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Article Excerpt
You're never too old for a good idea.
This roundup of web resources focuses on creativity and innovation, not so much the how-to as a sampling across a wide range of online assets, most of them freely available. If you're stuck for ideas, blocked for inspiration, or need some channeling for your creative muses, these websites might help you discover and create something different and new--and hopefully good.
When It Comes to Ideas, Big and More Are Better
"Creativity consists of coming up with many ideas, not just that one great idea."
--Charles "Chic" Thompson, What a Great Idea! (1992)
The growth of social networking, the creation of Creative Commons licenses, the propagation of "open" (shared, collaborative) approaches to problem-solving, software development, intellectual findings, and business innovation; the shift from analog to digital content--the last reinforced by the internet itself--have all led to some extraordinary personal connectivity and audio-visual collections. Blogging in general falls into these phenomena and Twitter [http://www.twitter.com] for mobile phone microblogging via text messaging, syndicated content (news) feeds, and newsfeed reading tools; Technorati [http://www.technorati.com] for tracking the popularity of blogs by their readership; Flickr for photographs and video [http://www.flickr.com]; YouTube [http://www.youtube.com] for videos; SoundBoard for audio [http://www.soundboard.com]; and the Internet Archive for historic video, audio, texts, software, and websites [http://www.archive.org]. Writers may find no greater source for ideas than places such as Wikipedia and its family of sites [http://www.wikipedia.org] and FreeBase [http://www.freebase.com].
Where can you find your next big idea? Businesses and services that specialize in trying to recognize the "next big thing" include the well-known IT consulting and research company Gartner, Inc. [http://www.gartner.com], which began hosting a Web Innovation Summit in 2007. Founded in 2002 by Reinier Evers, the Dutch company Trendwatching.com [http://www.trendwatching.com] has an idea-spotting network called Springspotters [http://www.springspotters.com] that, in turn, feeds into the database-driven Springwise.com [http://springwise.com]. TrendHunter.com [http://www.trendhunter.com], founded in 2005 by Jeremy Gutsche, operates on the same principle as the Springspotters Network. You can search the TrendHunter database of more than 22,200 trends without registering for a free account. Established in 2006, BuzzFeed [http://buzzfeed.com] combines social networking with trend watching by the masses.
The Belgian company CREAX NV has assembled more than 840 categorized links to sites "about creativity and innovation" at CREAX.net [http://www.creax.net]. Creative Clusters [http://www.creativeclusters.com], a U.K. company established by Simon Evans in 2001, has hosted conferences since 2002 and maintains a good set of international, mainly European, and English-language resources on the creative industries sector.
Web 1.0 subject portals and gateways to creativity and innovation include the Creativity Portal [http://www.creativity-portal.com], established in 2000 by Chris Dunmire and geared to writers, teachers, and arts and crafts enthusiasts. But the Web 1.0 outlets are giving way to Web 2.0 applications centered around blogging, wikis, and social networking, all better tools to promote a freer exchange of ideas. The upside and main advantage of the gatekeeper approach, especially in the how-to arena, is quality control.
When a Bad Idea Spells Innovation
"Innovation is the central issue in economic prosperity."
--Michael E. Porter, Harvard Business School (unsourced and attributed by various websites and publications)
One of the most famous "bad idea = innovation" tales from the 20th century is the story of how 3M Post-it Notes came to be. You can read up on this at Snopes.com [http://www.snopes.com/business/origins/post-it.asp] or on 3M's Post-it Brand gateway [http://www.3m.com/us/office/postit/pastpresent/history.html]. Striving to find something very sticky, 3M researchers found something that would pull off. Came the dawn! Light bulb appears over researcher's head!! Sometimes people want to pull things off. Where do ideas come from within a business organization? What conditions best generate good ideas? One set of answers may be found in the research of Teresa Amabile, Edsel Bryant Ford professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. An article by Bill Breen in Fast Company, "The 6 Myths of Creativity" (issue 89, December 2004 [http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/89/creativity.html]), neatly summarizes initial results from Amabile's empirical study on creativity within the workplace. You can find additional insights on her research into business creativity, and that of some of her Harvard Business School colleagues, at the school's Working Knowledge site [http://hbswk.hbs.edu].
These few business-oriented innovation resources may also help to unlock your innovative potential.
Google Directory Reference > Knowledge Management
> Knowledge Creation category
http://www.google.ca/Top/Reference/Knowledge_Management/ Knowledge_Creation
Contains the subcategories Brainstorming, Concept Mapping, Creativity, Innovation and Idea Management, Mind Mapping, and Problem Solving. To find the equivalent categories in the Yahoo Directory, search it for the same terms used by Google and select the More link at the bottom of the initial Related Directory Categories list at the top of the search results screen. Most business-related resources will start with the category name B2B (Business to Business).
Innovation Tools
http://www.innovationtools.com
Established by Chuck Frey, "a creative thinker with 20+ years of experience in PR, marketing, business strategy and information services," this site contains articles, software guides, book reviews, and links to resources, including a long list of innovation and creativity blogs.
TRIZ Journal
http://www.triz-journal.com
Focusing on a decades-old...
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