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Creativity is an important part of most of what we do.
Creativity Unleashed is particularly concerned with business creativity. Not advertising
or marketing, but being more creative in every aspect of business. It's a no-brain choice
these days. As the business environment changes faster, as yesterday's customers become
tomorrow's competitors, you need a dose of innovation just to stand still, let alone to
get ahead.
So what do you need to do? Rush out and hire a bunch of
creative people? Very probably. But you are already surrounded by them. We can all enhance
our creativity with simple techniques that work again and again. To find out more about
the whys and wherefores of business creativity, check out these articles:
- ?Why Science?
- we regularly get asked why our
site features popular science (and science fiction) as well as pure
creativity. Here's the answer.
- A Fast Way to Find
Clients -
if you have a business that involves gaining clients, Suzanne Falter-Barns
suggests that there is no better way that through a tailored workshop
-
Capturing Customers' Hearts - customer service needs more creativity, argues Brian Clegg
- Coaching Creativity. -
Discover the creativity inside yourself in this specially written article
by US expert Suzanne Falter-Barns
- Creative Post-it
Notes - some
quick thoughts on using sticky notes in the creative process by Brian
Clegg
- Creative Rewards
- make
sure your staff feel really rewarded for their creativity by giving them
something more than a few extra pounds or dollars in their pocket.
- Creative Role
Models -
can we learn how to get it right from the most creative companies?
- Creativity versus
Profit - according to Mark Adams, it's possible to pull together the creative
aspect of advertising and the bean counters - but it's not easy.
-
De Bono's Why So Stupid? -
is the amazing price of Edward de Bono's new book wonderful creativity or
a rip off?
-
DisOrganization - read the first chapter
of our book on organizational change the creative way
-
Douglas Adams and Creativity - lessons from a remarkable writer, provided by Adams' biographer MJ Simpson
-
Generating Curiosity in your Company - consultant David Firth argues that curiosity is even more essential than
creativity.
-
Have You Got Street Theatre Creativity
- inspired by an act on London's Embankment, Brian Clegg wonders if there
should be more corporate creativity at the individual, low budget level.
-
Horse Whispering and Innovation - a fascinating
insight into creative leadership by Professor Tudor Rickards of the
Manchester Business School.
- How Creative are You?
- in a hard hitting article, Dennis Sherwood of the Silver Bullet Machine
Manufacturing Company demonstrates how ludicrous it is to separate the
world into 'creatives' and the ordinary masses, and describes an effective
idea generation method.
- How to Find Your
Purpose in Life -
Suzanne Falter-Barns suggest a way to look beneath your creativity to what
it's all for
- I heard it
through the grapevine - management consultant Peter Cook argues that finding mechanisms to share
knowledge, skills and experience is essential if an organization is to
gain leverage from its collective intelligence.
- Imagination
Engineering - the basics of creativity, originally published in the BT online magazine
Business Connections.
- Innovation Agenda
- find out how to develop an agenda for creativity in your organization
-
Liberating the
Creative Streak in your Organization -
consultant Brian Lincoln identifies the ways that every organization can
make more use of the creativity of all its members
-
Mind Mapping from the
Horse's Mouth - Tony Buzan talks about how to mind map.
-
The Outsourcing
Courtesan versus the Nurturing Mother - Dr Paul
Henrickson explores the nature of creativity consultancy and training
-
The
Pinker Opinion - Brian Clegg explores Steven Pinker's outspoken views
on creativity consultancy
-
Reasons to be Cheerful
- according to Paul Birch, fun is a major factor in an effective and
creative workplace
- Seasoning your
creativity - a brand new creativity technique
for Creativity Unleashed readers
-
Structuring the Fuzz - a fascinating in-depth paper
on the design of the idea generation process by Professor Arthur VanGundy
of the University of Oklahoma.
- Think 25 - author,
consultant and coach René Da Costa argues that we often ask the wrong
question for innovation in business.
- TRIZ made simple
- the
sometimes overwhelming-seeming engineering originated innovation process
is untangled by Graham Rawlinson
-
Troubleshooter column - take a creative break with our
series of humorous columns originally published in PC Week
- World Expert
-
One of the best pieces of advice you can give anyone who wants to be more
creative is ‘Do something completely different. Here's one approach to
this.
- Zap Out of the Blue
- US
creativity consultant Robert Alan Black PhD leads us through making the
most of our unsolicited moments of genius.
Creativity Gym
Here are some exercise machines to get the creativity flowing
(and that includes the experience days!):
- Business/creativity books -
curl up with a creativity book and turn on the creative energy.
- Creativity software -
use a computer to unlock your personal creativity. To try a creativity technique without
even downloading, see our Random Word page.
-
Puzzles - free software downloads and lateral thinking challenges to
give your brain an instant workout.
-
Illusion - check out the most remarkable optical illusion we've ever
seen.
- Creativity links - find
other places on the web of creative interest from the technical to the loony.
- Cool Quotes
- read a random quote and let it stimulate a new idea. Jot down anything and
everything the quote makes you think of, then use these jottings as starting
points for your ideas.
-
Yahoo Picks - let your mind
wander with today's collection of bizarre, fun and interesting sites
-
Guimp - want some inspiration to
think differently? Here's a very different website. You may need a
magnifying glass.
-
Snopes - need a couple of
minutes of distraction to clear your mind? Take a wander in the urban
legend site.
-
Invention
at Play - the 'invention playhouse' of the Lemelson Center for
the Study of Invention and Innovation
Something completely
different
If you are looking for a burst of stimulation, a new way of
thinking, you could try one of the links above. Or check out our current
recommendation in popular science, a great way to give your brain a creative
workout:
The God Effect
by Brian Clegg 
We are used to hearing about
"Einstein's greatest mistake" being his throwing in the
cosmological constant to explain the expansion of the universe.
These days this seems less of a mistake than it was first thought.
But there's one thing he definitely didn't get right - that's
quantum entanglement, a concept so bizarre, that Einstein used it
as an example of why quantum theory had to be wrong.
In fact it was Einstein who for
once was mistaken, and entanglement has proved, as Brian Clegg's
subtitle suggests, to be one of science's strangest phenomena.
Imagine a link between two particles that is so low level that you
can separate them to either side of the universe and a change in
one particle will be instantly reflected in the other. Forget
special relativity - the spooky connection of entanglement doesn't
know about the light speed barrier.
The God Effect (the title
is a reference to the Higgs boson, also known as the God Particle,
which it has been suggested requires entanglement to function)
begins with an excellent background to where entanglement came from
- Einstein's original "entanglement busting" paper EPR, early
attempts to show whether or not entanglement existed and the
definitive experiments that demonstrated it in action. Although
we're dealing here with quantum physics at its most mindboggling,
Clegg makes a great job of explaining what was going on in layman's
terms, and bringing alive the major characters not widely known
outside this field, such as John Bell and Alain Aspect.
Where the book really triumphs,
though, is when he moves onto the remarkable applications of
entanglement that have started to be developed over the last few
years. Unbreakable encryption, computers that can crack problems
that would take conventional computers longer than the lifetime of
the universe to cope with, even Star Trek-style matter
transmitters. It's great stuff. I particularly liked the chapter on
why entanglement doesn't allow us to send faster than light
messages. Most of the books I've read on the subject just dismiss
this as obvious, but it isn't - in fact it's what most people think
of as soon as they hear about entanglement: surely it could be used
to send faster than light messages. Clegg explains just what the
implications would be - why faster than light messages would allow
us to send information back in time - then shows how entanglement
entices, but can never actually deliver on this promise.
There's also some fun speculation
from top scientists on what else entanglement could do - not just
providing a mechanism for the Higgs boson, but also the existence
of life, telepathy and more. The only criticism I have is that the
chapter on quantum computers told me rather more than I wanted to
know about different ways to make quantum computers work - it was
still interesting, but I didn't need that much detail.
Overall this is a superb
exploration of this weird and wonderful physical phenomenon and the
ways it could change our lives. It's well written and approachable
without any technical background, though I think it may also appeal
to undergraduates, as entanglement tends to get very limited
coverage on physics courses. Recommended.
Only in hardback
Idea structuring
Some of the best idea sessions could cover
the walls of a big room with thoughts - but it's not enough to brainstorm.
Idea structuring software makes it possible to
manipulate, group and structure those ideas so that they can be used or
remembered more effectively. This is probably the most advanced type of
creativity software on the market - we compare the best products.
More >>
Software reviews
If you want to check out a
specific product, rather than read our comparisons, use this
quick guide to access a particular review.
More >>
Idea gym
Part of the creativity section, this page
of puzzles includes some free software-based puzzles to download for
your PC.
More >>
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