Cats - The Nine Lives of Innovation

There was a nice article about me in CDN.

Today is the first day of "holidays" for me. I am determined to have good discipline and habits during my break. I feel disorganized at home so today will solve that. For me, organization and systems are how I gain productivity.

I have been enjoying twitter (although I am not too active on it). I am working on understanding the impact of social media. tomcarswell usually had good referals. Particularly enjoyed the Social Media Guide he tweeted about.

Twitter says when you go to tweet "what are you doing" and so many people put irrelevant stuff up like "eating a ham sandwich" which does not add value. Others however do share insights and refer good URLs. Interesting media.

I read "Cats the Nine Lives of Innovation" by Stephen Lundin. Good book. Lundin was the co-author of "Fish".

The book as the titles implies is about innovation and how companies and people can become more innovative. His thesis is that innovation and creativity can be learned and there are certain things that can be done to enhance creativity.

One concept I liked was his authentic energy concept. Authentic energy is energy that flows from choice and commitment rather than obligation or fear.

In an interesting paradox he talks about lack of clutter and quietness as being one way to get to creativity and in other chapters he talks about the need for uniqueness, clutter and social interaction. The two concepts seem somewhat opposing; however, I certainly understand where he is coming from and I think different creativity needs different things at different times.

One thing that I constantly use to enhance my creativity is reading. I think that is one of my biggest creativity enhancers.

The forward of the book was written by Tony Buzan who originated the mind map so the book talks a lot about mind maps as the creative way of getting to solutions. I have used mind maps for years.

Good short book and I highly recommend it.