Forget Networking. How to Be a Connector

Shared by Robert Alan Black
We all know people like them, people who seem to know everyone. They're always able to help -- or if they can't, they know someone who can. You meet them for the first time and in 15 minutes, you're talking with them like you're childhood friends. They're successful, smart and funny, with a likable touch of self-deprecation. And they're interested in everything.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/222707

Famous Creators on the Fear of Failure

While intended as advice for design students, these simple yet important insights are relevant to just about anyone with a beating heart and a head full of ideas — a much-needed reminder of what we all rationally know but have such a hard time internalizing emotionally.http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/05/12/fear-of-failure/

Visualising Creativity

The ability to think creatively, and from that innovate, is a key skill in any business. Whether it’s sales, customer service, operations or management, being able to solve problems and develop new products and services is ultimately the difference between business success and failure.
http://blog.mindjet.com/2012/01/visualizing-creativity

Creativity is not what it used to be

Dimis Michaelides' thoughts on creativity
http://www.dimis.org/

How the mind creates ideas

More from Michael Michalko in Psychology Today
"When you are brainstorming for ideas and have a thought, the value of that thought depends upon how you interact with it. We are educated to be critical, judgmental, logical thinkers and to instantly evaluate and judge thoughts based on our past experiences. If there is any ambiguity, the judgment is invariably negative and the thought dissipates back into nothingness. The ordinary mind has no tolerance for ambiguity because it is conditioned to simplify the complexities of life."
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/creative-thinkering/201201/how-the-mind-creates-ideas

Creativity Crisis?

Big Think is a site worth exploring. This short clip featuirng Tom Stewart, then editor of the Harvard Business Review, is one exploring aspects of creativity.
http://bigthink.com/ideas/2864

Free Email Courses

Mindwerx International and the Buzan Centre @ Mindwerx are committed to Tony Buzan's vision of Global Mental Literacy - that is the ability of everyone to understand how their brains work and how to improve the way they think and learn.
10-Day How to Mind Map®
10-Day Teaching Others to Mind Map®
8-Day Introduction to Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats®

http://www.mindwerx.com/free-email-ecourses

Creativity and Mental Illness

Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder have been linked with creativity. The relationship may occur because some of the genes that contribute to schizophrenia and bipolar disorder also contribute to creativity.

http://psychnews.psychiatryonline.org/newsArticle.aspx?articleid=334891

Creativity: Dissonant Goals into Radical Harmony

The idea that visionary geniuses are best-poised for radical innovation is simply misleading. Maybe Jobs or Steve Wozniak were visionary geniuses working in uninterrupted solitary isolation … when they weren’t busy working crazy-long hours with the rest of their über-talented crews in the cultural cradle of high-tech innovation.


More here: http://www.fastcodesign.com/1668889/the-truth-creativity-comes-from-blending-dissonant-goals-into-radical-harmony

12 steps for fostering your creativity

Marie Patchen in her blog Mynx Writes says "If I could, I would take every single bit of advice in this poster and turn it into one of the 12 Steps For Fostering Your Creativity this weekend. However, rest assured that you don't need to stop at the 12 steps listed here today. Find your own copy of this poster, frame it up, and hang it in your writing space - and don't be afraid to open yourself up to being the creative creature that you are."


http://mynxwrites.blogspot.com/2012/01/12-steps-for-fostering-your-creativity.html