by Matthew E May If you follow this blog you know I’m a huge fan of ” I Wrote this for You .” (Iain Thomas contributed a piece for this blog here.) Here’s Iain talking at a recent TEDx event is South Africa. It’s a heartwarming story about the power of story. It’s a must-see, if you want to change the world. And even if you don’t. Enjoy this post? Subscribe to our RSS feed and join our Continuous Innovation group! Matthew E. May is the author of “IN PURSUIT OF ELEGANCE: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing.” He is constantly searching for creative ideas and innovative solutions that are ‘elegant’ – a unique and elusive combination of unusual simplicity and surprising power.

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Power of Incomplete Microstories

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One key partner that has the potential to greatly affect and enhance the human condition is government. This author prefers the open market as the main catalyst for change, but given the complexity and scale of certain types of research, government can play a vital role in advancing knowledge in science and technology by supporting basic research. While some governments have been funding research for quite some time, the inefficiency of the process may be keeping new discoveries from being commercialized.

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Government’s promising role in fostering open innovation

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Hilary Mantel, the author of “Wolf Hall” which won the Man Booker prize for 2009, feels “there is always a danger with historical fiction that it may fall short as both literature and history”.

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All my works are personal alchemy: Booker prize winner

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Christmas is a fertile time for cartoonists. There’s tons of stuff to poke fun at: Santa, elves, gingerbread houses, ornaments, mistletoe… it just goes on and on. The bad part is because of publisher lead times, you usually end up writing your Christmas gags in June. Let me tell you, when I’m filling up the plastic pool in the back yard for the kids, reindeer jokes are hard to summon. One of my writing tricks is taking two things that don’t seem to go together and finding something to connect them. Santa’s naughty list is standard cartoon fare, but pairing it with a sales graph got me over the hump. And it helped me finish up my Christmas writing, even as I put on my sunscreen. * * * * * About the Author: Mark Anderson’s cartoons appear in publications including The Wall Street Journal and Harvard Business Review. Anderson is the creator of the popular cartoon website, Andertoons.com , where he licenses his cartoons for presentations, newsletters and other projects. He blogs at Andertoons blog . From Small Business Trends Santa’s Naughty List

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Santa’s Naughty List

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by Stephen Shapiro For those of you who asked, here is the video of my six minute speech at the TEDx NASA conference. Enjoy. Stephen Shapiro is the author of three books, a popular innovation speaker, and is the Chief Innovation Evangelist for Innocentive , the leader in Open Innovation.

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It’s Not Rocket Science

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The subtitle of the book, “ Love is the Killer App ” is: “ How To Win Business And Influence Friends.” This gives the reader a clue that the author is knowledgeable about Dale Carnegie’s famous book. In my favorite section of the book, you will learn to remember the ‘Big Thought’ about a book. Why?  The author explains: “Maybe someone was worried about job turnover and volatility; if you’d known Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, you could have recommended it for advice on how to be likable even in trouble times.” As a “cat person”, I love the author’s concept called “lovecat.” The first chapter is called The Lovecat Way and is a good instruction on how to come up with an excellent new idea and run with it. In the afterword, you learn about an acronym called NSPS (Nice, smart people succeed). I think that this is the essence of love as the “killer app.” “Here, then, is my definition of love business: the act of intelligently and sensibly sharing your intangibles with your bizpartners. What are your intangibles? They are our knowledge, our network, and our compassion. These are the keys to true bizlove.” (Page 13) You have now got the titles for chapter III (Network) and IV (Compassion). Tim Sanders gives you at least six benefits for being a lovecat and he starts with how “you build an outstanding brand as a person” by using a “brand mindset” (coined by Duane Knapp) around the DREAM (Differentiation, Relevance, Esteem, Awareness, Mind’s eye) acronym. As an avid book reader, the second chapter (Knowledge) is music for my ears. Through the book you get plenty of book tips and in the appendix you have a list of The Ten Must-Read Books for Lovecats. Tim Sanders says that books are the “complete thought-meal,” magazines are “between-meal snacks” and news media “are the equivalent of candy and soda: fun to eat, but hardly appropriate to live on.” He applies the Pareto principle as a food for thought idea: “Spend 80 percent of your time on books, and the 20 percent on articles and newspapers.” My question is: How would that classify the new media? How much time should you spend on blogs, social networks, etc.? And now it is time for the explanation why you should buy hardcovers: “And by books, I don’t mean just any book. I mean hardcovers. A paperback is made to be read. A hardcover is made to be studied. There’s a huge difference. I don’t read a book just to say that I’ve finished it. I read it so that when I’m done, the inside covers are filled with enough notes that I can use this book for as long as I need to.” (Page 70, paperback) Tim Sanders has created a “practical four-step program designed to make knowledge work for you:” Aggregation – How do you know which books to read? Encoding – How do you consume the books in the right way? Processing – How do you properly digest, “chew” and review the books? Application – How do you share the knowledge you get from the books? The application part entails four steps: Learn from the consumption and digestion on how to draw the big picture from the book. You have to “own the book’s Big Thought.” Do as George Constanza (Seinfeld TV show) and visualize a moment when you are adding value to the conversation by bringing up Big Thoughts from books related to the topic you are discussing. Look for the right moment to insert points from your reading literature in a real-time conversation. It is similar to do an “elevator speech” to a business contact. After inserting the pointers, ask for feedback. “Play doctor” and prescribe “medications” (books) to your “patients” (business contacts). I feel strongly about this book, so you could see this blog post as a fan letter to Tim Sanders! I look forward to meeting Tim Sanders someday and check out his book libraries. I love the example with Steve Leveen of Levenger company and his fan letter to Stanley Marcus, the author of Minding the Store. I wonder if Tony Hsieh of Zappos found his calling as a merchant, in the same way as Steve Leeven. At the end of the book (P.S. I Love You) you could read three fascinating stories, including the uplifting story, Spreading The Love: The Rosetta Story. Do you have a story? Write it down in the comment field. * * * * * About the Author: Martin Lindeskog is a “trader in matter & spirit” and a small business entrepreneur in Gothenburg, Sweden. He is a board member of the Swedish National Association of Purchasing and Logistics (Silf, Western Region). Martin also writes a long-standing blog called Ego . From Small Business Trends Love Is The Killer App – Or How to Get Ahead by Helping Others

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Love Is The Killer App – Or How to Get Ahead by Helping Others

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At every job I had before becoming a cartoonist, on my desk sat the traditional IN and OUT trays. And occasionally I’d get those really busy days where my inbox was so full I was sure my desk would flip to one side. All day co-workers would walk by, drop a stack of papers in my tray, and head off secure in the knowledge that it was out of their hands. So every so often, on those especially crazy days, I’d hide my tray

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A Remedy to Inbox Overflow

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In a world of ubiquitous communication, I thought it might be fun to see what was available at the more quiet end of the communication spectrum. And this is where I found “Talk Less, Say More: 3 Habits to Influence Others and Make Things Happen” by Connie Dieken. This book was on my list of must-reads for 2009 so I bought it as soon as it was released.  I hope that it will get on your reading list as well. The first thing I thought of as I got into this book was “This is a book about LISTENING!” But I don’t think that a title  like “Learn How to Listen” would have as much sizzle as “ Talk Less, Say More ” — do you? Who wants a nagging re-hash of all the reasons why it’s better to keep your mouth shut and let other people talk? No one! What we all want is to get our way and make things happen. And this is what Connie Dieken delivers.

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Talk Less, Say More

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Like business, cartooning has its own language. But instead of words like “infrastructure” or acronyms like “CEO”, it’s mostly visual. For example, you might show someone sleeping by drawing ZZZs over their head

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Ideas Lighting Up

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In Roger Martin’s new book, the author writes that the main reason companies find it difficult to realize innovations is that most people in corporations are trained in analytical thinking and focused on reliability and consistency. They are focused on making the “factory” and related processes better, faster, and cheaper to produce existing offerings.

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Barriers to innovation: The ‘factory’ mentality

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