While perusing the PureContent Weblog today (motto: "Look at more stuff. Think about it harder."), I came across a link to this interesting white paper: "Business Unorthodox: Creativity and the Bottom Line" It explores why now is the time to take action on transforming your corporate culture to embrace continuous innovation and creativity. It also lays out a thought-provoking list of strategies for organizational creativity that I think you may find very interesting. Nice work!

I second that ! Its got some really useful list of strategies - whats interesting about them is that they're quite 'do-able'.

I followed the link to the Pure Content Weblog too ... and found some terrific stuff and many links on creativity and innovation. Here's one example - with an excerpt from the article :

For many marketers, color has become a key to brand identity

By joan voight

"Most brand consultants agree that color can be a powerful tooló"the dress of the brand," as Cheryl Swanson, principal of brand consultancy Toniq, puts it. "It communicates viscerally and can get to the essence of a brand story," she says, noting that people tend to remember colors and shapes first, then numbers and words. "You can achieve a lot with the clever use of color, stirring strong emotions."

Color also can instantly differentiate commodities when there are no significant differences between the productsóCoke has marked itself as the red brand and Pepsi as the blue in the cola wars. A loud color can be used to dominate over other brands, or it can be a high-contrast attention-grabber, such as Citibank's red arc on a white background.

Color can also add a layer of meaning to the brand itself. The blue used in ads for American Express' Blue smart credit card, for example, communicates status, technical innovation and ease of use, according to Gary Stilovich, Interbrand associate creative director. "

An interesting thread from Doc Searls on to Robert Paterson's blogon the state of education systems, in response to this story. Roberts says in his post :

I am now convinced that our approach to school is one of the most powerful blocks to a better society. If we deconstruct what we really learn at school it gives us this picture.

1. You are an empty vessel and I am the expert. It is my job to fill you. - Result, we stop taking responsibility for our own learning. It is very hard to rediscover later in life that you can and should be your own teacher.

2. Everything you need to learn is in a book or in my words. Actually experience is the best teacher not abstraction. We now medicate 30% of the kids in school because they cannot sit still and hear their "mother's voice" drone on. Only 43% of places at university today are held by men! Most have been crushed and put off by a passive over-feminized system. So much for Girls being second class school citizens!

3. All knowledge comes in separate boxes. The bell rings and it is English. The bell rings and it is math. The real world is a connected system. More than anything this concept of separate subjects with no linking context is a tough meme to break.

4. Collaboration is bad. We are taught that you should share toys - bad idea - but not share work. Sharing work - the key to life and productive work - called cheating and is heavily punished.

5. We are so frightened of failure that we have taken all risk and challenge out of school. As a result we have taken out the value of achievement.

I think the same issues hold true in the Indian eduaction system today.  I was only just chatting with a friend about creativity and how "structured education" is demarking logic and intuition and in the process reducing our capacity to "sense".  Here are some things he said to me :

Ever wondered what creativity is? Had studied various left brain/right brain literature. On looking back, the one thing Iím uncomfortable about is, each of the study seems to centre from a basic precept that we canít naturally, simultaneously, work our intuitive and logical faculties. That, to work intuitively/creatively weíll have to, in some ways, unlearn and work at it to arrive upon the use of such faculties.

This I find is a primarily western/occidental position and not naturally an Indian (I wont go to include the whole of East) position. In the west, scientific reasoning had had to fight a long battle against the dogma imposed by the then institution of Church. It had to rely on 'logic' as derived by Aristotelian philosophy to challenge the tenets of Church. The triumph of "Science' was further established with the fruits borne by the Industrial Revolution. Thus, a school of thought process became a universal panacea. "Structured thinking"! In the same manner as in industrial product was producible and creatable by breaking down creation into a logical structure or process. This process obviously took time to allow within its ambit unstructured thinking.

The concept of education today is to break information into quantas and disseminate it in a structured manner. The success of education, until recently has been primarily information retention and secondarily subsequent application of the information and in its application this information became knowledge.