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Opt In Funding

School funding is a big problem in Ohio.  For as long as I can remember there has been a system that relied on the passage of levies district by district every year or two.  Those districts that regularly pass levies have money, and those that don’t pass levies struggle.  One problem with this system is […]

odd man out

Looking for a fun exercise to get your creative juices flowing.  Try Edward De Bono‘s odd man out exercise.  It is simple, fun, and as my friend Artie Isaac would say, it is a great way to “exercise your creative pet.” Start by going to a random word generator site like this one.  Take the […]

Orville Wright Did Not Have A Pilot’s License

I recently read Gordon MacKenzie’s Orbiting The Giant Hairball, an excellent book about cultivating personal creativity – particularly how to do so in the workplace. It is a brilliant book, chronicling the author’s experiences as an employee at Hallmark.  The book is filled with doodles, sketches, stories, and anecdotes chronicling ways in which Gordon managed to […]

The Amazing Pizza Box Video?

Yes, I said "The Amazing Pizza Box Video."  it is not a typo. Need proof that the opportunity to innovate is all around us?  Check out this 45 second video from Eco Incorporated, a company who is "saving the environment one pizza box at a time."   This is such an awesome concept for so many […]

User Generated Health Care

I have an idea that would help improve the health care system.  This idea would dramatically speed the process of diagnosis, reduce unnecessary testing, more quickly identify effective courses of treatment and radically reduce the costs associated with the entirety of it all.   I call it User Generated Health Care.  The idea is simple […]

Leaders Make Change

I started running again.  (Please don’t inform me of the over / under on how many days until I quit.)   Anyhow, I decided to combine my love for books with my need to exercise in an effort to make the most of each run.  I have loaded up some audio books onto my ipod, and […]

Surprisingly Simple Solution for Storing Surprises

Recently I wrote a post about a simple technique for enhancing your creativity that I learned from reading the book Creativity by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.  In a nutshell 1. Be surprised by something every day, 2. Surprise someone everyday, 3. Write both down and chronicle them over time. I thought it might be wise to […]

Surprise, Surprise, Surprise

Would you like to be more creative?  Here is a simple 3 step technique for getting your creative juices flowing from the man who wrote the book on Creativity, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Try to be surprised by something everyday. Try to surprise someone every day. Write down what surprised you and how you surprised others. These […]

What’s the big idea?

Recently some members of the Dayton Marketing Community met up for the 1st (of what will hopefully be many) Big Idea Breakfast – something I thought up a few days prior while writing my morning pages.   The concept for the event was as follows: This meeting is part networking part innovation part caffeination part collaboration […]

In One Word

On a recent shopping trip to the mall, I was walking past store after store thinking to myself “If I had to use one word to describe (insert name of retail store) what would it be.  For some, it was easy to do.  For others, not so much. From a marketing standpoint, this was an […]