Optical Illusions to Test Your Brain

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Solutions for the Common Good

IdeaConnection is seeking to harness the collective intelligence of the world, and make it available to all. Contribute your social innovations for the good of mankind by posting your solutions and comments. The donation of your time and knowledge is appreciated by everyone using this resource.

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Shutting down the idea factory

e economic downturn has hurt just about everyone: individuals, businesses, banks and even governments. But an unreported effect may have the most negative impact. The unnamed victim in this economy is 'innovation.' The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is laying off people because so little is happening. "A reporter for the Associated Press named Deb Reichmann first spotted the problem. At a time when we are being urged to invent the new future of American business and energy, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is laying off people because so little is happening.Venture capitalists, who always underwrite the next big thing, have invested $3 billion in the first quarter of this year. But that's down by nearly 50 percent from six months ago. Just when we need a flood of innovation in America, the money to make it happen has become a trickle." Is the situation any different in Canada? No. Canadian journalist David Crane wrote an editorial on the release of

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Creative Elegance - the power of incomplete ideas, Matthew E. May

It is nearly impossible to make it through a typical day without exchanging ideas. Whether deciding on something as simple as a restaurant for a long overdue night out, or as complicated as the design of an entirely new product, we are forever involved in sculpting and selling our creative thought. Conventional wisdom says that to be successful, an idea must be concrete, complete, and certain. But what if that’s wrong? What if the most elegant, most imaginative, most engaging ideas are none of those things? Gaze at the image below for a moment. The three sets of right-angled lines depict something so ubiquitous that you’d be hard-pressed to make it through the day without it. Can you identify it? If you can’t, it’s because a key piece of information is missing. Once that information is shared, however, you will never again be able to see the image in quite the same way again. You are looking at the upper case version of the most widely used letter in the English language. The letter, though, exists in the white space. Do you see it now? It is the letter E. Look again. My guess is that from now on, you’ll have difficulty not seeing it.

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The Care and Framing of Strategic Innovation Changes - Arthur VanGundy Ph.D.

One of our members - Josh Gluckman from Think Growth, recently provided this document from Arthur VanGundy. There is a bit of content, though well worth the read... The Care and Framing of Strategic Innovation Challenges Arthur B. VanGundy, Ph.D. (“Andy”) avangundy@cox.net November 2005 Author’s Note: This paper represents the draft version of parts of several chapters in my recently-released book, Getting to Innovation: How. NY: AMACOM, 2007. http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Innovation- Asking the Right Questions Generates the Great Ideas Your Company Needs Questions-Generates-Company/dp/0814408982/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/105- 5881108-2916424?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1189367822&sr=8-1 Ideas in Search of Problems Are ideas a dime a dozen as the expression says? Probably not. That’s too easy and somewhat of a cop out. It is relatively easy to get ideas, but probably more difficult to get “good” ideas—those with the greatest probability of solving problems.

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