Wednesday, 28 March 2012
1. Think about what you love to do and your current strengths, skills and experience. List them down.
2. Get creative. Look forward to consider things you’d like to do.
3. Learn, never give up. See the gap and what you need to reach your goal… More training, guidance, mentoring, money, contacts etc.
4. Take the holistic approach. Look at your whole life, not just career but hobbies, interests, things you love, aspirations etc.
5. Consider all options at a body, mind and spirit level = Optioneering
6. Create your own white board of life and assess these options
7. QUESTION: What do you need to do to get from here to there?
8. See the end result of your vision in action (not the obstacles to get there)
9. Reverse engineer the steps to reach your goal
10. Develop a diverse support group… Friends, family, mentor, colleagues…ask them for their support.
11. Take massive action. Profound, powerful, absorbing, passionate action. Don’t give up!
12. Make a difference to others along the way
Tuesday, 22 November 2011
“What an inspiring, insightful, and inventive conference this was. From entrepreneurship to the latest trends in society and the world, Ci2011 lived up to its creative and innovative name. Brilliantly organized too!” Ray Kurzweil
“Most folk content themselves with a conference of a few talking heads, some conversations, and good catering, but you went a stellar mile beyond that with a conference that was filled with a portfolio of possibilities, a cornucopia of conversation. I loved every moment, every chat, every bubble!” Professor Stephen Heppell
“Ci2011 was an astonishing and dazzling array of minds and speakers and we feel excited, stimulated and energised and already have tons of ideas for our own work. It was wonderful to be with so many like-minded people and everyone was abuzz connecting and learning from each other. The conference was also superbly organised, presented and every detail was exquisite right to the ginger ice-cream on the last day! Congratulations on a world class event.”
“I will treasure many of the inspiring presentations and challenging discussions from so many distinguished presenters forever.”
“In my 30 years of attending conferences this was the best conference ever…inspirational!”
“I’ve never seen a conference put together like an artwork before. It was a stunning achievement of vision, serendipity, generosity of spirit and organisation.”
“Life changing event…I was blown away. Compelling speakers and high quality attendees. When is the next event?”
“I’ve been to a lot of conferences and CI2011 was definitely the best. Well done.”
Monday, 21 November 2011
Thursday, 17 November 2011
Opening Poem
Philip Salom, Poet in Residence Ci2011
Twenty years ago, late at night, I sat alone.
I would hibernate with faxes and a phone.
Like a zither player: on a many-stringed instrument,
one player, in silence, plucking slow and digital music.
But a Chinese zither uses twenty-five variations of vibrato,
its possibilities are endless, and now it’s playing on YouTube!
And now I live with all the Gods of endless connections,
slow is very fast, I’m up all hours, on all sides I am the vibrato
of information, in its heaven or chaos, of neurons and axons.
We all live in its language, but information isn’t truth, it’s data.
It seeds the crazy wastefulness that makes things happen.
Data shines, it bursts on us repeatedly: but we are the mind
truth emerges from. In the changing shapes that change
us in their making, there inside them, we are the music.
Wednesday, 2 November 2011
Posted by Lynette Jensen on November 1, 2011
Late last year, IBM published the Global Survey of CEOs 2010 and found that,
“More than rigour, management, discipline, integrity or even vision – successfully navigating an increasingly complex world will require creativity”.
IBM and the more than 1500 CEOs they interviewed from 60 different countries are not alone in this view. Ernst & Young in their Connecting Innovation to Profit Report, 2010 said,
“ The ability to manage, organise, cultivate and nurture creative thinking is directly linked to growth and achievement.”
Why is creativity so important?
Creativity underpins everything we do. It’s hard-wired into our DNA. We can’t help but be creative. Creativity is the ability to solve problems and exploit opportunities. It’s what got us out of the caves and experimenting and discovering. As a species, we have an insatiable desire to make new things, to see what we can do with what we’ve got, to invent and discover, to play with ideas and to see if we can push things to the limit.
Creativity is the raw material of innovation, or in other words, innovation is creativity put into action.
Friday, 28 October 2011
Creativity is a messy and confusing subject. Much of the difficulty arises directly from the words “creative” and “creativity.”
At the simplest level “creative” means bringing into being something that was not there before. Understanding the need for creativity in business and industry today is the easy part. Everyone is faced with the need to create a new product or service, solve a problem, or have the leading edge over the competitors.
Lateral Thinking™ and Dr. de Bono
Dr. Edward de Bono is regarded by many as the leading world authority in the field of creativity. He is the inventor of the phrase “Lateral Thinking” which is now in the Oxford English Dictionary.
His Lateral Thinking tools are based directly on how the brain functions as a self-organizing information system. He has worked for over thirty years in the field with major corporations all over the world.
Here are some notes from Dr. de Bono on the definition of Lateral Thinking.
There are a number of ways of describing or defining Lateral Thinking.
In my writing and seminars, I use the terms “lateral thinking” and “creative thinking” interchangeably because creative thinking is much more widely known.
I introduced the new term “serious creativity” in my book Serious Creativity (HarperBusiness, New York, 1992) in order to make a distinction between formal creative techniques and just messing around and hoping that an idea will
happen.
The word “creative” in the English language has a very broad meaning and includes the bringing into existence of something new. We do not accept creating a mess as being creative because the new thing is supposed to have value. For example, artists are creative because they create new things that have value.Yet many artists are productive stylists who produce within the same perceptions and style of expression.There may be very little of the change in perceptions and concepts that is central to Lateral Thinking.
So one of the reasons for creating and using the term “Lateral Thinking” is to distinguish this kind of artistic creativity from the thinking involved in creating new perceptions and new concepts.
There are, of course, artists who also change concepts and perceptions and who do use Lateral Thinking as such.This seems to particularly apply to musicians in both popular and classical music. There are also playwrights, novelists, architects, and others who have used Lateral Thinking to open up new concepts and perceptions.
Even so, the Lateral Thinking course does not pretend to turn a participant into an artist.
Misconceptions about Creative Thinking
Have you ever heard the following?
“You have to be an artist to be creative.”
“Ideas have always happened.”
“Creativity is a talent that some people have and others do not.”
“Creativity comes from rebels.”
“Being liberated is enough.”
“Tools and techniques are confining.”
Here are some thoughts on these misconceptions.