Piano Stairs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXh2n0aPyw

Innovators practice 5 skills the rest of us don't

Want to know what they are?
Go here. http://news.byu.edu/archive09-Dec-dyerinnovation.aspx

The personality traits of designers

This from Fast Company.
www.fastcompany.com/1557979/what-personality-type-makes-the-best-designer?partner=design_newsletter

Look for an Olympic 'Right Brain' Performance

Whitney Ferre wrote a book called The Artist Within: A Guide to becoming Creatively Fit. I have featured Whitney and the book in a previous blog. Francois Coetzee of Ideation South Africa http://ideationsa.ning.com alerted me to a Facebook article that Whitney wrote. You can check it out here. http://www.facebook.com/notes/the-artist-within/look-for-an-olympic-right-brain-performance/318559659336

If you are in New Zealand and would like a copy of Whitney's book I have a spare one - its free. Either comment on this blog or email me at wayne@future-edge.co.nz and I'll send it to you. First in first served.

Are introverts more creative than extraverts?

Being an introvert but often having to take on an extravert persona when I work I found this Psychology Today article quite reassuring.
http://psychologytoday.com/blog/the-career-within-you/201002/are-introverts-more-creative-extraverts

Fleeting youth, fading creativity

This from the Wall Street Journal
http://on.wsj.com/d4cAEQ

Workplace creativity shrivels on the vine

More work, longer hours, lower pay, fewer resources.
Employees have endured a lot over the past 18 months.
Now add stifled imaginations to the list.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/managing/weekend-workout/workplace-creativity-shrivels-on-the-vine/article1474956

Digital Storytelling

Microsoft has just made avaiable a free download of a digital storytelling book. Although it's content is aimed at schools and promotes Microsoft products it does have some great information and handy hints for those of us who are digital dinosuars and would like not to be.
You can download it here. http://www.microsoft.com/education/teachers/guides/digital_storytelling.aspx

How to be an explorer of the world.

I just borrowed a book from my friend Bruce Hammonds www.leading-learning.co.nz Its called How to be an explorer of the world by Keri Smith.

Its great. It fits with my belief that creative people have habits that support their creativity.

Smith encourages readers to be curious about the environment and see the world through new eyes. She writes, "Creativity arises from our ability to see things from many different angles." She shows through a series 59 'explorations' how to explore the world around you starting with your immediate environment.

Explorations include:

• making sculpture with objects at hand
• fully using one's senses by listening to sounds and mapping them
• collecting objects that have 'magic potential'.
• seeing life in inanimate objects
• exploring patterns in nature and man made objects and collecting pattern rubbings

Great book for releasing the child in you - or if you have a child using them as an excuse for doing the stuff in this book.

After reading this I went on line and ordered 4 more of Smiths books. I'll let you know what I think of them in a future blog.

Breaking the Rules

Stanley Jordan is self-taught. He has broken the rules about how a guitar is played. He is an advocate of music therapy, and as with many great talents, applies his thinking to wider humanitarian issues as well as music. His website explains more.

Improv Everywhere

It was a GIANT teambuilding and leadership challenge...
On a cold Saturday in New York City, the world’s largest train station came to a sudden halt.
Over 200 Improv Everywhere Agents froze in place at the exact same second for five minutes in the Main Concourse of Grand Central Station.
Over 500,000 people rush through Grand Central every day, but on this day, things slowed down just a bit as commuters and tourists alike stopped to notice what was happening around them.
This "mission", as Improv Everywhere likes to call it, is just one example of how groups of people (many are strangers to each other) come together to create memorable and fun moments.
Improv Everywhere is, at its core, about having fun - - organized fun. Their missions are a fun source of entertainment for the participants and those who happen to see them live. Improv Everywhere brings excitement to otherwise unexciting locales and give strangers a story they can tell for the rest of their lives. Link below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwMj3PJDxuo

Art and Maths - Yeah Right!

It was rare at school that the students who took maths also took art. It worked the other way around because maths was compulsory but I was never good at it. American photographer Nikki Graziano has proved that the two - art and maths do mix. Just imagine if Nikki was your maths teacher! Hard to explain: see it for yourself here.

Taking your brain into 2010

Apple has announced the iPad, politicians are fighting over whether climate change is real, some countries have survived the economic crisis, some are in deep trouble, hundreds of thousands are homeless after earthquakes, wars are going on in over 30 countries, technology is moving faster than ever, and Roger Federer has won another Grand Slam...!

So what?

This is just a tiny sample of the complexity of our lives in 2010, and it's not going to get any less complex as time goes on! How do we make sense of it all, and how can we operate more effectively in such a complex environment? Given that everything we do starts with our brain and how we think, wouldn't it make sense to find out more, and help others to find out, how their own special brain operates and how they prefer to think and therefore how they operate from day to day?

The Neethling Brain Instrument (NBI) is the ideal tool to help make sense of complexity and manage your way through the confusion.

NBI Practitioners are ideally placed to help your clients and your staff make more sense of their own particular environment, whether it is at work, at home, in relationships, in learning, parenting, career choice, and even on the sports field.

There are thousands of untapped opportunities and potential applications for the NBI profile. In fact - I would dare to suggest that there are many more potential NBI applications than there are apps for the iPhone!

There are now 22 different NBI profiles available on-line:

General Adult
Job
Teacher / Trainer
Young Child Indicator
Personal Negativity
Eating Habits
Junior Student
360 short assessment
Senior Student
Rugby
Parenting Style
Soccer
Leadership Style
Rugby Referee
Learning Style
Cricket
Creativity Style
Tennis Skills
Skills
Netball
Relationship Style
Golf Skills

Some recent success stories include:

· A call centre operation that improved staff retention and shortened learning
times by 50%. NBI Job profiles were completed for 'exemplary' performers
and shortlisted candidates asked to complete the NBI Skills profile and the
NBI Preference profile. Candidates selected on matching profiles
outperformed previous recruits in learning time, job performance and
retention.

· A national sports team were ranked outside the top ten before a World
championship series. Every player in the squad completed an NBI profile.
The team was then taken through a series of workshop sessions, where
thinking preferences, positional play and strategy were the subject of intense
scrutiny and discussion. Significant changes were made to match players'
thinking, and new thinking patterns were developed, understood and adopted
as the changing game strategy demanded. The team reached the semi-finals
for the first time in their history!

· In a strategic planning session the top team completed NBI Preference and
Leadership profiles to examine individual preferences and to develop
leadership strategies that would take their personal and group thinking
patterns into account. As a result the whole team was more willing to adopt
'Whole Brain' thinking tools and techniques, to produce the business plan in
shorter time and to a much higher quality. Individual differences were seen
as a strength, rather than an opportunity for competition and point scoring
behaviour.

Please contact us for more information. Between us we can change the World - or your business - ONE THOUGHT AT A TIME!

In Australia: info@wholebrainthinking.com.au
In New Zealand: wayne@future-edge.co.nz