Articles

Articles

The Brain is Plastic

Aug-04-08. By Vern Burkhardt

We use our brains to experience everything, study everything, and accomplish everything, but we don’t generally spend much time thinking about the brain itself. Science is now proving that by taking time to understand how the brain functions we can actually learn how to use our brains to improve themselves.

Exploring Strategic Intuition

Jul-28-08. By Vern Burkhardt, with assistance from Graham Duncan

Brain science tells us there are three kinds of intuition; ordinary, expert and strategic. Ordinary intuition is just a feeling, a gut instinct. Expert intuition is “a form of rapid thinking where you jump to a conclusion when you recognize something familiar”, as a professional engineer might do in his daily practice. The third kind, strategic intuition, is “thinking, not feeling. A flash of insight cuts through the fog of your mind with a clear, shining thought”. It's not fast, like expert intuition, it's slow and occurs in new situations where your best ideas are needed.

"We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything"

Jul-21-08. By Vern Burkhardt

Anyone interested in inventing, creating or innovating should acquaint themselves with Thomas Edison. We have all heard of him and we know he invented the light bulb, for which we are all grateful. What most people may not know is that he was a one person university—a careful examination and understanding of his methods should, when accurately and intelligently followed, be enough to lead to success.

Thought Leaders

Jul-14-08. By Vern Burkhardt

Innovation is an essential survival skill for the 21st century. Products and services become obsolete faster and faster. In this global economy a new competitor can disrupt your business model overnight—innovation is increasingly becoming a way of life.

Going Beyond Collaboration, Part II

Jul-07-08. By Vern Burkhardt

If a firm is highly innovative it is likely an indication that its leaders and employees are skilled collaborators. Developing collaborative capabilities requires learning new values and behaviors and unlearning old habits. It takes time, training and participants who value the contributions of their colleagues. Building trust is a time-consuming but necessary component.

Going Beyond Collaboration

Jun-30-08. By Vern Burkhardt

Innovation as the primary driver of economic development and business success is not a new idea—over seventy years ago economist Joseph Schumpeter first posited this idea.

Exceptional Leadership, Part II

Jun-23-08. By Vern Burkhardt

We exist as a totality—a physical, emotional, spiritual, and intellectual being. All those aspects need to be nurtured. This is balance. And we need to take this balance into everything we do—including, and especially our work. If we are leaders it is even more important.

Exceptional Leadership

Jun-16-08. By Vern Burkhardt

Everyone wants to be respected, appreciated, purposeful, significant, understood and intentioned. Trust is what holds all relationships together, including the relationship between the leader and the led. And trust is based on integrity.

Creativity Needs to be Rewarded

Jun-09-08. By Vern Burkhardt

"When writers, and composers and music makers for that matter, can no longer hope to make a living from their work, how many works will never be written or created?"

Author Scott Berkun's Television Debut

Jun-02-08. By Vern Burkhardt

Scott Berkun, author of The Myths of Innovation, is going to be a television star! He contacted me to advise that he will be a recurring expert for a five-hour CNBC special about innovation.

The Maverick Spirit

May-26-08. By Vern Burkhardt

Mavericks are those individuals who eagerly make business decisions that fly in the face of business-as-usual. They deliberately turn traditions up-side-down or shut them out altogether, looking instead for new "disruptive" ideas and creative people, and in doing so find themselves on a joyous ride to success.

The Creative Frame of Mind

May-19-08. By Vern Burkhardt

While thinking "outside the box" is touted as a key to being creative, thinking "inside the box" with limitations of time, money and other resources often sharpens the mind. A project with fifteen people dedicated to it may take longer than one with half that number!

Zero-Gravity Thinkers

May-12-08. By Vern Burkhardt

"Innovation is the application of an idea that results in a valuable improvement".

Releasing our Mental Blocks

May-05-08. By Vern Burkhardt

We become locked in our old ways of thinking, and we often assume our past and current successes are the path to future success. But inevitably every current success will become a future failure if we keep thinking and doing things in the same manner.

The Wisdom of Not Knowing

Apr-27-08. By Vern Burkhardt

“The one thing Socrates knew beyond a shadow of a doubt was that he didn’t know anything beyond a shadow of a doubt.”

Using Your Mind to the Utmost

Apr-21-08. By Vern Burkhardt

What do fifth century BC Athens and 2008 New York City have in common? A man could, and can, be seen dressed in a toga and wearing a headband, exploring complex ideas by asking probing questions of his fellow citizens.

Solving Tough Problems (Part 2)

Apr-14-08. By Vern Burkhardt

Last week we learned that the authoritarian approach to solving tough problems, where the expert, the boss or the politician attempts to solve it does not work. Rather, it hurts and as Adam Kahane, author of Solving Tough Problems, learned from his dental nurse, when something you are doing hurts then stop doing it.

Solving Tough Problems

Apr-06-08. By Vern Burkhardt

Tough problems in families, businesses, communities, countries and other organizations often don’t get solved peacefully. They either remain unsolved or are dealt with by force. There is another way. Talk and listen to each other in order to reach a solution peacefully.

Mental Models

Mar-31-08. By Vern Burkhardt

Use of mental models can stimulate innovative ideas, including ideas for new products and services for customers. This is a tool that can ensure our customers are front and centre in the design process. Author Indi Young describes design as organizing the way in which you enable “digital, physical, and environmental interactions that people carry out to accomplish something”.

Demystifying Mind Mapping

Mar-24-08. By Vern Burkhardt

Not often does one encounter a productivity tool that will support group brainstorming and creative thinking, organize complex information, help solve problems, support SWOT analysis, enhance memory, help make decisions, manage projects, support strategic planning, prepare for major meetings, take notes, write papers and presentations, manage “to do” lists, support process and quality improvement, assist teachers to structure their presentations and students to increase their learning, and facilitate individual ideation (generate new ideas). Visual mapping supported by mind mapping software may be a must tool for all knowledge workers who are increasingly inundated with data and information.

The Power of Cool

Mar-17-08. By Vern Burkhardt

Jazz music fans will know the English slang “cool” means excellent. According to Coolhunting by Peter Gloor and Scott Cooper, cool goes beyond the usual definitions of “excellent” and “fun”. To be cool something must “make the world a better place” and exhibit “altruism” in its development and realization.

Don't Blink, Think (part 2)

Mar-10-08. By Vern Burkhardt

Last week we ended with my question to Michael R. LeGault, author of Think! Why Critical Decisions Can’t Be Made in the Blink of an Eye, regarding fear. We continue this week with his answer to that question and a number of other questions.

Don't Blink, Think

Mar-03-08. By Vern Burkhardt

We are what we think. Faulty thinking results from the inability to think critically and a lack of will to think clearly. Critical thinking plays a significant role in our physical and mental well-being. Critical thinking depends on analysis and logic, and on action. Critical thinking requires gathering, processing and evaluating information, and creative thinking uses this information to produce a result that would not have happened without that effort. Therefore, critical thinking is the key to releasing the mind’s higher cognitive powers—creative thinking.

Myths and Methods of Innovation

Feb-25-08. By Vern Burkhardt

Myths simplify and distort reality but as human beings we have a propensity for believing them. When it comes to innovation the myths surrounding it can stand solidly in your way.

Not Leaving Good Ideas on the Shelf

Feb-18-08. By Vern Burkhardt

BrainBank Inc. is located in Montreal, Canada. It provides systems, implementation consultants and technologists that enable organizations to implement idea and innovation management processes that deliver measurable and sustainable improvements in financial results; and positive cultural change. I recently had an opportunity to interview Andre Laurin, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of BrainBank.

Interview with Richard Ogle, author of Smart World

Feb-11-08. By Vern Burkhardt

We are making our world “smarter” all the time by creating more and more “idea-spaces”. Idea-spaces are those places, outside ourselves, where we store information, allowing us, as brain scholar Andy Clark says, to “be dumb in peace”. These spaces can be as mundane as a grocery list or as sophisticated as the computers that help spacecraft reach their destinations, do their jobs, and return to earth.

Right Brain Workouts Explained

Feb-04-08. By Vern Burkhardt

Last week I wrote an article summarizing my interview of Peter Lloyd and Steve Grossman, co-authors of Animal Crackers. In this article I continue to explore Peter's creative ideas.

Animal Crackers

Jan-28-08. By Vern Burkhardt

People need a slight switch in their mood -- in a positive direction -- before they can create. When you get creative insights it is thrilling; it gives you energy.

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

Jan-21-08. By Vern Burkhardt

What is a Tipping Point? It is “that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire.”

We are Smarter than Me

Jan-14-08. By Vern Burkhardt

After only a decade and a half of being in existence, the “Internet Age” is being compared to the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution. With about one billion people “connected” and the numbers growing exponentially, businesses are harnessing the power and ideas of their online community of customers, employees and shareholders to make better decisions, improve services to their customers, and make bigger profits.

Democratizing Innovation: The Shift of Innovation to Users

Jan-05-08. By Vern Burkhardt

A major reason for the frequent commercial failure of manufacturer-developed products is poor understanding of users’ needs on the part of manufacturers’ innovators. To avoid this problem, some businesses have begun to shift the task of custom product design to their customers, in some cases providing them with toolkits for innovation.

The Power of Story

Dec-29-07. By Vern Burkhardt

The most precious resource we humans possess is our personal energy. The key to almost all our problems is faulty storytelling, because storytelling drives the way we gather and spend our energy. We need to constantly infuse our personal story with new thinking and new energy in order to bring about sustained shifts in happiness, excitement, enthusiasm, joy and inspiration.

How to Think like Leonardo da Vinci: Seven Steps to Genius Every Day

Dec-16-07. By Vern Burkhardt

When you ask for feedback from your friends, clients, spouse, children or co-workers listen carefully to the responses you receive, especially if they are different than you expect or want to hear. Don’t explain, justify or argue or become defensive. Also, seek out those who hold a different perspective than your own and listen to their views (This sounds very much like “deep listening” which Keith Sawyer and I discussed in my article dated November 12, 2007.)

Thinkertoys: Handbook of Creative Thinking Techniques

Dec-10-07. By Vern Burkhardt

Creators are creative because they believe they are creative. And they are not negative. To solve a problem you have to believe that you already have the answer in your unconscious. When Einstein was troubled by a problem he would lie down and take a long nap. Thinking in terms of contradictions and paradoxes are the hallmarks of creative thinking. Exposing yourself to unusual images, such as the hieroglyphics in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, sparks your imagination. The difficulty of effective collaboration is each person thinks his or her view is the correct one.

Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution

Dec-03-07. By Vern Burkhardt

Mobile communication devices and inexpensive microprocessors linked to the Internet are allowing people to act in concert with each other. Howard Rheingold described this as the emergence of “Smart Mobs”, whose basic characteristics include:

mobility through the use of wireless devices, such as mobile phones, pagers and personal digital assistants
informal organization, and
social networks in which every individual has links to other individuals through the Internet.

Think Better: An Innovator’s Guide to Productive Thinking

Nov-26-07. By Vern Burkhardt

We have the potential to think better, more productively, and more creatively. Thinking better is a skill that we can learn. It’s not what you know but what you think, and there is a lot of room for improvement. Thinking is hard work. The more you practice the better you become at thinking.

The Art of Creative Thinking: How to be Innovative and Develop Great Ideas

Nov-18-07. By Vern Burkhardt

See or make connections between ideas that seem far apart, look to nature for models and principles to solve problems, make the familiar strange and the strange familiar, cultivate curiosity, ask lots of questions, observe, be a good listener, and read to generate questions. Reading without reflecting is comparable to eating without digesting. These are but some of the many useful bits of advice that Dr. John Adair offers in The Art of Creative Thinking.

Group Genius: Everyone can be More Creative - But not Alone

Nov-12-07. By Vern Burkhardt

In his book Group Genius, Dr. Keith Sawyer asserts that creativity is always collaborative. The lone genius of inventions is a myth, and he backs up this point with examples such as television, email, game of Monopoly, mountain bike, ATM, the airplane, quantum physics and psychoanalysis. It is group genius that generates breakthrough innovation.

The Most Productive Engines of Creativity

Nov-03-07. By Vern Burkhardt

Peter A. Gloor has coined the term COIN, which is an abbreviation for Collaborative Innovation Networks. A COIN, according to Dr. Gloor, is "a cyberteam of self-motivated people with a collective vision, enabled by the Web to collaborate in achieving a common goal by sharing ideas, information and work". The Internet permits these participants to develop and disseminate creative ideas to anybody across the globe almost instantaneously, and at minimal cost per transaction. This is the underpinning of ever accelerating rates of innovation and problem solving, and organizations ignore this new reality at their peril.

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