Author: Guest Blogger

Leaders, trust yourself,

You may have seen Don Tapscott’s recent article about the future of the University: http://edge.org/documents/archive/edge288.html#tapscott Tapscott paints a very compelling picture of the radical changes coming in higher education, probably much sooner than most anticipate. The article was forwarded to me by Rick Cherwitz founder and director of the Intellectual Entrepreneurship (IE) consortium. Rick’s note on the article is worth passing on: “As you know, I agree that we need a new model of pedagogy–one that involves more than simply implementing new uses of technology, as Tapscott suggests. Universities (as well as K-12) are broken in a more fundamental way.…

“What’s wrong with thinking inside the box”? It’s dull, certainly, and not very rewarding, and usually quite a tedious process, but other than that, what is the harm?

To become more creative individually and to foster more innovative workplaces and communities, we need to develop a whole new set of skills that have not been part of our formal education. Actually, skills are not quite enough. Creativity requires something else–a shift in attitude or, as I prefer, mindset–that also needs to be practiced and learned. It is this mix of mindset and skills that make up the 3 creativity competencies I’ve been discussing in my Innovation on my Mind blog, Fluency, Flexibility and Originality. And, if you’ve ever taken a workshop with me, you know that the most…

art
busiiness

Janus is the Roman god with the two faces, one looking forward and one back (or: in opposition). In the 1970’s, psychiatrist Albert Rothenburg coined the term “Janusian Thinking” to describe the oppositional energies that are often present in creativity. An image of Janus hangs on the wall outside the creative studies library at Buffalo State College. (It’s fitting that he hangs at the threshold, as Janus was also the god of doorways and passages…) I just returned from my first two weeks as a student at the International Center for Studies in Creativity at Buffalo State. I learned many…

What do you do when your caught between a rock and a hard place: Do you take the job because any work is good work or do you stand your ground and only work for the price you think your work is worth?

Perhaps it’s the economy, but garden centers nationwide are finding themselves having trouble keeping vegetable plants on the shelf this season. Having started my journey with a few tomato, cucumber, and squash plants myself over the past couple of years, I was one of the many inspired to take my efforts to a whole new level this season. So, I dutifully go off to my local home improvement center, rent some heavy machinery, and cut out 50 more feet of plant bed to house my new garden. I till, I mulch, I compost, and finally, I plant. Of the many…

I was just talking with my old friend George Aguilar, with whom I once shared a rat’s nest of an office in our volunteer roles for the now-defunct National Poetry Association (once a groundbreaking nonprofit, its web address has been taken over by a French sex site). George ran the poetry-film festival and is a digital videographer (and cin(e)-poet–there’s a creative hybrid still ahead of its time); I ran Poetry USA, an ambitiously-named tabloid journal that in its time was well-known at least in San Francisco. We basically were cleaning up the nostalgic detritus left from artistic experimenters and hippies…

I just spent a week at the beach after returning home from NYC the night before our FL departure!  I have the fullest next two months EVER and an entire week at the beach started to make me nervous as my inner to-do list swept over my consciousness as the waves lapped up on the shore on which I reclined.  I thought maybe some of you might feel this way at times.  This is how I manage…. I read a quote once about how when we are feeling overwhelmed that we can access our hidden well of potential that is…