” She created a system to honor others for their work with her Successful and Outstanding Blogger site (SOB). That’s the best kind of announcing. Liz is a model for anyone who wants to get their mind around how helping other people keeps you on the track to personal success. She’s funny, too. You can follow her on Twitter as @LizStrauss, and see her website at http://successful-blog.com.
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I hope you will explore these fine contributors to the innovative online community. Our world is more sane, more civilized, more viable, and just better at everything because of them.

Suzanna Stinnett

Interesting.org has a better idea

What frame of mind brings you new ideas? Are you aware of the process you use to generate and utilize your ideas?

The Idea Book is a fantastic tool for expanding your creative capacity, discovering untapped resources in your own brain, and actively connecting to the world of innovation.

Published in Stockholm in 2004, over 200,000 copies of this book have sold in 9 languages. Sold to 40 countries, it is not yet “available” in the U.S., but you can find it and the author Fredrik Haren at the parent site, www.interesting.org.

I’ll be telling you more about its excellent layout and the experience of writing in the blank pages over the weeks to come. This post is your heads up to seek out a copy of The Idea Book — and become part of the huge wave of innovation which is carrying us into a viable future.

Suzanna Stinnett

The global brain + cloud alchemy = thoughtsourcing

Catching up with my brain

While preparing my notes and whiteboard scribbles for a corporate presentation tomorrow, I realized I had not articulated some concepts I refer to often. In my journal.

Remember, folks, the global brain does not carry your information unless you upload it. So I’m writing today about thought sourcing. If you Google “thoughtsourcing,” you get references which contain sentences like “what they thought sourcing was…” Well. That’s not it. That’s about sourcing. Not thoughtsourcing.

(Before I go any further, let me state clearly:  My use of thoughtsourcing is NOT “outsourcing your thoughts.” What Nick Nanton called “The 8th Deadly Sin” in his article in January 2009 is a completely different animal, and, to my mind, a good example of how we often jump the gun with a negative reaction before we really see what can be done with instant and exponential communication. Nick’s concern was that people stop thinking for themselves and draw from the collective without any creative effort of their own. I believe it is quite the opposite. In my Glossary, I put Nick’s definition as the second possibility for this term. Consider this disclaimed.)

Thoughtsourcing

Thoughtsourcing is using modern communication tools (digital) to feedback an answer, a segment of an answer, an expansion of any kind – on your own thought.

Bringing it down to earth a bit more, I could say that “thoughtsourcing” is in the same ball field as what we do when we use Twitter to “crowdsource” and get answers to questions or come up with some research data. But it’s more than that.

Cloud Alchemy

Let’s back up and reference that other term in the title, cloud alchemy: Connecting the thoughts of two or more people on the Internet in a meaningful way to create a new synergy, a new statement or definition or resource or investigation. Cloud alchemy can be done in a few different ways, but it speaks to the new capacity of the global brain to think as an organism.

I think, therefore I tweet

Thoughtsourcing happens when a skilled new-media user employs a tool like Twitter, for example, to almost instantly answer a question or fill in a blank. A new-media user with a broad range of skills can obtain the next piece of information related to their own thought so quickly that it mimics the human thought process. It’s still thousands of times longer than thought itself, but it is so fast now, we can start to see the future through it.

It’s not crowdsourcing

Thoughtsourcing is faster than crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing has its own value and purpose. Thought sourcing is an individual’s extended reach, through their organized and informed use of new media, into the global brain, where they can cherry-pick a trusted source and zero in on an answer – or a new perspective – which does not require further research to validate. The sourcer (ooo, sourcer!!) can then promptly move on to the next thought with new information integrated.

A global brain area, properly connected, means the participants can thoughtsource each other, which makes them all more efficient and more intelligent.

So go do some cloud alchemy. Bring your sources closer together by introducing your best peers to one another. Make a new brain area strong and effective and meaningful.

Be well, friends.

Suzanna Stinnett

*train of thought illustration (c) Suzanna Stinnett 2008

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Are you selling your blog short?

It could be a masterpiece.

I taught my Dynamic Blogging class earlier this week to a group of people, each one of them with a great deal to offer their readers. Since blogging is basically simple self-publishing, it’s easy to miss what else they can be. And it’s important (at least to me) to recognize the impact they can have. Your blog can change lives.

So here’s the deal. Whether you are one of my blogging class attendees, someone who enjoys learning about the brain and technology, or a new reader wondering what my website is about, you are likely to be a good candidate for a great blog. I want you to recognize that and take a few steps toward realizing your potential.

Step: Ask yourself what your inspiration is for your blog. If you’ve had your blog for a while, do you still feel the same way about your material? Do you still want to write the same stuff? Come up with one thing that is new or different about your motivation now. Consider acting, creatively, on that difference.

Step: Before you go to sleep tonight, run a little suggestion through your head: Ask your imagination to come up with three new ways your blog can be more helpful to your readers. Then leave the thought alone. Your imagination knows what to do while you’re sleeping. You’ll know more tomorrow.

Step: If you’re still thinking about a blog but haven’t started one quite yet, get out a piece of paper. Write on it “I haven’t started my blog because _____” and fill in the blank. Write ten reasons why you don’t have a blog right now. I already know what three of them are. Keep going. Then leave it alone. Your imagination is going to work on that too.

This post is coming out of my own recent inspiration about a new direction I’m starting to travel. I recognize a dramatic difference in my energy for the thousand tasks of blogging and my daily sense of renewal now that I have opened up some new avenues. I’ll tell you more about my new stuff soon. Today I want to trigger some of this renewal in you.

Have you noticed a quiet questioning going on in the back of your mind and heart? Something inside, wondering how things might be different – if…? That’s what I hope you will pay attention to today. Your work – your blog – your creation, might be more important than you’ve yet dreamed.

Tell me something that has inspired you today – put it in the comments below. I’d like to know.

Blessings,

Suzanna Stinnett

Come read Mark McGuinness interviewing Roger von Oech!

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I’m so excited to see this article come out on Lateral Action. Mark McGuinness interviewed Roger von Oech about his “Creative Whack Pack” coming out as an iPhone app.

I have the app, of course, as a long-time (way long time) follower of von Oech’s great work. He really was the instigator of my own creativity and imagination workshops. The world needs more whack-i-ness, of this order.

But go read the article – it’s a perfect marriage, Lateral Action and Roger von Oech.

Sweeeet!

Suzanna Stinnett

Applying determination in the right place

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Most of us have tried to change our behavior at some time or other. Some people attempt this almost every day, becoming inspired about the whole new life they are going to live, making huge promises to themselves and to others, only to return to the exact same behaviors the next day – or around the time of the next meal, to be more precise. Our brains respond to the deepest hardwiring, and that revolves around survival. Once you get hungry or tired, or respond to the stress of living today, you are once again deep in the ruts you have developed in your mind throughout your life.

The idea that thoughts create our reality is true for this one reason if no other. We think the same things over and over, and our entire physiology follows that thought pattern, running us through our hours and our days. Is there anything that can actually change these patterns?

Some scientists say no. Research has shown a very thick resistance to any real change in the life of an adult. To find a way around this reality which affects every human, one must create new patterns and find many ways to trigger the new, more desired behavior which one hopes will eventually result in a different outcome. Pay attention to the last part of that last sentence.

“Find many ways to trigger…” This is the essence of giving mental energy to desired behaviors in a way that can produce real change. Some examples of triggering the desired thought patterns are posting notes for yourself, having a friend participate by calling you or sending you a text message several times a day, attending groups regularly who are focused on the same kinds of changes. To change your life, you must change your life. It would be wonderful if we could just make a promise to ourselves in a moment of inspiration and have that be the force that moves us through a change, but it does not work that way. If you are a person who wants to make change in your life, you may have read many books and articles on how to create a new reality for yourself. You tell me. Have you accomplished your new goal? Reading about and thinking about change are part of the same mental habit which you are trying to escape.

People who have actually managed to make real change in their lives have employed a series of new patterns over time. The new habits can replace the old ones, draining the undesired brain area of its energy while it is being diverted to the new thought processes. The most productive way to get rid of a bad habit is to focus on a new one and put active, enthusiastic energy into accomplishing it.

Is there something you’ve been thinking you’d like to do for yourself? How about starting a new habit today? What might that be?

Suzanna

11 Great Adaptations Juxtaposed

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Plants respond to changing environments by adapting (if they survive), and so do humans. It just doesn’t look like it sometimes. Stoicism and all.

We adapt as a first response to external information, and then, piggy-backed on the process of adaptation, we innovate. Adaptation is like that initial shrink-back when you touch the feelers of a snail (that might be a Northern-California-centric thing), and then the innovation is when the snail turns slightly to go around you. I’m trying to keep things simple today.

What follows are solutions to problems which affect us all, and while they’re all brilliant, many of them need tending to keep up with the world’s constant morphing.

1. The compass. (China did it, although they were using it to decide which way their houses should face)

2. Paper. (105 A.D. Another bow to China, they pulled this one off. They also created the first newspaper in 700 A.D. Now if they could just figure out free speech.)

3. The use of bamboo in building. (Fast growing, no pesticides, beautiful, strong)

4. Continuous closed loop algae bioreactors as super cost-effective fuel source. (Development from Vertigro, check it out.)

5. Light emitting diode, the LED. (Still coming into its own, probably the light of the future, lasts forever, and is almost cheaper than fluorescent now.)

6. The Earth Charter. (The global consensual statement on the meaning of sustainability, created from the input of over 5000 people from cultures across the world. Completed in the year 2000)

7. Float glass. (1959! The technique that gave us a pane of glass that doesn’t distort. Most glass still made this way.)

8. Locofocos: the early match. (1836 patent granted for friction matches called locofocos, to a guy from Springfield, Massachusetts. Sweden made the safety match, of course, and Joshua Pusey created book matches a few years later.)

9. Smoke detector. (1969. Check your battery.)

10. The ladder fire truck. (It just took a few years after the match was invented for this necessity to arise.) 1868, Daniel Hayes invented the Hayes truck.

11. This is my personal favorite: The application of physics to describe a vacuum as not empty, but actually as highly organizing and constantly communicating. (Nassim Haramein, The Resonance Project, 2001)

Help me build this list – send your favorite adaptation or innovation in the “Reply To” area below.

Happy morphing!

Suzanna

To the moon with innovation – an invite

Apollo 13 Ground Crew Works it Out

What makes a great adaptation?

Adaptations involve imagination, innovation, creativity, and usually a bit of urgency. Do you know about Apollo 13? It was a mission to the moon that went wrong, and a tremendous drama of relationships, teamwork, and life. (Check out the movie, it’s inspiring.) The crew was facing death by asphyxiation unless the ground crew could quickly and effectively create an adaptation using what was available to the astronauts to remedy the breakdown in their oxygen supply.

It’s a fantastic scene with a whole posse of high-functioning brains working together under terrible pressure. They did it. They innovated, found the solution, and effectively articulated it for the astronauts who were already suffering from oxygen deprivation.

This is a super example of our capacity and potential. Now, most of us are not functioning anywhere near that level of brain use. On the contrary, we’re far below our own potential. Especially in the creativity and imagination department.

Daily routines have a deadening quality, simply because the brain makes no new connections for months on end. Stress takes its toll on brain function and motivation. Too much media is also likely to dampen our spirits. At the end of the day, we’re much more likely to turn to a spoon-fed hypnotic evening of entertainment than any activities which could actually make a difference in our lives.

Maybe what we need is a little encouragement. Here at Great Adaptations, I’m hosting Adapt-athons. And you’re invited!

There will be prizes – so don’t miss out! Find the criteria here, jumpstart your imagination, and discover how innovative you really are.

Subscribers will receive updates and email reminders for the Adapt-athon. Don’t wait! I’ll be looking for your links!

Women: Waking up on the right side of the web?

Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm Announcing her Candidacy for President in 1972

Global Female Brain

The ‘net, web, or mesh encompassing this planet (sponsored by constant technological innovation) has been viewed as a “global brain” for twenty-five years – at least. And this is a productive way to look at our intelligence, flowing fractally forward.

Since the right half of the human brain is said to host the creative engine, and the female brain, we’re told, has super-strengths due to high-complexity mondo right-left brain connections that foster the use of creativity (and other human relation tasks), does it follow that women are destined — er — designed to carry our innovation forward into fantastic femme formations?

I’m not seeing a preponderance of women innovating in technology. The women I do find who are deeply involved are definitely bringing a uniquely feminine blend of intuition, creative thought, and humanity into the mix. I’m just not seeing enough of the “she.”

This is a call to you women innovators – and the curious but not-yet-active innovators of the female persuasion. As a way to further the balance, I’m asking you to participate in the first Great Adaptations Adapt-athon.

We are all adapting in endless creative ways, adapting to changing conditions, working our lives around the stresses and rewards of this millennium. This site supports and highlights the great adaptations and innovations of our ongoing cultural transformation.

I invite women and men to tell me: How are you adapting? I want to know something about how you have adapted your life, your significant relationships, your thinking, your dreams, and your workspace. Tell me one story that speaks to your adaptation as you make your way through modern life. For good, for bad, for otherwise, describe the challenge and the solution you have put in place. Qualify? If you’re reading this, you definitely qualify. Rather than exclude men (exclusivity bugs me), what I’m going to do is choose winners from the submissions from my readers, female and male, 50-50. Two women and two men will win the prizes. Humor my Libra-ness, this is about balance. Men appear to participate in greater numbers than women in all kinds of web-based systems. I want to encourage women to bring it on. ‘Cuz I know you’ve got the juice.

As a loose format, just write out the challenge that you faced, and then explain how you created an adaptation to solve the challenge. It might have to do with your routine, or your relationship, your kitchen-corner-office, something that helps the environment, or — you name it! How did you adapt in order to make things work for you? Put a different way, what did you adapt so it would work better?

Get the idea? This Adapt-athon kicks off on May 1st, and runs until May 31st. There will be prizes! The top four Greatest Adaptations will receive special kudos, recognition, links to their sites, and even a little cash. The winners will show creative thinking and courage and brain power.TO PARTICIPATE: It’s easy. Bloggers can post their adaptation on their own blog, and send me a link so I can go find it. Include your title and the challenge your adaptation meets. If you don’t have a blog, go ahead and post your adaptation in the comments area below. You are welcome to use video or audio, just post it as a link so I can go view it. In order to receive the updates about the Adapt-athon prizes, and see more examples of how people are submitting, be sure to subscribe to my e-mail list up at the top right column here. When you submit your adaptation, don’t forget to include your contact information or a link to your website!

Okay, she-people, and he-people too, I know you’ve got it. Let’s see it in action.

Suzanna

To receive all the Adapt-athon Updates, subscribe at the top right of this page.

Use the Brain's Natural Patterns for Great Blogs

Dr. Frank Lawlis has done a great job of describing the steps to enhance creativity in his book, “The IQ Answer.” Other authors have described similar steps. Let’s go over these basic concepts which can be creatively applied to your blog writing with great results.

Immerse Yourself in Your Topic

The first step is immersion. This is when you start gathering information about the creative challenge you have in front of you. If you are blogging as a way to make a living, you are paying close attention to your readership. Few things are as productive for your long-term goals as learning everything you can about your readers. Who are they? Where do they live? What do they do for recreation? While you immerse yourself in the material, keep asking yourself questions. Ask yourself what you know about the topic, what you want to know. Make a list of what you don’t know. This is an exercise which involves many brain areas.

Incubation

Next, you will start to incubate. You have to go away from the information onslaught and let your own thoughts and ideas percolate up. Now the creative process is gearing up. If you can do this without being frightened, you are ahead of most people. For a lot of ambitious types, it is very hard to move away from the work at hand. The sensation of gearing up your brain is like traveling to a new planet. Your habitual brain normally fears this change and will let you know with anxiety and strange little fear-stories. You can keep your brain in a more creative mode by using music, movement, retreating from noise, turning off the TV and the radio, and doing breathing exercises.

Encouraging Your Brain’s Pathways

The next stage is when you use symbols to encourage communication pathways in your brain. As Dr. Lawlis states, “Every brain is hardwired with preset images, visual representations of spirals, lattices, webs and geometric figures.” If you like to doodle, this is a good time to make use of that habit. Allow your hardwiring to present itself on the page. When you do this, you are allowing your body to send you signals. Your mind responds to this emerging information and your creativity is deepening as you allow yourself to express these primitive mental pathways. Another amazing step in this stage is to create a mind map, drawing out circles and connecting lines that mirror how your brain is organizing information. Look at the photo of a mind map I’ve included with this post. Don’t imitate it, draw from your own brain’s patterns. Be loose.

Evaluate and Filter Out

Now comes the evaluation part. Look back on what you have done and filter out everything that seems mundane or just doesn’t interest you. Find some part of your recent creative journey and focus on it, elaborating and enhancing that pathway. Through this exercise, you may find a whole new avenue you have never considered. You may very well discover that you are quite good at something creative which you have never consciously known! For your blogging topics, you may see a vein of gold you haven’t noticed before.

What areas of your blog writing seem to need a shot of creative juice?

Suzanna