SIG

At the risk of saying I told you so ... I told you so!  And now I have mighty IBM backing me up. Via the Innovation Network, we learn that the recently released 2010 IBM Global CEO Study, based on interviews with 1500 top global business leaders, finds that "CEOs now realize that creativity trumps other leadership characteristics. Creative leaders are comfortable with ambiguity and experimentation.

View Pierce Transit's Learning Manager Kelly Johnston presenting as part of the regional Innovation panel by clicking here.  

There is growing recognition that the capability to innovate is one of the essentials for organizational survival in a tough and turbulent economy.  We all feel the pressure to run faster and faster just to stay in place. The plaintive cry that "we've always done things this way!" is a sure-fire recipe to guarantee obsolescence and, ultimately, oblivion.

But how do you make an organization more innovative? What's the magic formula WLP practitioners can use to transform a stagnant dinosaur of an organization into an innovative dynamo?

On April 29th, the Chapter's Creativity and Innovation SIG will feature a panel discussion of three regional practitioners with three very different approaches to fostering innovation. In this posting, I want to feature one these, Ross Smith of Microsoft.  He claims the key to innovation is building trust. Get a preview of Ross's perspective by watching this video … … and then Register Now for this fascinating and informative program!

April 15th is not just Tax Day. It's also the 558th birthday of Leonardo da Vinci -- and in honor of this creative genius, the original Renaissance Man, the kick-off of the eighth annual World Creativity and Innovation Week. The Week "is a celebration of our ability to get new ideas, use imagination and make new decisions to make the world a better place and to make your place in the world better too." 

Thomas Friedman, the New York Times much-honored foreign affairs columnist, finds himself writing more and more these days about creativity and innovation, rather than the struggles between great powers. In effect, he explains in a recent column why the subjects he writes about have shifted:

Dick Brass, a former vice president at Redmond-based, global software giant Microsoft, recently issued a grim forecast about the company's future on the New York Times op-ed pages:

"... while the company has had a truly amazing past and an enviably prosperous present, unless it regains its creative spark, it’s an open question whether it has much of a future."