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Five Questions to Ask Yourself Before Launching a New Business
Owning a home used to be the “American Dream.” However, this long-standing goal that so many aspired to, and ultimately reached, has been replaced with a new goal -- becoming a business owner. At first glance it sounds perfect: Leave the corporate...
Forcing Inspiration
Most people, when they have to complete a creative endeavour, often tend to wait for inspiration. It is not unusual to find, therefore, that most people take inordinately long to complete projects or never finish them at all. Look at the infinite...
How To Fail... Faster Then a Speeding Bullet!
Hello, I am getting married. Want to pay me $798 dollars to come? Yes, this is the theme in the latest marketing campaign from the infamous Corey Rudl. Now before I give you the wrong idea here it really doesn't cost $798 dollars to attend. In...
Revenge of the Sith – Creativity and Structure
The common belief is that lack of structure and randomness enhances creative output, whereas in truth, creativity is enhanced when it is organised, systematic and based on highly structured processes. This article will use Episode III of the Star...
Ten Top Tips about Committing to Your Niche
Among the crucial questions of life, one of great import may just be “what is my niche?” Should you want to answer that question, what path do you follow? Where are “niches” for sale? The word “niche” comes from the French and means “dog house…”...
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The Cure for the Highway Hi-Fi Blues
The other morning I was driving to an appointment, inserting a
CD into the player, and I couldn't help smiling. I was thinking
about my father and his career as a mechanical design engineer
for RCA. After the war, he helped design the innards of the
first record players RCA mass produced.
Remember the plastic cylinder you stacked 45's onto, that
slipped over the 78 spindle, and dropped records down one at a
time to be played? Well, my dad holds the patent on that handy
little device. Because of his ingenuity, teens all over America
could dance or make out uninterrupted for a whole evening.
One of the neatest things he worked on at RCA was a record
player for cars. The year was 1958. Our '57 Plymouth Fury was
one of only two test cars in the whole country retro-fitted with
a record player. It played 45's only and was mounted upside down
beneath the dash, just over the transmission hump. You first had
to push a stack of records up into place, and then the
diamond-tipped arm came in from underneath to play them.
The record player was set in a terrific suspension system,
allowing you to drive over railroad tracks and potholes without
causing Peggy Lee to skip a beat. I remember how cool I felt as
we drove through town secretly playing the Everly Brothers on a
record player and not the radio. "You watch, in a few years ever
car in the country will have one of these in it," my dad would
tell anyone who would listen. "This is going to be big."
Chrysler Corporation, RCA's partner in the project, went on to
feature the "Highway Hi-Fi" in their Plymouth and DeSoto models
in 1960 and 1961. But after only two years on the market the
whole concept of car record players quickly fizzled out, mostly
for technical reasons.
My dad was pretty disappointed. His invention wasn't holding up
to the rigors of daily use in a moving automobile. (For a brief
history of car record players: ).
So how has the market treated your genius? Have you and your
design team ever worked long and hard on a project, really put
your heart into it, only to have it bomb in the market place, or
get buried by senior management for any number of good or bad
reasons?
Here's my real question: how do you keep your own and your
team's morale level and creativity from sagging when that
happens? How do you keep your team from singing the Highway
Hi-Fi blues or getting
as cynical as Dilbert?
T., one of my coaching clients, created a fresh vision of
success for her human factors software design team after several
marketing disappointments. Their previous two designs were not
embraced by customers due to financial considerations despite
the high quality of their end product.
They were beginning to feel that they weren't making a
difference. Her plan was to separate their sense of achievement
from the market's response to their final designs.
She accomplished this by emphasizing her team's overall value to
the company and to their industry as a whole. In other words,
she shifted their paradigm for "making a difference"--based on
actual facts that they weren't seeing because of their
single-minded focus on the end result.
One of the things she did was to demonstrate to her team how
they gave the company a high degree of credibility in the
industry. Their forward thinking was gradually having an impact,
and she reminded them of this fact as often as she could.
For instance, whenever one of her people went to an industry
conference, she had that person give a report to the whole team
on how their ideas were being slowly embraced by others. They
really loved hearing that, she said.
So the skill I'm stressing here for maintaining morale in the
fickle world of new product development is to broaden your
team's definition of success. Shake up their paradigm.
Try to identify the actual value your team is adding, such as
giving the company credibility in its industry, a reputation for
innovation, being perceived as a leader of technological change
within the company, etc. These perceptions alone can attract new
customers and qualified new employees.
So with the advantage of 20/20 hindsight, I can see how my dad's
work with the primitive Highway Hi-Fi in-car audio system paved
the way for my simple act of inserting a plastic disk into a CD
player while driving. He helped open a technological door.
In 1965, just four years after the car record player, Ford
introduced the 8-track system into their new models. You know
the rest.
About the author:
Joe DiSabatino helps individusl leaders and organizations build
high levels of employee commitment and morale by creating
high-trust work environments. For more information and support
visit: www.phoenixleaderrship.com
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| Creativity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
| Creativity (or creativeness) is a mental process involving the generation of ... Wallas considered creativity to be a legacy of the evolutionary process, ... |
| en.wikipedia.org |
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| Creativity For Life |
| An exploration of creativity in everyday life, with articles, quotes, reviews and other creative resources to awaken creativity in daily life. |
| www.creativityforlife.com |
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| AdCritic.com: Commercial Ads |
| FROM CREATIVITY: Emerging Directors, Unite In the time it took to write this, three new directors popped up. Here are twenty to get acquainted with. ... |
| www.adcritic.com |
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| National Curriculum in Action - Creativity - |
| Ordering Creativity packs: print and video materials. This website gives practical ideas on how to promote pupils' creative thinking and behaviour. ... |
| www.ncaction.org.uk |
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| Ten Steps for Boosting Your Creativity |
| Experiments performed by the JPB Creative Laboratory show that watching TV causes your ... a weekly report on creativity, ideas, innovation and invention ... |
| www.jpb.com |
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| Category:Creativity Techniques - Mycoted |
| This is a general category of Creativity and Innovation Techniques, ... I like to think of these creativity techniques as tools in a toolbox in much the ... |
| www.mycoted.com |
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| Creativity at Work: The interplay of business, art and science |
| A resource for training and development in creativity and innovation in organizations. Has a newsletter, and some articles and essays by 'Corporate ... |
| www.creativityatwork.com |
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| Crayola Creativity Central |
| Crayola Creativity Central offers kids arts and crafts ideas for rainy day fun. We also have coloring books and pages, art and craft projects, games, ... |
| www.crayola.com |
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| Pages tagged with "creativity" on del.icio.us |
| All items tagged creativity ??? view popular ... Perspective for Creative Leaders · save this. by aromay to creativity business management ... 1 hour ago ... |
| del.icio.us |
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| Creativity Web - Resources for Creativity and Innovation |
| Creativity Web Home Page Resources for Creativity and Innovation ... The Creative Process · Multiple Intelligences · Idea Recording · Your Creative Space ... |
| members.optusnet.com.au |
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| gapingvoid: "cartoons drawn on the back of business cards": how to ... |
| So you want to be more creative, in art, in business, whatever. ... Companies that squelch creativity can no longer compete with companies that champion ... |
| www.gapingvoid.com |
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| Creativity Quotes | Creativity Quotations | Creativity Sayings ... |
| Quotes on Creativity - part of a larger collection of Wisdom Quotes to challenge and inspire. Find Creativity quotations and links to quotes on other ... |
| www.wisdomquotes.com |
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| Ideas by Creativity Pool |
| A free database with new ideas and possible inventions. Add your own, or bring an existing idea to life. |
| www.creativitypool.com |
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| CREATIVITY |
| Creative problem solving depends on using the right tools, tricks, ... Search for the latest books on Creativity (or anything else) in the Quantum Books ... |
| www.quantumbooks.com |
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| Creativity Tools, Creative Solutions & Creative Problem Solving ... |
| This page explains a wide range of techniques which can help you generate creative solutions to your problems. |
| www.mindtools.com |
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| The 6 Myths Of Creativity |
| A new study will change how you generate ideas and decide who's really creative in your company. |
| www.fastcompany.com |
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| CreativeClass.org |
| Richard Florida's "The Rise of the Creative Class" examines creativity and its effects on economic development. |
| www.creativeclass.org |
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| TIP: Concepts |
| The relationship between creativity and intelligence has been always been a central concern of psychology ( Guilford , 1950). Much effort has been devoted ... |
| tip.psychology.org |
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| American Creativity Association (ACA) |
| An incorporated non-profit organization promoting personal and professional creativity. Association membership is represented by four multidisciplinary ... |
| www.amcreativityassoc.org |
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| CREAX - Portal for creativity and innovation |
| A resource for links on creativity and innovation on the web. A selection of 690 links is divided into 67 categories for the visitors convenience. |
| www.creax.net |
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