Interview with Michael A. Dalton, author of Simplifying Innovation
Feb-07-10. By Vern Burkhardt
Vern Burkhardt (VB): Last week we briefly talked about the concept of the bottleneck and the "critical chain" project management in improving the process of innovation. Is there anything more related to those concepts we haven't talked about?

IdeaConnection Interview with Michael A. Dalton, author of Simplifying Innovation
Feb-01-10. By Vern Burkhardt
"Traditional improvement efforts work on the premise that strengthening each process step makes the whole process stronger. Unfortunately, in most cases, this dilutes your efforts, which is contrary to your goal."

IdeaConnection's interview with Patrick Harris, Author of The Truth About Creativity
Jan-25-10. By Vern Burkhardt
"If knowledge is the mind of the Talent Age, creativity is its heartbeat."

IdeaConnection has Three More Questions for Madeleine L. Van Hecke, author of Blind Spots and Co-author of The Brain Advantage
Jan-18-10. By Vern Burkhardt
"…either it's better to trust your intuitions and go with your gut OR it's better to always stop and think, be very analytic. This kind of simplistic dichotomy is rarely helpful."

Interview with Madeleine L. Van Hecke, author of Blind Spots and Co-author of The Brain Advantage
Jan-11-10. By Vern Burkhardt
"Our minds work for us in wonderful ways – 80 or 90 percent of the time. But the rest of the time, functioning in the very same ways, our minds work against us."

IdeaConnection Interview with Paul Paulus, co-author of Group Creativity
Jan-02-10. By Graham Duncan
Even with the information explosion and the growing necessity for specialization, the development of innovations still requires group interaction at various stages in the creative process.

IdeaConnection Interview with Ann Weimer Baumgardner, author of Pretend You're Normal: But Only When Absolutely Necessary
Dec-20-09. By Vern Burkhardt
Take the principles of the business world and apply them to the home. Or take the principles of the home and apply them to business. For the past ten years, Ann Weimer Baumgardner has been teaching mothers of preschoolers to do exactly that.

Interview with Peter Cook, Author of Sex, Leadership and Rock'n'Roll and Best Practice Creativity
Dec-14-09. By Vern Burkhardt
VB: Would you talk about "creative leaders?" Are they the ones whose organizations are the most innovative?

Interview with Peter Cook, Author of Sex, Leadership and Rock'n'Roll and Best Practice Creativity
Dec-06-09. By Vern Burkhardt
"Music has become global language in the last forty years." "By contrast, the language of leadership put forward by so-called professional management consultants is dry, unnecessarily complex and does not rock."

Interview with Tim Jones, Leader of the Innovation Leaders Programme and Programme Director at Future Agenda
Nov-30-09. By Vern Burkhardt and Sherry Brown
"Innovation leaders, those companies that are able to better understand emerging opportunities, access and exploit new technologies, develop successful new products and services or even change their business models, are the corporate heroes of today."

Winnovation: Rowan Gibson's November Column
Nov-30-09. By Rowan Gibson
One of the most prevalent and dangerous misconceptions in innovation is that it's all about coming up with ideas. So when companies catch the innovation bug, their tendency is to run off and immediately launch fun initiatives like online suggestion boxes, creative competitions, open innovation programs and offsite brainstorming sessions.

Interview with Micael Dahlén, Author of Creativity Unlimited, Nextopia, and Marketing on the Web
Nov-23-09. By Vern Burkhardt
"Creativity is not about taking chances. Creativity is about ensuring success."

Interview with John Sweeney, Author of Innovation at the Speed of Laughter and Return to Civility, and Owner of The Brave New Workshop
Nov-15-09. By Vern Burkhardt
VB: You report that the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota found that national employers consider leadership to be the single most important aspect of a MBA. And that the two key ingredients of leadership are self-confidence and the ability to declare one's point of view. How does one discover one's point of view?

Interview with John Sweeney, Author of Innovation at the Speed of Laughter and Return to Civility, and Owner of The Brave New Workshop
Nov-08-09. By Vern Burkhardt
"Treat each other in a way that creates a culture that lends itself to more and better ideas. Then refine those ideas really quickly in order to deliver innovative products."

Winnovation: Rowan Gibson's October Column
Oct-28-09. By Rowan Gibson
Corporate innovation has traditionally been driven from the technology side; from departments like R&D and engineering. It's an approach that can be very successful. Indeed, it has often led to great breakthroughs. But if a company wants to win in today's value-based economy, this is no longer the best way of doing things.

Interview with Elaine Dundon, Author of The Seeds of Innovation
Oct-18-09. By Vern Burkhardt and Sherry Brown
"As every good farmer knows, you can't expect new plants to sprout from old seeds. It takes the seeds of creative thinking, strategic thinking, and transformational thinking to cultivate the synergy that fosters new ideas."

Interview with Lee Colan, co-author of Engaging the Hearts and Minds of all your Employees
Oct-11-09. By Graham Duncan
Employee engagement is the cornerstone of achieving a sustainable competitive advantage. Creative and innovative solutions are perhaps in greater need now than ever in order to transform the workplace.

Interview with Luc de Brabandere, Author of The Forgotten Half of Change
Oct-04-09. By Vern Burkhardt
VB: You say "Think globally, act globally." Would you talk about this, as it seems to be at variance with the thinking that we should have to act locally to reduce humanity's negative impact on the environment? When you say, "act globally" you're thinking about businesses, aren't you?

Interview with Luc de Brabandere, Author of The Forgotten Half of Change
Sep-27-09. By Vern Burkhardt
"You not only need to change the reality of your situation, you also need to change your perception of this reality." It's the second change "that really counts."

1 of Interview with Dave Siegel, co-author of Innovation: Myths and Mythstakes, Marketing to the New SuperConsumer, and The Great Tween Buying Machine
Sep-20-09. By Vern Burkhardt
There are numerous misconceptions about innovation. And there are many "truths" about innovation that are misapplied. These myths and "mythstakes" are costly and should be avoided.

Winnovation: Rowan Gibson's September Column
Sep-15-09. By Rowan Gibson
It never ceases to amaze me. I'm meeting with the executive committee of a major global company. I've just asked if innovation is one of their top strategic priorities. Their unanimous answer is "yes". I then ask about their individual responsibilities. "Which one of you is the CFO?" "Who is head of HR?" "Where's the CIO?"

1 of Interview with Dave Siegel, co-author of Innovation: Myths and Mythstakes, Marketing to the New SuperConsumer, and The Great Tween Buying Machine
Sep-13-09. By Vern Burkhardt
"It's a scientifically proven fact that the more you are laughing, the greater the quantity and quality of your ideas. For the good of your customers, your own jobs, the shareholders, and each other, have a good time. Think, joke, and be merry for today we ideate!"

Interview With Charlene Li, Co-author of Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies
Sep-05-09. By Vern Burkhardt
The groundswell is a completely different way people relate to companies and each other. It has changed the balance of power between companies and their customers. This new era has been created by people's desire to almost always be connected with others using interactive Web 2.0 technologies.

Interview with Stephen Lundin, author of Cats, and Co-author of Top Performer, Loops, and the Fish! series of books
Aug-30-09. By Vern Burkhardt
"Innovation is at the heart of a life well lived." "…any individual, company, or country wishing to survive and thrive in the twenty-first century will do so by developing the brain's seemingly infinite capacity to create and innovate."

Winnovation: Rowan Gibson's August Column
Aug-27-09. By Rowan Gibson
At many companies, the term "innovation strategy" refers simply to an agenda for new product development or a technology roadmap for R&D. This is like picking up a single leaf in the forest and calling it a "tree." Innovation strategy is not merely about the next product launch or patent registration.

Interview with Adrian Gostick, co-author of The Carrot Principle
Aug-20-09. By Graham Duncan
Drawing on case studies from leading companies including Disney, DHL, KPMG, and Pepsi Bottling Group, bestselling authors Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton show how the transformative power of purpose-based recognition produces astonishing innovations and results – whether measured by return on equity, return on assets, or operating margin.

Interview with Debbe Kennedy, Author of Putting Our Differences to Work and Breakthrough!
Aug-14-09. By Vern Burkhardt and Sherry Brown
"…the people most likely to bring us the paradigm-shifting innovations we need to create new wealth are almost always outsiders, people who know little or nothing about the normal way of doing things – people different from us. This is true at every level of every enterprise, community, and country. New wealth is the result of innovation. And innovation is driven by diversity."

Interview with Peter Cappelli, author of Talent on Demand
Aug-10-09. By Graham Duncan
The new way of managing talent is fundamentally different from what came before it. The traditional model is extinct. Yet most companies are doing little to plan for and meet their needs for talented staff. Many rely on outside hiring to solve their problems but this creates other problems. In Talent on Demand, Peter Cappelli uses supply chain management models and numerous company examples to present new strategies organizations can use to ensure they have the staff they require.

Interview with Dan Roam, author of The Back of the Napkin
Aug-01-09. By Vern Burkhardt
"We can use the simplicity and immediacy of pictures to discover and clarify our own ideas, and use those same pictures to clarify our ideas for other people, helping them discover something new for themselves along the way." Pictures can be used to discover, develop and share business ideas—and have some fun.

Interview with Paul Sloane, author of The Leader's Guide to Lateral Thinking Skills and The Innovative Leader, and co-author of many books containing lateral thinking puzzles
Jul-25-09. By Vern Burkhardt
Innovative leaders "use creative and lateral thinking techniques to transform their organization into a hotbed of entrepreneurial spirit brimming with new ideas." They manage change by focusing "on developing the skills of the team in innovation, creativity, risk taking and entrepreneurial endeavor."

Interview with Vijay Mahajan, Author of "Africa Rising" and Co-author of "The 86% Solution"
Jul-19-09. By Vern Burkhardt and Sherry Brown
"The rise of Africa is hidden in plain sight." "The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in Africa."

Interview with Michael Gelb, author of "Discover Your Genius", "How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci", "Innovate Like Edison" and eight other books
Jul-13-09. By Vern Burkhardt
Was your mother right when she looked into your eyes when you were born and saw the 'spark of the genius', the miraculous potential of the human brain?

Winnovation: Rowan Gibson's July Column
Jul-13-09. By Rowan Gibson
As usual it was Peter Drucker, the godfather of modern management, who said it first. Right back there in 1966 (!), in his landmark book "The Effective Executive", Drucker argued that companies would need to build a new kind of organizational capital as the industrial economy gave way to the knowledge economy.

An Interview with Clint Swindall, Author of Engaged Leadership: Building a Culture to Overcome Employee Disengagement
Jul-06-09. By Vern Burkhardt and Graham Duncan
Imagine you've been tasked with hiring a new employee for your organization. After an exhaustive search, you found the perfect candidate. You've made the offer, but before the person will accept, the person asked to have a quick meeting with a group of randomly selected employees. The perfect candidate says it's no big deal... just wants to learn a little about the culture of your organization.

Interview with Tom Kelley, General Manager of IDEO, and Author of The Art of Innovation and The Ten Faces of Innovation
Jun-28-09. By Vern Burkhardt
Vern Burkhardt (VB): What are some of the most interesting and exciting parts of your job as General Manager of IDEO?

Interview with Jon Katzenbach, co-author of The Wisdom of Teams
Jun-20-09. By Graham Duncan
Many companies overlook the potential of teams to turn around lagging profits, enter new markets, and make exciting innovations happen because they don't know how to successfully use teams. Authors Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith talked with hundreds of people in more than thirty companies to find out where and how teams work best, and how to enhance their effectiveness.

Interview with Dorothy Leonard, co-author of When Sparks Fly and Deep Smarts, and author of Wellsprings of Knowledge
Jun-15-09. By Vern Burkhardt and Sherry Brown
"Perhaps the most crucial way to tap the creativity of groups is to promote passion among members – passion for the organization, for the job, and for the product."

Winnovation: Rowan Gibson's June Column
Jun-11-09. By Rowan Gibson
Pick up your iPod and turn it around. Note the cool and somewhat snobby phrase that's printed on the back of the device: "Designed by Apple in California.

Interview with Paul Gillin, Author of "The New Influencers: A Marketers Guide to the New Social Media"
Jun-01-09. By Graham Duncan
Social Media have changed the dynamics of marketing. The real influencers are no longer marketing experts, nor the traditional media that have always controlled and filtered marketing messages. The new influencers are the millions of ordinary people who are determining in direct and powerful ways what people, hear, say and believe.

Interview with Dr. Robert Cialdini, author of "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion"
May-29-09. By Vern Burkhardt
Often when making a decision about something we don't use all the available relevant information. There is too much of it and we frequently don't have the ability to decide what information we can trust. So we rely on others.

Interview with Dov Frohman co-author of "Leadership the Hard Way: Why Leadership Can't Be Taught - and How You Can Learn It Anyway"
May-25-09. By Vern Burkhardt
"Leadership is a matter of courage: a willingness to take risks and do the unexpected; to make judgments with no data or, at best, inadequate data; to face one's fear of failure." How do we learn to lead like that? According to Dov Frohman and Robert Howard, co-authors of Leadership the Hard Way, by teaching ourselves using our wits, our intelligence, our observation, our intuition and our life experience.

Interview with Patricia Seybold, author of "Outside Innovation," "The Customer Revolution," and "Customers.com," and co-author of "BRANDchild"
May-17-09. By Vern Burkhardt
Innovation is game changing. "You create or invent a new product or a new way of doing things. You commercialize it. Customers value it. Your firm benefits through increased sales and/or usage, improved brand reputation, and better results delivered."

Interview with Jill Nemiro, Author of "Creativity in Virtual Teams: Key Components for Success", and "The Handbook of High-Performance Virtual Teams", and co-editor of "The Collaborative Work Systems Fieldbook"
May-11-09. By Vern Burkhardt
Virtual teams need to compensate for the lack of nonverbal communication. Not only can electronic communication be dehumanizing and socially isolating, it can foster a sense of anonymity. Messages in email tend to be stronger, more uninhibited, and assertive.

Winnovation: Rowan Gibson's May Column
May-04-09. By Rowan Gibson
The first modern hospitals were founded in Europe and America in the 18th century. About a hundred years later, both the pharmaceutical industry and the health insurance industry began to emerge. So it's safe to say that, in much of the developed world, the healthcare business has been around for about two or three centuries. And, over time, like most other businesses, it has become bigger, better and faster.

Interview with Dr. Jonas Ridderstrale, co-author with Kjell A. Nordström of "Funky Business Forever" and "Karaoke Capitalism", and with Mark Wilcox of "Re-energizing the Corporation"
May-03-09. By Vern Burkhardt
Power has been transferred from those who sell to those who buy. "The stupid, humble, loyal customer is a thing of the past." The competitive edge in today's market economy is e-business. The 'e' stands for 'emotional business'.

Interview with Jackie Fenn, co-author of "Mastering the Hype Cycle: How to Choose the Right Innovation at the Right Time"
Apr-25-09. By Vern Burkhardt
The hype cycle occurs with almost every innovation. It's tied to the human emotional response to the new and novel. Knowing how the hype cycle works can help us avoid its traps, and also open opportunities for individuals and companies.

Interview with Diane Deacon, co-author with Mike Vance of "Creating Mega Results", "Think Out of the Box", "Break Out of the Box"
Apr-19-09. By Vern Burkhardt
Vern Burkhardt (VB): You say your "mission is to help revolutionize the way people work through the design of new transformational environments." Would you talk about that mission?

Interview with Diane Deacon, co-author with Mike Vance of "Creating MegaResults", "Think Out of the Box", and "Break Out of the Box"
Apr-10-09. By Vern Burkhardt
Walt Disney knew how to do it. So did Thomas Edison and many other giants of innovation. The highest creativity occurs within structure and organization. In work settings we can set up s. At home we need a "kitchen for the mind."

Interview with Jean-Philippe Deschamps, Author of Innovation Leaders; How Senior Executives Stimulate, Steer and Sustain Innovation
Apr-05-09. By Vern Burkhardt and Graham Duncan
Innovation leaders relentlessly stimulate, steer and sustain innovation in their companies. They deploy different strategies that require different innovation leadership skills to ensure their companies succeed. In Innovation Leaders, Jean-Philippe Deschamps reveals how companies at different stages of their innovation learning are building favorable innovation cultures.

A conversation with Sarah Miller Caldicott, author of "Innovate Like Edison: The Five-Step System for Breakthrough Business Success."
Apr-01-09. By Alice Bumgarner
Sarah Miller Caldicott may be the great grandniece of Thomas Edison, but she relied on more than simply family anecdotes to write her book, Innovate Like Edison. She delved into all things Edison with Dr. Paul Israel, the director of the Edison Papers at Rutgers University, who presides over an archive 5 million pages deep.

Winnovation: Rowan Gibson's April Column
Mar-31-09. By Rowan Gibson
It's every employee's nightmare in recessionary times: finding a "pink slip" in the pay envelope, or getting a fateful phone call from HR. Over four and a half million workers in America have had that gut-wrenching experience since the economy hit a wall in 2007. And this year the global layoff tsunami will claim millions more jobs worldwide.

Interview with Keith Sawyer, Author of "Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation"
Mar-29-09. By Vern Burkhardt
"To explain creativity we need an action theory, a theory that explains how the process of doing a work results in the product." Creativity is fundamentally a social and collaborative activity. Keith Sawyer also says "Scientific creativity and business innovation are even more deeply social and collaborative than…artistic creativity."

Interview with Judy Estrin, author of "Closing the Innovation Gap: Reigniting the Spark of Creativity in a Global Economy"
Mar-22-09. By Vern Burkhardt
"People often overestimate the aha! factor in the invention process. That process starts with creating the right kind of environment."

Interview with Dr. John Kotter, Author of "Leading Change", "Our Iceberg is Melting", "The Heart of Change", "A Sense of Urgency", and fourteen other books
Mar-14-09. By Vern Burkhardt
A real sense of urgency is rare but it's invaluable in a world that will not stand still. "In a fast-moving and changing world, a sleepy or steadfast contentment with the status quo can create disaster – literally disaster." Frenetically activity people coping with many issues, few of which are central to the organization's success and future growth, is not a sign of a sense of urgency. It's a sign of a false sense of urgency. John Kotter says its all about leadership.

An Interview with Amar Bhidé, Author of "The Venturesome Economy: How Innovation Sustains Prosperity in a More Connected World"
Mar-06-09. By Vern Burkhardt
The perceived threat of loss of jobs through "offshoring" – companies contracting manufacturing and provision of services to countries in Asia, for example – is more perception than fact. Enforcing contracts and protecting intellectual property are but two impediments that discourage rampant "offshoring". In any event, it is not a zero-sum situation.

An Interview with Amar Bhidé, Author of "The Venturesome Economy: How Innovation Sustains Prosperity in a More Connected World"
Feb-28-09. By Vern Burkhardt
The United States and other developed countries do not need to fear being surpassed in high–level scientific and technological research and development by countries such as India and China. Indeed, they should welcome more advanced research overseas because high-level know-how tends to be geographically mobile, and entrepreneurs are able to apply these outside innovations in their own countries through mid- and ground-level innovations of products, services and know-how.

An interview with Robert Tucker, author of "Driving Growth Through Innovation, Second Edition: How Leading Firms are Transforming their Future"
Feb-16-09. By Vern Burkhardt
More than ever before incremental innovation is not sufficient for survival. Many businesses need to re-tool their business models in order to achieve breakthrough innovation.

An interview with Geoffrey Moore, author of "Dealing with Darwin: How Great Companies Innovate at Every Phase of their Evolution"
Feb-05-09. By Vern Burkhardt
Innovation is valuable only if it helps a company attain economic advantage.

An Interview with Gregg Fraley, author of "Jack's Notebook"
Jan-23-09. By Vern Burkhardt
Innovative ideas are always the result of creative thinking. Fortunately artists do not, contrary to popular belief, have a monopoly on creativity. With a little training anyone can develop their brain's capacity for creativity.

Winnovation: Rowan Gibson's January Column
Jan-22-09. By Rowan Gibson
That's the bugging question that just won't go away. It seems to get asked every time Steve Jobs goes to the doctor. First it was a brush with cancer. Now it's a mysterious "hormone imbalance" that has left Jobs looking gaunt, forced him to cancel his appearance at Macworld 2009, and put him on a six month medical leave. Once again, people are wondering if Apple has lost its core.

An Interview with Anja Foerster and Peter Kreuz, authors of "Different Thinking: Creative Strategies for Developing the Innovative Business"
Dec-27-08. By Vern Burkhardt
Innovate, don't imitate.

An interview with Glenn Parker, Author of "Team Players and Teamwork: New Strategies for Developing Successful Collaboration"
Dec-21-08. By Vern Burkhardt and Graham Duncan
Teams are everywhere. During this first decade of the twenty-first century the role of teams and the use of teams to address organizational issues has increased dramatically. Teams in many forms are seen as critical to the creative and innovative success of companies.

Winnovation: Rowan Gibson's December Column
Dec-17-08. By Rowan Gibson
In March 2008, British Airways discontinued its decades-old daily service between London Heathrow and Detroit. Not exactly world-shattering news, you might think. But BA's decision was quite significant. They made it because passenger numbers had dwindled so pathetically low that the flights were no longer profitable. It's just one of a whole kaleidoscope of symptoms that signal Motor City's dismal decline.

Interview with Jack Foster, author of "How to Get Ideas"
Dec-14-08. By Vern Burkhardt
No one is criticized for having too many ideas. Such a person is more likely to be known as the genius with all the ideas, but all of us can learn how to get ideas—a lot of ideas. We need to learn to be ever more idea-prone, to idea-condition our minds. But in the final analysis we need to have the moxie to put our ideas into action.

Interview With Jon Katzenbach, co-author of "The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization"
Dec-07-08. By Vern Burkhardt
In The Wisdom of Teams, Jon Katzenbach and co-author Douglas Smith define a team as "a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable." They also say, "No major company we know is pursuing an energized, productive work force without the conscious use of teams."

An Interview with Marco Marsan, author of "Who Are You When Nobody's Looking" and, with Peter Lloyd, "Think Naked: Childlike Brilliance in the Rough Adult World"
Nov-30-08. By Vern Burkhardt
It's okay, indeed it's smart, to cheat. Smart people look everywhere for suggestions, answers, and to stimulate their thinking. Ask someone who knows nothing about your business. Get smart help, strategic inspiration, and sage advice.

An Interview with Paul Sloane, author of "The Innovative Leader: How to Inspire your Team and Drive Creativity"
Nov-23-08. By By Vern Burkhardt
Last week Paul Sloane recommended that businesses should define themselves not by their products but by the benefits they deliver to their customers and how they can extend that value. Knowing there is always a better way drives innovation.

An Interview with Paul Sloane, author of "The Innovative Leader: How to Inspire Your Team and Drive Creativity"
Nov-17-08. By Vern Burkhardt
Innovative leaders of outstanding companies set outstanding expectations. They recognize that success can be the cause of their organization's long-term failure so they continue to drive for change, for innovation. They have a vision and are passionate when talking about it. They are prepared to invest in innovation. They don't pay lip service to innovation while their actions make it clear to their employees that taking risks is job- or career-limiting.

Winnovation: Rowan Gibson's November Column
Nov-16-08. By Rowan Gibson
There are three ways to react to an economic crisis. One way is to bury your head in the sand and hope the whole thing just blows over (good luck!). Another way is to run around in a panic-induced cost-cutting frenzy that could seriously impair your company's long-term growth potential. The third and, of course, smartest way is to recognize the impending threat to both your top and bottom line, and quickly adapt your company's strategy and business model to the new market conditions.

An interview with Dr. Satish Nambisan, co-author of "The Global Brain"
Nov-09-08. By Vern Burkhardt
The How-To's of Collaborative Innovation: An interview with Dr. Satish Nambisan, co-author of The Global Brain

An interview with Clayton Christensen, co-author of "Disrupting Class"
Nov-03-08. By Vern Burkhardt and Graham Duncan
We need to understand and embrace disruptive change. It will transform the way we view innovation. Businesses may be well managed, customer-friendly, and technologically advanced—they are still susceptible to failure or to being overtaken by upstart competitors.

Winnovation: Rowan Gibson's October Column
Oct-31-08. By Rowan Gibson
Whoa! This is the big one! Most of us have weathered economic storms before, but nobody has ever seen anything like this. Forget the Asian financial meltdown of 1997, the dot-com implosion of 2000-2001, the blistering financial scandals of 2002 (a la Enron, WorldCom et al), and the three-year, post 9/11 global recession that finally abated in 2003.

An interview with Andrew Razeghi, author of The Riddle: Where Ideas Come From and How to Have Better Ones
Oct-27-08. By Vern Burkhardt and David Duncan
Artists, scientists, and entrepreneurs thrive on their ability to be creative. New wealth tends to flow to those who successfully introduce new ideas.

An interview with Barry Nalebuff, author of "Why Not? How To Use Everyday Ingenuity to Solve Problems"
Oct-20-08. By Graham Duncan
Have you ever been in line at the grocery store, sitting in a meeting, refinancing your mortgage, programming your VCR, waiting on hold—and thought to yourself, "There must be a better way to do this!"

An Interview with Scott Page, author of The Difference
Oct-13-08. By Vern Burkhardt
Having smart individuals in a group does not necessarily make a group smart, a crowd wise, or a team effective. Diverse groups often trump homogeneous groups. Random collections of intelligent problem solvers can outperform groups of the best like-minded individual problem solvers.

An Interview with Jeff Howe, author of Crowdsourcing
Oct-06-08. By Vern Burkhardt
The crowd is talented, creative and stunningly productive. Crowdsourcing has the potential to harness the knowledge and talents of the crowd to solve our greatest problems.

An Interview with Michael Michalko, author of Cracking Creativity
Sep-22-08. By Vern Burkhardt
Seeing what no one else is seeing. Thinking what no one else is thinking. Merely understanding the strategies for cracking creativity will not result in the generation of creative ideas and creative solutions. If we actually use them we might even become creative geniuses—perhaps the best type of intelligence.

An Interview with Michael Michalko, author of Cracking Creativity
Sep-15-08. By Vern Burkhardt
Creative geniuses know how to think rather than what to think. They have child-like curiosity. They ask bold questions. They generate and entertain many ideas, not just the first idea that comes to mind. "If you always think the way you've always thought, you'll always get what you've always got—the same old, same old ideas."

An Interview with Rowan Gibson, co-author of Innovation to the Core
Sep-08-08. By Vern Burkhardt
We’ve become an innovation-based economy. The good news is all of us have the capacity to be incredibly creative—it is not the exclusive domain of famous innovators past and present.

Interview with Rowan Gibson, co-author of Innovation to the Core
Sep-01-08. By Vern Burkhardt
Innovation is now at the stage the quality movement was in the 1960’s. Many leaders of businesses and organizations are aware that their future growth and survival depends on innovation in products, business models and even management systems. But few are aware of what it takes to implement and sustain breakthrough innovation. We now have the answer—irrespective of whether we are a large global corporation or a small business focusing on a local market.

An Interview with Richard Scase, author of Global Remix
Aug-25-08. By Vern Burkhardt and Graham Duncan
The communications revolution is fundamentally changing the nature of the global economy. Knowledge based jobs are contributing to a 21st century work revolution. Alongside this, consumer markets in the Western economies are being re-invented. In Global Remix: The Fight for Competitive Advantage, Richard Scase argues that corporations, entrepreneurs, and individuals will have to reinvent themselves in this ever-changing business environment.

An Interview with Sir Ken Robinson, author of Out of Our Minds
Aug-11-08. By Vern Burkhardt and Graham Duncan
Being creative involves doing something. It is applied imagination, whether in art, music, mathematics, engineering, writing or business. The outcomes that are produced are original. And creative ideas are often ahead of their times.

An Interview with Dr. Norman Doidge, author of The Brain is that Changes Itself
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.

An Interview with William Duggan, author of Strategic Intuition
Jul-28-08. By Vern Burkhardt and 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.

An Interview with Michael Gelb, author of Innovate like Edison
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.

An Interview with Chuck Frey, author of The Mind Mapping Manefesto
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.

An Interview with Raymond Miles, author of Collaborative Entrepreneurship
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.

An Interview with Raymond Miles, author of Collaborative Entrepreneurship
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.

An Interview with Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur
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.

An Interview with Polly LaBarre, author of Mavericks at Work
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.

An Interview with Roger Von Oech, author of Expect the Unexpected or You Won't Find It
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!

An Interview with Cynthia Barton Rabe, author of The Innovation Killer
May-12-08. By Vern Burkhardt
"Innovation is the application of an idea that results in a valuable improvement".

An Interview with Roger Von Oech, author of A Whack on the Side of the Head
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.

An Interview with Christopher Phillips, author of Socrates Café
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.”

An Interview with Ronald Gross, author of Socrates' Way
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.

An Interview with Adam Kahane, author of Solving Tough Problems
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.

An Interview with Adam Kahane, author of 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.

An Interview with Indi Young, author of 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”.

An Interview with Chuck Frey, author of Power Tips & Strategies for Mind Mapping Software
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.

An interview with Peter Gloor, co-author of Coolhunting
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.

An Interview with Michael LeGault, author of Think!
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.

An Interview with Michael LeGault, author of 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.

An Interview with Scott Berkun, author of The Myths 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.

An 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.

An Interview with Peter Lloyd, creator of Right Brain Workouts
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.

An Interview with Peter Lloyd, co-creator of 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.

An Interview with Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point
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.”

An Interview with Barry Libert, co-author of 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.

An Interview with Dr. Eric von Hippel, author of Democratizing Innovation
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.

An Interview with Jim Loehr, the author of 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.

An Interview with Michael Gelb, author of How to Think like Leonardo da Vinci
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.)

An Interview with Michael Michalko, Author of Thinkertoys
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.

An Interview with Howard Rheingold, author of Smart Mobs
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.

An Interview with Tim Hurson, author of Think Better
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.

An Interview with Dr. John Adair, author of The Art of Creative Thinking
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.

An Interview with Dr. Keith Sawyer, author of Group Genius
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.

An interview with Peter Gloor author of Swarm 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.