Contributed by Dr. Darin Eich

I like this “cone of learning” visual. I understand and remember it more because it is something I see instead of just read. It is visual. This has relevance for innovators when they are trying to advance their creations by communicating them to others. When we are communicating our concepts people will “get”, retain, and learn more if you don’t just let them read or hear, but also see… or better yet hear and see. How can you tell and story and show people your innovations?

We are hosting a webinar series where we will teach people brainstorming and concept development through guiding them practically along the stages of the BrainReactions system. We will help people hear, see, and do. Most of us are communicating our creations on the web. Instead of just text why not try letting others hear and see? It is easier now to create your own videos that can do just this. Even a short rapidly created video will increase the potency of your communication over written words. Instead of a paragraph of text about the webinar series I will use one of the communication innovation tools and let you hear and see so that at the webinar you can do to learn and create more! Take a look at what even amateur video producers can create with basic software:

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Contributed by Rishi Shah, CEO and founder of FlyingCart.com - Flying Cart is an easy way to create an online store and sell products. Currently they help over 6,000 businesses create, market, and manage their online store.

A long time ago (August 2005) I had an idea about how great it would be to go into any major retail store, buy something, and it would remember what you bought. You could then enter in your email address and after a few weeks the retail store would email you suggestions based on your previous purchase. I reached out to every major retailer I could find. Using Hoovers and Google Finance I was able to easily find the key people (CEO’s and VP’s) to ask about this idea. After getting hundreds of “No, Thank You” or “Who are you?” or “Call us in a year,” I decided to approach small business owners.

I walked up and down State Street in Madison, Wisconsin. State Street is known for having 30 or so small niche boutiques. I asked each store owner if they were interested in my idea. A few said yes but they were more interested in just a really easy way to create an online store where they could sell their products. I heard this over and over again. After doing some research I found a few “create online store” solutions did exist but they were extremely complicated and I have a technical background!

Because I heard the problem and need directly from small business owners, I was pretty convinced that an easy to use online store was a solid idea. I was able to get a client to sign a contract with me as a beta customer. Now that I had a client and a solid idea I needed to develop the product. I posted a job ad looking for an experienced programmer on Craigslist.org. This is how I found a talented business partner in Margo Baxter. She liked the idea and we were both excited to work on it.

We asked our first beta client many questions and pitched them a lot of feature ideas. All they said they wanted was an easy online store they could manage themselves. At first we didn’t really think the bigger market would want a featureless cart so we went on to build in many features. The results were months and months of development and a product that was over bloated. We decided to take a step back and re think things. After a lot of long nights we decided to rebuild the product except this time with simplicity and only the essential features in mind.

MARKETING WITH NO MONEY
While Margo was cranking out code, I knew we needed more than one client to make a business. So we created a nice looking website showing off what we were developing and an email sign up form so people could be alerted when we launch. The form was essential to us and we were able to create an initial demand before we launched the product. Building a form is simple to do especially with Wufoo.com. Once we launched the site we hit the web world hard and tried to get any free publicity possible. We spent months looking up open directories and submitting Flying Cart to it. A few of the best directories we got into were go2web20.net, feedmyapp.com, wikidweb.com, and DMOZ.org. We wrote press releases and submitted them to any free press release website we could find. The best press release sites for us were ecommwire.com and free-press-release.com. We also wrote to hundreds of blogs personally one by one asking them to write about us. Luckily Mashable.com, BusinessWeek.com and Entrepeneur.com wrote about us. After 3 or so months we had 400 clients waiting to be invited into Flying Cart to open an online store. This kept us extremely motivated to keep building the product.

Flying Cart officially launched in Aug. 2007. We had a dead simple easy to use product. We had a few paying customers but needed more to survive. We knew that marketing would play a key role in acquiring more customers.

REACHING OUT
Before launching Flying Cart we did some major research on eBay to uncover customer wants and needs. We knew there were millions of frustrated eBay customers. We hit their forum boards and asked around what their major problems were. One major problem we heard was eBay’s outrageous fees. They hated giving a cut of their profits (eBay charges anywhere from 3-9% of the final sale amount). We decided that we would give our customers the ability to take home 100% of their profits and we would charge a flat low monthly fee instead.

ADVERTISING
In order to get more traction on the web we decided to sign up for Google Adwords and starting purchasing keywords like “Shopping Cart Solution” so our ad would appear when someone searches for it. Google Adwords was great and it helped us lock down some good customers at a very affordable price.

HELPING CUSTOMERS
Although Google Adwords was getting us new customers our biggest strength was old customers referring new customers. This is when it struck us. Let’s take care of our customers and our customers will take care of us! Let’s ask our customers what they want and need and build it for them!

CUSTOMER SUPPORT
Our best feature was our customer support - everyone liked our personal attention and fast responses. Over the last two years we learned how to create better customer service. We allow our customers to set up phone calls with us so we can figure out what is wrong with the store or even give them advice on how to market their products online.

GETTING FEEDBACK
We are constantly asking our customers for feedback. At any point the store owner can submit feature suggestions, take a survey that we post in our newsletters, and communicate with us on our blog. Margo and I can still name each one of our customers and the features they came up with. This feedback drives the development of new features and how we communicate about our business to others.

HELPING CUSTOMERS MAKE SALES
We found a repeating pattern in our business. Customers with no sales cancel. So we went to work. We researched every possible tool we could integrate that would make our customers products more visible on the Internet. We added the ability to add all your products to be indexed by Google Product Search with a click of a button. We created on demand sitemaps for each store and alerted Google, Yahoo, and ASK about it. We reached out to TheFind.com to index each one of our stores in their major shopping directory.

Unfortunately, no matter how many automated marketing tools we added the overall success of the online store lies in motivating the actual owner and teaching them what it takes to be successful. A few months ago we launched a store check list. 20 tips they must do to get their online business rolling. We guide each store owner through marketing tasks like publishing a press release to design guides so they can create a trustworthy beautiful looking online store.

RECURRING SALES
The most important thing to any business owners is recurring sales. Keeping cash flow alive. Our solution was to launch a mini social network inside each store. Each store owner has a “Fan Club”. Old and new customers are given the opportunity to join the store fan club, upload a picture, and create a mini profile. The store’s fans can communicate directly with the store owner right on their store. This way the store owners can find out directly from the customers what they like, want, and need. This creates a lasting impression and turns each customer into a fan.

MOVING FORWARD
We aren’t slowing down. Feature suggestions are always coming in. The hard part is deciding which idea to focus on. The way we look at new feature ideas now is the amount of impact it will have. Before we take on any new feature idea we ask ourselves one big important question: Will it help our customers out?

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Contributed by Anand Chhatpar, CEO of BrainReactions LLC http://www.brainreactions.com

I have been an entrepreneur as long as I can remember. I started my first company, Pyxoft Infotech Pvt Ltd. at age 17 in India. I went to college at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and in my second year in the US, was involved in my second start-up, OZ Innovations and we went on to sell the product internationally in a retail chain of over 72 stores. I was also fortunate to have been named as one of the “Top 5 Entrepreneurs Under 25″ by BusinessWeek and also featured on CNBC TV’s “Young Turks.” Now is as good a time as any I have seen to become an entrepreneur.

This is a great time in life for you to start a new business, especially if you do not have the responsibilities of a family or the pressures of a house mortgage payment. Starting a new business has become much cheaper today because office rent, cost of advertising and cost of employees has gone down. You probably also have a group of friends who would like to work with you and all of you can pool your startup money together. Some of you have ideas, but are hesitant to act due to the fear of making mistakes. Let me assure you that everyone makes mistakes when starting a new business. What is needed to succeed is the will to recognize your mistakes and to fix them quickly. As I learned from my mentors during my internship, “Fail fast to succeed sooner!”

Some of you may not yet have thought about any ideas for a business you can start. My company, BrainReactions http://brainreactions.com, is in the business of identifying new opportunities for entrepreneurs and companies by generating creative new ideas. We not only generate ideas professionally for clients, but we also teach people methods of being more innovative systematically so they can create useful new ideas for their unique situation. Perhaps we can share some business ideas with you here. Although the general sentiment today is quite negative, this is in fact, a great time to use the recession to your advantage.

Not all businesses are suffering in the recession. According to Barry Moltz’s recent survey, about a fifth of all businesses are such that they actually do better in a recession. Such businesses, called “countercyclical businesses”, present great startup opportunities right now. Businesses that help people save money generally tend to be in this category. For example, in a recession, people prefer to buy more groceries or eat cheaper food than eat at a fine dining restaurant. Insurance agents that can save people money on their car insurance premiums also do well in a recession. Funnily enough, in India, astrologers tend to have an increase in clients during a recession. Could you, perhaps, create a new product or service that helps people save money or reduce wastage in their homes and offices?

For new entrepreneurs, it is easier to set up service-based businesses that have a low startup cost. Businesses like web design, tutoring, delivery, event planning service, and a travel booking service are some examples.

Since you are reading this article on a computer, I would assume that you enjoy the Internet and are open to ideas for online entrepreneurship. Sites like eLance.com and odesk.com provide opportunities for freelance writing, graphic or web design, programming, and even simple tasks like data entry and virtual assistance. Similarly, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk at mturk.com pays people for completing simple tasks online as well. If you are good at photography, you can upload good quality photos to iStockPhoto.com and get paid royalties. Metacafe pays users to upload videos that are popular. Sites like ReviewMe.com and PayPerPost.com pay you to write reviews of websites on your free blog. Speaking of blogs, Squidoo.com and eHow.com pay a revenue share to people who contribute articles to their site. SpringWise.com has a database of unique business ideas from around the world that you could spend hours reviewing. The web is a huge resource of business ideas and for reaching out to other entrepreneurs who are available for providing guidance and help for your new business.

To get more new business ideas, I would recommend traveling to a new place that you have not been before, perhaps to a different country if you can. Experiencing a new place and culture can give you tremendous amount of fresh inspiration for new ideas. Also, check out the book called “Successfully launching new ventures” by Dr. Bruce Barringer which features BrainReactions as a success case study in its second chapter. Furthermore, you can double your chances of success by learning the fundamentals of systematic innovation through a four-week online course we deliver via webinars at http://www.innovationtraining.org or get recordings of the training sessions. You can walk through activity by activity the steps to create a solid business concept or new product idea.

I hope that after reading this article you will rethink your career and normal daily job-hunting and actually use some of the ideas and resources that I have shared in order to create your own successful business and create new jobs for our country and our world.

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About the Author: Anand is the CEO of BrainReactions LLC, a company that helps companies and entrepreneurs with innovation. Anand has a degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Computer Engineering. He holds 8 issued U.S. utility patents.

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David Dalka has been a friend and strong supporter of BrainReactions dating back to our inception. After exiting a small startup last year, David is currently a Marketing Strategy Innovation Management Consultant to senior executives. Darin Eich had the pleasure of talking with David about the exciting and abundant opportunities to utilize social media and user generated content as strategic management team tools!

Darin Eich: What kind of activity takes place on social media and user generated content sites that could become insights for innovation?

David Dalka: People are discussing the products and services you provide everyday on blogs, social media sites like Twitter and user generated content sites like Youtube. The types of people can provide falls into several categories: evangelist about an industry, evangelist about a product or service, people who are passionate about a particular brand (no matter what!), people expressing frustration or dissatisfaction and people who are making constructive criticism.

Darin Eich: That is certainly true, what does this mean for better innovation?

David Dalka: Everything! It has potential not only for innovation, but also the entire way you do business! In the era of Web 2.0 a lot of people have focused on the public relations aspects of social media to promote their products. It is my opinion that the largest opportunities actually are in listening to people expressing frustration or dissatisfaction and people who are making constructive criticism and then acting on that information. The focus should be on how to solve these pain points in the marketplace, improving offerings and creating an elite, innovative brand experience!

In the late 1990’s, I worked at BlackRock (BLK) during its’ growth phase from 80 to 800 employees. At BlackRock we provided daily reports via the Internet for our institutional clients back in 1996 when other firms were still sending out paper reports only 45 days after the end of the month. This created offline conversations and/or emails from these clients for data adjustments and tons of suggestions for adding fields to these reports, changing the reports and innovation that created new reports! The increased cycle time of communication with our customers brought us closer to them and increased our pace of innovation – more importantly it focused that innovation outward towards the customer instead of inward. Our responsiveness to their feedback encouraged even more feedback! This feedback loop was critical in creating the incremental improvements that BlackRock made every day. These improvements over time created substantial competitive advantages that were a direct result of user and customer generated innovation!

Darin Eich: That’s amazing! So you are suggesting that pre-social media era experience is a strong indicator of what can and should be done to create innovation today using these tools?

David Dalka: Absolutely! The opportunities to create a process where you listen, then engage and reform your customer acquisition, marketing positioning and customer service is where the future of competitive advantage has the largest area of opportunity. Is your organization seizing the opportunity? Or are entrenched silos beholden to rigid budgets more suited for 1990 than 2009 over analyzing and delayed decisions? Have a bias for action.

Darin Eich: Who is starting to adapt to this change well? What actions are they taking?

David Dalka: Comcast is certainly making incremental steps in the right direction. A few short years ago a contract installer told Comcast that he completed an installation at my mother’s house when he actually did not. This was highly upsetting. My Mom responded with a guest blog post which made the Digg home page and they promptly removed the charges. Then there was the well known sleeping Comcast employee Youtube video incident.

Several months later a support employee named Frank Eliason approached VP of Communications Jennifer Khoury and asked if he could create a Twitter account and start to proactively respond to the complaints and problems of customers voicing concerns on blogs and/or Twitter. His @comcastcares account has now solved thousands of problems for Comcast customers and Frank now leads a team that is solely dedicated to this. I talked with Jennifer about this at ad:tech Chicago in 2008 to learn more about how this came about and she said she granted him the authority to do that immediately. The decision to allow a bottom up idea to be rapidly implemented is critical. Is Comcast the best customer service organization in the world? Not even close. Is Comcast realizing the mistakes of the past and making incremental strides towards improvement everyday now? Absolutely! And that is what matters, making incremental improvements in the customer experience. They also came back onto that original blog post and left a lengthy comment replying to all the other comments. There hasn’t been another comment on that post since then. Comcast is building credibility. Ultimately a portion of social media is a revolution about a return to good old fashioned customer service, which I’d highly welcome over the only way to get service is to request to close my account option.

Darin Eich: If an organization is looking to strategically innovate with utilizing social media and user generated content, what can they do to start in the right direction?

David Dalka: Why is Twitter working for Comcast? It works because Comcast is listening to and solving customer needs instead of seeing social media as purely a public relations or promotional tool! Strategy without execution is nothing, effective implementation is everything. Empowering your employees towards rapid action instead of 18 months of meetings to make a decision is critical to making incremental progress. Using user generated content, social media and search engine marketing effectively is an incremental process that transforms your entire culture and the way you do business across your organization not something that you have one person do and keep doing everything else the same way! You can’t write a check to a consultant and be done, you have to be committed to change. This means changing customer interaction processes and procedures across the organization. The big one hit solution doesn’t exist. Stop looking for it. You need to get down and roll in the dirt to find the details that can lead to innovation.

Darin Eich: Can you point to an opportunity for a company to utilize customer feedback in this manner to make products or services that improve the customer experience and create competitive advantage?

David Dalka: Sure. I bought a new Acura Integra in 1991 and am I am driving it into the ground – it has 154,000 miles on it. It’s been one of the greatest and highest return on investment purchases I’ve ever made! It’s time for me to buy a new car and I’m an Acura loyal customer for life right? Sadly no, I’m not likely to be. Why? During the 1990’s the engineers at Honda and Acura have forgotten that a significant number of their customers are 6′3″ or taller and the “improvements” that have led to marginal increases in miles per gallon changed the headroom in their sedans to the point where I don’t fit comfortably in one and the current pillar and rear view mirror placements cause dangerous obstructed views. If I don’t buy an SUV from them I don’t fit. To be honest, I am surprised the auto insurance industry hasn’t been more proactive in regards to this emerging issue. Starting way back in the year 2000 I started calling Acura’s customer service number periodically to give this feedback – to date I have yet to see any change in the design. I mean look at this photo showing a 5′6″ reporter in the backseat of a 2010 Honda Insight. I really wanted to consider the new Honda Insight, but myself and tons of other consumers will reject this car outright due to its inferior headroom characteristics. I’ve Tweeted the issue again just now. Will some car company listen to this, design cars that once again serve the comfort, visibility and safety needs of tall people and increase their market share? The opportunity is right there in the tweet waiting for any auto manufacturer to build a great sedan with great headroom and visibility for tall people!

Darin Eich: Other than innovation blogs and e-magazines like this one, where else can you find the thought leaders and resources on this subject?

David Dalka: Your own well thought out search queries on a search engine like Google is the best place to start. If people understand the true strategic nature of the emerging content and search engine optimization opportunities you’ll find them when searching about subjects that you care about! Another great place is slideshare.com, the world’s emerging thought leaders are creating content for lectures, small group meetings and Conferences (UGCX) and put the deck on slideshare.com.

We hope that you’ve enjoyed this conversation with Marketing Strategy Innovation Management Consultant David Dalka. Stay tuned for future conversations with David and other innovators in future issues of BrainWaves. Drop us a line to let us know any specific issues you’d like us to discuss in future interviews.

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BrainWaves is a quarterly e-periodical for people who are interested in how organizations cultivate individual and group creativity. Each issue of BrainWaves features information and perspectives about individual and group ideation; how businesses and not-for-profits actuate the best ideas; and reports on remarkable innovations that promise novel solutions to intractable problems. Brainwaves is produced and edited by BrainReactions, producer of “outside insight” — ideas for organizations conceived by outside professional brainstormers and from online brainstorms using BrainReactions.net. BrainReactions also provides innovation training to help companies and individuals generate more and better ideas. 

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In This Issue

• How to innovate and brainstorm a better idea to change the world for a share of $10 Million from Project 10^100
• Utilizing the Labyrinth for innovation and convergent thinking in the Conceptual Age
• The Labyrinth: An ancient and emerging tool for idea development
• Review: Frost & Sullivan conference on Growth, Innovation and Leadership

Announcement:

BrainReactions’ most popular webinar, Fundamentals of Idea Generation for Innovation, which has been attended by over 100 companies already, is now available to watch as a video so you can watch and learn from the webinar video at your own convenience. To download this webinar and the related materials, please visit http://training.brainreactions.com

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Contributed by Darin Eich, Ph. D.

Google has committed $10 million to fund ideas from individuals that can improve our world. This article will help you to use best practices for idea generating and innovation so that you may submit a better and more well developed idea to increase your chances for a share of the $10 million and better improve the world. We will pull out key parts of the Google application for topics you can generate ideas around and criteria to use to select and develop your ideas. We will also share with you what we have learned from experience not only crowdsourcing ideas but developing a simple idea generating for innovation process you can use to develop and communicate your big idea in a more meaningful way. We have developed and used this process with similar projects that were geared at improving our world, be it eradicating extreme global poverty with the UN, fundraising for the United Way, helping children’s shelters in developing nations, or bettering our environment. These projects all started with a problem, led to questions, continued with ideas, and led to selection and development of the best ideas…just like you can do with the Google Project 10^100.

In a Google news release they described this project in these terms: “Google is announcing as part of its tenth birthday celebration Project 10^100 (pronounced Project 10 to the 100th), a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible. For this challenge we are asking our users to send us exciting ideas for ways to improve people’s lives and have committed $10 million to turn up to five of the best ideas into reality. These ideas can be big or small, technology-driven or brilliantly simple – but they need to have impact. We will identify the 100 best ideas and then ask our users to vote on which ideas we should fund. Their votes select the 20 finalists, and then a panel of judges will choose up to five ideas for final funding.” For more information, visit: http://www.project10tothe100.com

If you want to submit an innovative idea for this project where do you start? First, practice innovation best practices. You will have to go about this purposefully with a process or system you use to develop a fine concept. This means generate multiple ideas and then synthesize relevant multiple ideas logically together in the form of a well-developed concept. It is important to capture and store all of these ideas in one place. Also, great innovations are not solitary work. They are the result of collaborations. Involve others to help you generate ideas, develop the concept, validate the concept, and communicate the concept so that is meaningful and memorable. In a free brainreactions.net private brainstorming room you can pose your question, provide background, visuals in the form of a photo or video, and generate ideas. With the free room you can include up to five brainstormers and these brainstormers can not only generate ideas but also vote, select, and sort the best ideas to move forward and develop.

So, how do we come up with a large number of ideas so you can develop a strong concept? First of all, we do it deliberately and purposefully. If you expect a bunch of brilliant ideas to come to you by chance, you are not going to get very far. You have to set out to come up with these ideas; schedule time to do it; plan to do it. Schedule a brainstorm or innovation session time, invite your collaborators, and execute.

An important start to an idea generating for innovation project is to pose important questions that are grounded in a problem or opportunity for innovation. Google’s Project 10^100 offers seven suggested categories and questions:

1. Community: How can we help connect people, build communities and protect unique cultures?
2. Opportunity: How can we help people better provide for themselves and their families?
3. Energy: How can we help move the world toward safe, clean, inexpensive energy?
4. Environment: How can we help promote a cleaner and more sustainable global ecosystem?
5. Health: How can we help individuals lead longer, healthier lives?
6 Education: How can we help more people get more access to better education?
7. Shelter: How can we help ensure that everyone has a safe place to live?

Start by selecting a category that you are passionate about, value, and have knowledge or experience in. Brainstorm many specific problems or opportunities within that category. For instance, on a similar project we picked the “environment” category and then brainstormed solutions to the plastic bag problem as something to dig deeper into with ideas. You can view an example of this plastic bag brainstorm at: http://www.brainreactions.net/brainstorms/1815

This process example that you can see includes a question stimulated from a problem, hundreds generated ideas, collaborated ideas from multiple people, selection and voting of good ideas, and sorting most popular ideas. This simple process is valuable for creating better and more innovative ideas.

When generating ideas it is good to create with criteria in mind. This will help you to create ideas that have a better chance of success because they are grounded in the criteria that have been established. Project 10^100 has suggested five criteria:

1. Reach: How many people would this idea affect?
2. Depth: How deeply are people impacted? How urgent is the need?
3. Attainability: Can this idea be implemented within a year or two?
4. Efficiency: How simple and cost-effective is your idea?
5. Longevity: How long will the idea’s impact last?

You can select your top ideas from the brainstorm (by hitting the “good idea” button” on brainreactions.net) based on not only your passion for that idea but by how well it fits with the criteria. If it has reach, depth, attainability, efficiency, and longevity then it is a tremendous idea! The criteria will also help you to compare ideas to determine which to develop further.

You also need to do more than just develop a great concept. What is often times missing in success is being able to communicate your concept so that it is understandable, valuable and memorable. The Project 10^100 application is simple. They do though ask you to provide more about your idea or concept on key questions. Many of these questions are deserving of their own brainstorm to converge on the best ideas or answers. These questions from this Google Project are:

What one sentence best describes your idea?
Describe your idea in more depth.
What problem or issue does your idea address?
If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how?
What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground?
Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it?

You can also create a short video to explain your big idea. The more visual the better to help others’ minds connect with and understand your concept. Use metaphors, evidence, stories, and examples. You can also use the brainstorming process to create a video, generating ideas for both top-level video themes and the supporting details to reinforce the theme.

So why is it so important to have a process that yields a lot of ideas instead of just one that you get by chance? Generating many ideas is a process-oriented feature of very successful innovation systems in lots of successful organizations. When they develop new products they get many, many ideas in the pipeline. From there, they qualify the ideas and whittle them down into a handful of concepts. After that, they test the concepts while developing them more and may only end up with 1 new product from 100 product ideas. This is how ideation for innovation works. More importantly, when you come up with a large number of ideas it is easier to do good analysis. You can identify some themes that a lot of the ideas shared. Some ideas will lead to new and different ideas. You will learn a lot from looking at all of the ideas from above. You will see the forest from the trees. An innovation process is necessary to develop a better big idea.

Why not carry the Google idea competition inspiration forward? With brainreactions.net you can also run your own version of the competition. Why not do the same thing at a smaller scale and provide funding for ideas to help your organization or your local community? With crowdsourcing the connections can now be made between individuals and organizations. The technology and time is ripe to open up idea submissions and competitions from normal people with great ideas.

About the Author: Darin Eich, Ph.D. helps organizations to develop and facilitate idea generating & front end of innovation systems and programs. He also speaks and trains individuals in innovation, brainstorming, creativity, and leadership. You can email Darin at darin.eich@brainreactions.com.

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Contributed by Darin Eich, Ph.D.

A labyrinth is a reflective tool, a moving meditation if you will. It is a patterned path that you walk. While you walk, you think. You think very clearly. You gain insights. You think through things better. This is my experience walking labyrinths and utilizing them for my own personal innovation work. The last time I remember having a similar powerful experience walking and thinking was mowing the lawn which involved constantly moving in a pattern towards the center. My mind was full of ideas and thought during this experience and the labyrinth has generated similar effects for me. The labyrinth is a good weekly personal practice or a good tool for a group to use. Labyrinths can be used for a variety of purposes. The ability to use them individually and with groups for the purposes of convergent thinking, decision making, and innovation have become increasingly pertinent. Some thinking techniques like the labyrinth are ancient but readily applicable today.

I’ve used the labyrinth as a very powerful creativity, thinking, development, and problem-solving tool with a number of different groups of people seeking to innovate their own lives and organizations. When I need to work out a problem or think about something and develop it deeply, I journey to the labyrinth for this silent reflective walk that is very different from a group brainstorming session. This labyrinth walk is a moving, personal and inner thinking tool that I try to utilize on a regular basis. I have also been involved with using the labyrinth at a variety of leadership retreats and with teaching people innovation and creativity. The application can be equally powerful for individuals walking alone as it is for a group walking together. The group silence that typically accompanies a labyrinth activity is a new powerful feeling to experience.

I’ve also noticed labyrinths making their way into popular literature on innovation and creativity. Most interesting to me was seeing a number of pages devoted to the labyrinth in Daniel Pink’s tremendous book, “A Whole New Mind”. This is probably one of my favorite books relating to innovation and how individual thinking can contribute to it. The leadership and personal innovation skills for the new era he is presenting resonate with me. Dan says the keys to success in this upcoming “conceptual age” are in developing and cultivating six senses: design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning. The tools of innovation and the labyrinth align well with his six senses. How interesting would it be to create new interventions and programs designed to develop these capacities in people? One idea is creating a program designed to help people understand, articulate, and create their own stories. The labyrinth would be an excellent tool that can help people think through their own stories and work towards developing these important capacities and outcomes necessary for success and meaning in the conceptual age.

The labyrinth is starting to gain increased recognition for its role in helping to foster creative ideas, solutions to problems, and the development of innovative concepts. Read the article from Professor and Labyrinth researcher, Katja Marquart, for more information on labyrinths and how some people are using them for enhanced creative problem solving. Why not walk a labyrinth yourself and see how it may help you think more clearly. To find a labyrinth near you, search the World Wide Labyrinth Locator at http://wwll.veriditas.labyrinthsociety.org/

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Contributed by Katja Marquart

Harnessing creativity, innovation, and problem-solving techniques in a fast-paced environment is a highly valued skill in today’s world. Although each of us possesses the ability to be creative and innovative, we each access these skills differently. Factors such as the environment in which we work, the amount of time available, and our personal state of being, greatly affect our overall productivity and problem-solving process. Often, we rely upon tools and various practices to facilitate this process. Around the world, many people are turning to labyrinths as a unique tool for enhancing creativity and problem-solving processes.

Labyrinths are often confused with mazes. Without a visual reference, this confusion is understood, as the terms maze and labyrinth are often used interchangeably. However, following a maze involves navigating through a series of paths, dead-ends, and multiple turns eventually leading to a goal that solves the maze. Contrary to this, labyrinths consist of one very clear path winding around a central area. This same path is then followed back out from the center to complete the labyrinth journey. Many people who experience labyrinths find that navigating this single path creates a right-brain experience that differs from the left-brain, decision based experience of solving a maze. There is nothing to solve in following a labyrinth, you simply experience the journey.

Labyrinths have a long and rich history. As ancient patterns, labyrinths have evolved into modern tools with numerous uses. They have been found in cultures around the world and throughout time, with earliest documentation found in the Minoan culture, second or third millennium BC. In most contemporary applications labyrinths are created as walking paths or finger-tracing patterns. The labyrinth pattern defines a unique space, offering individuals a focused place for personal reflection and centering, as they physically experience walking or tracing the labyrinth’s winding path.

As creative problem-solving tools labyrinths may be used in a variety of ways. Many people find the experience of walking or tracing a labyrinth to be quite relaxing, allowing them to feel centered. This inner-calm encourages a flow of ideas emerging from subconscious levels of thought. The steady winding of the labyrinth’s path also reflects the divergent and convergent nature of thoughts during creative problem solving. Following the labyrinth’s path, draws one tantalizingly close to the center, when suddenly making a turn guides you towards the outer edges of the labyrinth and far away from the center. As this journey unfolds, the path maintains this rhythm until the center is finally reached.

“Relating labyrinths to creativity is not new”, notes Janice Francisco, a facilitator in the field of Creativity and Change Leadership. Francisco states that labyrinths have often been fixtures at international creativity conferences. However, she became interested in how and why labyrinths were related to creativity when she observed that, “a specific link between labyrinths and creativity was never explained at these conferences.” This observation launched Francisco into a deeper examination of labyrinths related to creativity, resulting in authoring the useful text, “A Creative Walker’s Guide to the Labyrinth”.

Francisco also opts to use finger labyrinths over larger labyrinths made for walking, a decision based upon the nature of her work. Francisco often has limited time in which to facilitate a productive session. Finger labyrinths pique curiosity and provide a tool for her clients to use as a grounding exercise and to facilitate certain types of the creative problem solving process. Specifically, Francisco finds that labyrinths are best used to help clients incubate ideas, or generate questions or information in response to a question that she may pose. She describes her use of the labyrinth as, “a vehicle by which we get to an outcome.”

Using small-scale labyrinths isn’t the only way to achieve effective results when working with corporate groups. Tricia Pierce, another labyrinth facilitator, believes the physical experience of walking a labyrinth with the entire body enhances the creative process in a different way than with finger labyrinths. Pierce often works with an artist who creates the labyrinth pattern on-site before the facilitation process begins. She believes using site-constructed labyrinths provides an experience that is more authentic, connecting the walker’s feet directly with the floor or earth.

Pierce describes her facilitated walks as very, “process driven”, where she “creates opportunities for awareness and presents task-driven challenges evolving into a defined plan by the end of the walk.” Pierce also integrates team process theories, team building exercises, and community building activities with her sessions. Pierce has also developed a game utilizing the labyrinth as a means of brainstorming. Her goal with this game is aimed at getting participants to experience and see things differently so they might approach their problem-solving task from a different perspective. Utilizing the labyrinth as a game produces successful group results, and the game has since been adopted by other labyrinth facilitators for use with brainstorming.

Labyrinths exist in a variety of shapes and sizes, some of which are thought to be more conducive for specific types of brainstorming, problem-solving, and creative ideation. Perhaps one of the most significant design elements affecting all three of these processes is the overall length of the labyrinth itself, which directly impacts the amount of time it takes to complete the journey. Labyrinth patterns (and their resulting size) are frequently differentiated by the number of “circuits”, meaning the number of paths counted from one edge to the center (or center to one edge). An eleven-circuit labyrinth takes more time to complete than a seven-circuit labyrinth. One of the most popular labyrinths in use today is an eleven-circuit design called the Chartres Labyrinth. This labyrinth was originally installed in the floor of Chartres Cathedral, France, around 1200 AD. This path offers a longer journey that some facilitators prefer to use when leading groups through problem-solving exercises.

On the other hand, the shorter experience offered with a variety of different seven-circuit labyrinth patterns is preferred by others. Francisco uses the seven-circuit Santa Rosa Labyrinth, designed by Lea Goode-Harris. Using this pattern has helped Francisco introduce the labyrinth as a tool for brainstorming and problem-solving, without discussing the full history of labyrinths, because she is able to focus more on the labyrinth as “a vehicle by which the group achieves an outcome.”

About the Author:
Katja Marquart is the Publications Chair for The Labyrinth Society, and works as an Assistant Professor of Interior Architecture at the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point, with a research emphasis on labyrinths and their applications in the built environment.

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Contributed by Anand Chhatpar, CEO of BrainReactions LLC http://brainreactions.com

I have attended and even spoken at many conferences in the past, but none of my previous experiences even come close to the delightfully invigorating and valuable event put together by Frost & Sullivan this year in San Francisco at their Growth, Innovation and Leadership conference ‘08. I think other companies that organize conferences for business leaders have a lot to learn from Frost.

Here are some key highlights that came out of the event for me:

1. High interactivity: The facilitated discussions and networking opportunities allowed me to learn directly from peers in leadership positions. Not only did I gain insight into what worked and what did not work for others in similar positions, but I was also able to connect a name and a face to each story that I learned from. That is invaluable because my knowledge retention here was very high. My knowledge retention from most conferences that focus mainly on presentations is fairly low.

2. Exemplary speakers: The speakers that Frost & Sullivan had brought together for this event were exceptional. One speaker that I had a chance to connect with, Mr. Murugavel Raju from Texas Instruments, himself embodies the ideas of “Growth, Innovation and Leadership” that Frost is promoting with the conference. Mr. Raju began his career as a small-time embedded systems engineer in India, and used his creativity to win a contest sponsored by Texas Instruments. TI offered him a job after recognizing his talent, and he has tirelessly climbed one peak after another within TI to reach his current senior management position.

3. Remarkable Team: The team from Frost & Sullivan that put together the event did a thorough job. Brian Denker from Frost is a very reliable young man who keeps everything running smoothly behind the scene. Joe Krumpfer is extremely helpful and jovial. I also had the distinct pleasure of having dinner with David Frigstad, Chairman of Frost & Sullivan, who is an inspiring entrepreneur. David started a market research company right after graduating from Indiana University and eventually bought the Frost & Sullivan brand. Everyone from Frost had a wealth of knowledge to share and ensured that each event attendee was receiving value by being there.

If you have attended a Frost & Sullivan conference already, I’m sure you will agree with my review. If you have not attended a Frost & Sullivan conference before, I would highly recommend it. They have already begun planning the next Growth, Innovation and Leadership conference and very soon will have these all over the world: http://www.frost.com/gil

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BrainWaves is a quarterly e-periodical for people who are interested in how organizations cultivate individual and group creativity. Each issue of BrainWaves features information and perspectives about individual and group ideation; how businesses and not-for-profits actuate the best ideas; and reports on remarkable innovations that promise novel solutions to intractable problems. Brainwaves is produced and edited by BrainReactions, producer of “outside insight” — ideas for organizations conceived by outside professional brainstormers and from online brainstorms using BrainReactions.net. BrainReactions also provides innovation training to help companies and individuals generate more and better ideas. 

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In This Issue

• Beyond a contest for the “best idea”: A case of crowdsourcing through a brainstorming competition
• What’s All the Fuss About Engagement?
• Knowledge Sharing Tool SnapAnswers.com insures against knowledge calamities
• Owl Analysis: A Metaphor for the first round of analyzing ideas for innovation
• Training Webinar for Innovation Through Ideation
• Frost & Sullivan conference on Growth, Innovation and Leadership

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