World_Creativity_week

It’s World Creativity Week! Here’s some inspiration to act…
“In the left side of our brain sits a strict referee sorting all our thoughts. He sorts correct and wrong. He has no creativity or sense of humor. Example, what is a cow. Animal on a field eating grass. Correct. Lightsaber swinging jedi animal with jugs squirting pink beer and singing gangster rap. Wrong, thought discarded. Kick him out, have some fun. Dare to be wrong, and ridiculed by the silly referees out there. Dare to play.”~ This was the highest rated comment on a YouTube clip about creativity- by user hjernevasket  3 

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World Creativity week was started by Marci Segal in Toronto on the anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s birthday 15 April, and now its celebrated in 46 countries. Anyone can participate- and contribute your celebration to the wiki. See http://worldcreativity.pbworks.com/What-is-World-Creativity-and-Innovation-Week

By way of inspiration- here are a few pits of content I thought I will share! 

Tom Peters 

Dan Pink
Tim Brown at TED: The powerful link between creativity and play

Unmanaging and unleashing your creative beast

Let’s face it….You’re creative! http://worldcreativity.pbworks.com/Admit-it-You’re-Creative

Life is about invention, not survival.

We are here to create, not to defend.
Out beyond the shadows of darwinistic thought,
a wholly different world appears.
A world that delights in explorations.
A world that makes it up as it goes along.
A world that welcomes us into the exploration
as good partners.- Margaret Wheatley

In a creative organization, everyone in the
organization feels compelled to be alert,
seeking out new measures, new events to observe.
Our consciousness expands as we become willing
to question even our processes of observation.
Consciousness and creativity are inextricably
linked in this always discovering world.

Organizations keep searching for ties that bind them
–new incentives, rewards, punishments.
But organizations could accomplish
so much more if they relied on the passion
evoked when we connect to others, purpose to purpose.

Until the system forms, we have very limited
knowledge of what might emerge.
The only way to know a system is to play with it.
Instead of defining what’s right for a system
and then struggling to impose it,
we learn to say, “Let’s see.”

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THE GEEK’s version of the “Tradie belt”

I haven’t yet met a geek who doesn’t love toys (except for @jeffjervis who was trying to be contrarian with his dramatic stunt of publicly “reboxing of his ipad” with great bravado on YouTube today.) Thanks- picked that one up via @IA on Twitter. 

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An act that suggests to me maybe Jeff is just a “pretend geek” and not an inventor, despite having written about the the current Gods of Geekdom at Google so eloquently . Geeks rule the earth because they are experimenters, tinkerers and inventors. If they cant figure out a need for it, they will invent one, as hacker, serial inventor and futurist Paul Pablos Holman so elegantly explains here . -It’s called user-led innovation, and a catalogue of thousands of iphone and ipad apps invented by users is testimony this phenomenon. ) 

But the reason for this post is not to snigger at Jeff, who is clearly VERY courageous to voice a contrarian opinion, but to rather celebrate the energetic messages of worlds of posibility opened by the smart use of technology, brought to us by the Montero brothers on their amazingly rich blog called The Anywhere Office.

Here is just one example of why you should subscribe to them if you are in the business of getting the most value out of the time you have available through the smart use of tools and work and organisation methods. They came up with this idea to enter a competition to win a Flip Ultra HD Camcorder.….and they won! Full story here and this was the video they made that won them first prize. ! 

I have recently ordered 3 new Flip HD minos for our office to lend out to IT teams to submit content for our World Creativity Week celebration (more about that later- see also my earlier post) . And, I have  requested our contracts team to negotiate a mass purchase price so that this vital communication and knowledge capture and sharing device can be offered as an extension of our standard operating environment (SOE) aka “geek toolbelt” at work at less than AU $200 per unit. (We actually bought the starter pack of 3 for US$154 each on Amazon)

This device will pay for itself in a single hour of video footage if it helps create better storytelling capability around work-related issues, aha moments and camaraderie-building. Yes, and even fun has a business value. If you don’t believe me and want that scientifcally verified, read The Levity Effect“. 

So Jeff, even though I am not sure exactly what business problem we will solve this way, I am pretty sure that it will emerge….and that’s what experimentation is all about. 

Tradie belt: Australian slang for pseudo-sex object- a leather contraption slung suggestively low around the hips and worn by a tradesman- like a cowboy’s gun-holster- in which he carries his tools of trade and paraphernalia like pliers, hammer, screwdrivers, measuring tape, etc