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Think You’re Not Creative? That Could Cost You Your Job

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Balderdash and Piffle

Creativity at Work

Creativity comes from the sum of one’s life experience. It pulls from knowledge, abilities, and skills. It uses neural pathways in the brain made by everything a person has learned and makes new ones as new connections form. It calls upon an ability to get beyond the ordinary, automatic response—to explore the inside and the outside of that darned proverbial box.

Still think you’re not creative? Maybe your definition of creative is too narrow. Some folks, who call themselves “creatives,” would have you believe that all creativity lies only in artistic endeavor. That brings me back to balderdash and piffle. Those folks aren’t creative in how they define creativity.

Ordinary folk have the power for creative thinking.

Creative thinking is essential to most every career on the planet. Businesses need creative thinkers to innovate, to manage risk, to meet ever-changing customer needs, to build efficient processes and solve complex problems.

If you argue for your lack of creativity, that could cost you your job. [Read more…]

Net Neutrality 8-2-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.

Telcos Keep Castigating the “Free-Riders”

GigaOm’s Katie Fehrenbacher attended today a speech by AT&T Chairman Ed Whitacre before the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners and reports that he’s as hard-line as ever about network neutrality. Here’s what he said:

“Some companies want us to be a big dumb pipe that gets bigger and bigger…No one gets a free ride. The American economy doesn’t work that way…We are not going to build this with no chance for a return. Those that want to use this will pay.”

Comcast, Cox, Time Warner to Start Mobile Voice Tests

The Hollywood Reporter’s Andrew Wallenstein has this extended, excellent piece on the cable-telco battle of the bundles. Buried in the article, however, is something new to me: Comcast, Time Warner and Cox will start this month testing the sale of mobile voice service as part of a new, expanded quadruple-play package.

This potentially killer combination flows from the $200 million dollar-backed consortium formed last year by Comcast, Time Warner, Cox Communications and Advance/Newhouse with Sprint-Nextel. According to the piece, Comcast and Cox will trial a mobile voice service in selected markets including Boston, Austin, Texas, and Portland, OR. . . .

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

We’re All Creative 1: The Bunnies Prove It

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I Drive Myself Crazy Crazier

Creativity at Work

Yesterdays post on 10 Reasons Creative Folks Make Us Crazy — The 10 Dimensions of Creative Complexity got quite a response, particularly on a couple of forums. The most interesting part was that in the comments about the post it seemed that

  1. the folks commenting didn’t seem to have read the entire post, only the list.
  2. they also didn’t know this blog or they would understand that I count myself among the people who drive people crazy.
  3. they didn’t catch my personal belief that everyone is creative.

The fact is I drive myself crazy crazier the more I think. The other fact is business schools need creative thinkers more than ever. The whole world does if we want to get anything to change around here.

With those thoughts in mind, I dug out a piece that explains my thoughts on creativity. I’m posting it because the bunnies prove that we’re all creative types. [Read more…]

Net Neutrality 8-1-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.

More networked journalism: All for one, one for all

Imagine this from the vision of Tom Evslin: What if all our Skype widgets had a button that allowed us to test and report the speed at which our Skype voice packets were being allowed through by our ISPs. What if then — following the 1 percent rule — just 400,000 of Skype’s 40-million-plus regular users hit that button and reported in how Skype’s — and other applications’ packets — were treated by their ISPs.

This would produce an incredible data base showing whether ISPs are, indeed, discriminating against certain packets and applications to advantage their own. I suspect Cablevision of playing wack-a-mole with my Skype because it works fine on slower lines elsewhere but horribly when I try to do interviews with the Guardian or the BBC (which prefer Skype) from home. But I have absolutely no way of knowing whether this is true. . . .

Now a reporter could take that data and go to ISPs to find out their side and get a good story out of this that has a big impact — one way or the other — on the net neutrality debate. Is there a smoking gun of discrimination to favor ISPs own packets? Or not? Let’s find out and report it.

Now, of course, there is also a sort of Heisenberg principle (using the bastardized definition of it) at work here: When the reporter calls, the ISP may say, ‘Oh, this is a mistake. We don’t discriminate.’ And whatever was switched on gets switched off. Or this could happen simply when the ISPs notice that they are being watched by the magic button. So the act of reporting affects the news reported (but then, it often does).

Now a journalist might say that this ruins the story. But the essential role of reporting remains in force: Journalism is a watchdog and now companies know that their customers are their watchdogs. Every customer is now a reporter.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

10 Reasons Creative Folks Make Us Crazy

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As Business Looks for Creative Thinkers — Look Out!

Creativity at Work

In this age of innovation, Business Schools look to fill theirs eats with more right brain creative people. Folks are beginning to take notice of the value and power of the off the wall idea.

Business Week.com devotes an entire section to innovation and creativity and companies have titles such as Idea Czar on their organizational chart. Tom_Peters asks “Where are the freaks in your company?” and goes on to say that they’re the ones who have the ideas.

Yeah, but how do you deal with someone who is one way one minute and the opposite the next? How do you tell a creative person from someone who just irritates you?

What are the traits that creative folks have in common? Are we all creative? Is there anyone who’s not? Can I boost my creativity? Am I a creative freak? Questions follow creativity — what is it, how does it work, and how do we access our Creativity at Work to make our brand and business stronger? [Read more…]

Net Neutrality 7-31-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.

What’s Microsoft Afraid Of?

Reuters reported last week that the Free Enterprise Action Fund – which holds more than 4,000 shares of Microsoft stock – wants the company to explain its rationale for supporting Net neutrality. The fund wants to put a proposal before shareholders, for an up-or-down vote at the next meeting, which would direct Microsoft management to prepare a report “analyzing the business and economic rationale, regulatory impacts, legal liabilities and any effects on product development and customers” of Net neutrality.

Sounds reasonable enough.

But Reuters reports that Microsoft has “asked the Securities and Exchange Commission if it could exclude the proposal from its annual shareholder vote without facing enforcement action by the agency.”

“What is Microsoft afraid of,” asks Tom Borelli, a portfolio manager at the Free Enterprise Action Fund.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE