So what’s going to be the creative route in Super Bowl 2008?
You’re welcome to share your opinion in the comment section of this post.

We’ve put together a nice collection of Super Bowl advertising links for you to enjoy… Check it out… 

Watch all 2008 Super Bowl ads after the game here:
http://www.youtube.com/superbowl
http://sports.aol.com/nfl/superbowlads
http://www.spike.com/superbowl
http://www.superbowl-ads.com/
http://www.superbowlads.us/
https://www.nielsenmedia.com/monitorplus/superbowl/
http://creativity-online.com/work/view?seed=PABJ34zm

The 10 Best Super Bowl Ads of All Time (MSNBC):
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16691199/

Here’s one of them… 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJB0CzlzSwY 

And then came the spoof…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaoIsPZAgck

The 10 Worst Super Bowl Ads of All Time (MSNBC):
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16790823/

20 Highlights in 20 Years of Ad Meter (USA Today):
http://www.usatoday.com/money/advertising/2008-01-31-20th-super-bowl-ad-meter_N.htm

And this one is one of my all-time favorite Super Bowl ad

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryMgZ0pyGS4

Comments? Ideas? Cool links?
Enjoy the game!

In their article “Measuring Climate for Work Group Innovation: Development and Validation of the Team Climate Inventory” Anderson and West search for a way to measure the climate for innovation in “shared perception” work groups. They define shared perception as a level of interdependence between team members who interact and rely on each other as a group to develop innovative outcomes.

The authors developed the Team Climate Inventory (TCI), their method for measuring innovative climate that is based on four factors:

• Vision - In a work group, clear vision motivates each team member for a higher goal and depends on clarity, visionary nature, attainability, and “sharedness”.
• Participative Safety - ensures that team members feel safe to contribute ideas for innovation.
• Task Orientation - describes the general commitment and accountability of tram members to search for the best methods of obtaining their goals.
• Support for Innovation - entails the resources and support bestowed on the group.
  

The TCI focuses on the development of innovation in work groups, instead of the organization as a whole, and can be best demonstrated in the following fictional example:
Lets say Googuly Gum, Inc. is the world’s largest manufacturer of Pineapple flavored bubble-gum and they want to expand their customer base through a new and innovative marketing plan. In order to generate the most creative and ingenious ideas, the President of Googuly Gum decides to create two different teams, one team headed by John, and the other by Ron.

Ron starts off the first meeting talking about himself and how he really wants to get a promotion. When Sally, a member of his team, begins to ask about the vision, he cuts her off and tells her to stop asking stupid questions. He then lays out an incredibly vague vision: get customers to buy gum. His team doesn’t know where to begin, and gets frustrated with the process. When a different member tries to come up with an idea, Ron shuts him down and says his idea isn’t feasible. Not knowing what they are trying to accomplish or what their guidelines are, the group gets off task and settles for a second rate solution. Googuly Gum is disappointed and puts the plan on the shelf, never to be implemented.

John, on the other hand, starts off his first meeting getting to know the members of the team and making sure they all feel comfortable sharing their ideas and expressing their feelings. The team then establishes a detailed vision. They not only want to increase the customer base, but they also want to stay within a reasonable budget and maintain former customers. By having a clear vision and allowing members to participate “safety,” each member of the team feels invested in the outcome and remains task-oriented throughout the brainstorming process. They end up with a revolutionized marketing plan for Googuly Gum! John gets a promotion, and all the members of his team get an all expense paid vacation to the Caribbean!!! John’s group successfully encompasses all four factors of the TCI and subsequently did better in coming up with more innovative ideas.

Ok. fiction aside, lets look at what other people say about some of these concepts. In a recent article titled “Can Genius Flourish in a Team,” author Wan Lixin argues that a team-based decision-making process is more likely to lead to original ideas (makes complete sense, no?). Lixin quotes author Keith Sawyer (Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration) who also debunks the idea of creative geniuses growing in isolation. In our example, Ron represents the obsolete innovation method of the “isolated genius inventor,” while John’s group portrays the web of collaboration Lixin and Sawyer talk about. The shared vision, “safe” participation, and clear task orientation may depend more on the work group (and their leader, of course) while support for innovation (such as resources) often depends on the organization itself. Googuly Gum may support its employees with ample resources but it depends on how each team and leader chooses to use these resources.

From Dracula to Hedy Lamarr - The Many Catalysts of Creativity

Tuesday, Nov. 13, 6-7pm
Location: The Avaya Auditorium, The University of Texas at Austin (first floor of the Applied Computational Engineering and Sciences building).

Ira Flatow, host of National Public Radio’s “Talk of the Nation: Science Friday” show, will give a talk about how scientists, artists and others discover and develop their creativity at The University of Texas at Austin. The talk is sponsored by the Braden Distinguished Speakers Series of the Cockrell School of Engineering.

“Some people were born inventors, while others find their creative sides later in life,” says Flatow, whose two books include one on the stories behind great inventions. During his presentation, he will demonstrate the creative process involved in the discoveries and inventions of scientists, technologists and other professionals, such as musicians and writers. He will also describe how news and current events act as creative catalysts. Flatow earned an engineering degree at the State University of New York, and covered the first Earth Day as his introduction to science journalism. A science correspondent at NPR since 1971, he also has numerous TV credits, including six years as host and writer for the Emmy Award-winning “Newton’s Apple” on PBS. His writings have appeared in publications ranging from Woman’s Day to American Lawyer to The Los Angeles Times. Flatow also founded Talking Science, a non-profit organization that educates the public on science through the media.

Should be super interesting, will report back after the talk…

And here’s Ira talking to Nancy Andreasen, Chair of Psychiatry and Director of the Mental Health Clinic Research Center, University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, Iowa City, IA on - Creativity, Learned or Innate? 

Hypothetical Conversation on Creativity, Reward and Motivation.

By Senior Editors Emily Hardy & Tim Ogletree

Imagine this…

INT. COFFEE SHOP - DAY
Robert Eisenberger sits alone, taking up a table for four. He hunches over his laptop with frustration riddling his face. Beth Hennessey and Teresa Amabile enter through a side door and get in line. Eisenberger notices them and waves.

EISENBERGER
Beth! Teresa!

BETH
Oh, hey there Robert. How are you?

EISENBERGER
I’m doing well, thank you.

TERESA
Are you working on something?

EISENBERGER
Yes, actually. My associate Judy Cameron and I have just recently wrapped up an experiment on the psychology of creativity. I’m just organizing our report.

TERESA
Wow, what theory were you testing?

EISENBERGER
Well, the experiments themselves were based on our argument that creativity and originality can be heightened by the suggestion of a reward or encouragement. It could also be termed Intellectual Property. Although, we can’t take total credit for the idea. Rewarding creativity and innovative ideas can be dated back to 400 BC.

BETH
Interesting. What types of activities or tasks did you have your subjects perform?

EISENBERGER
We divided our subjects into three age groups, then gave each group a separate activity, such as filling in a circle, or generating a word, and told them that the best of each group would receive a small prize.
Would you like to sit down? Nobody’s with me.

BETH
Of course, thanks.

Beth and Teresa take their seats opposite Eisenberger.

TERESA
So, what did you find?

EISENBERGER
Our results as a whole backed up our theory.

BETH
I don’t mean to come down on your work, but don’t those seem like relatively simple tasks?

EISENBERGER
Well…

BETH
I mean, did you test anything that required a more advanced form of creativity, such as art or storytelling? Music or song writing? Your tests just seem a little too basic.

TERESA
I agree. Honestly, I don’t believe that you can bribe or convince someone to be creative. Creativity needs to be intrinsic, it needs to be something from the heart, something desired.

EISENBERGER
Well, offering a reward can stimulate a desire for creativity and originality. It gives them something to look forward to and makes them work harder for what they desire.

TERESA
But that’s exactly it, they are desiring the reward, not creativity itself.

EISENBERGER
Well, you can’t argue that rewards never positively influence creativity.

BETH
Oh, we aren’t. We agree with that.
There will naturally be some instances where a certain reward or form of congratulations will enhance a simpler form of creativity.

TERESA
We are simply saying that working repeatedly for a reward under common or every day circumstances can be detrimental to both intrinsic motivation as well as creativity. For example, if a teacher were to constantly offer their students rewards or prizes for who can draw the best dragon, then they aren’t drawing for drawing’s sake. They are solely drawing for the prize, whether it’s a cookie or an A or what have you.

EISENBERGER
You drive a convincing argument, I must admit. I’ll have to share your views with Cameron. But, unfortunately I have a meeting at 3, so I should get going. It was great seeing you both again.

BETH
Certainly, we enjoyed the chat.

TERESA
Yes, thanks for your company. Have a good meeting!

EISENBERGER
Oh, abstract experimental funding, it should be a blast.
Have a good day!

TERESA AND BETH
Ciao.

BETH
Interesting guy, isn’t he?

END SCENE.

Creativity in the Workplace
Good for them (employees). Great for you (managers)

By Senior Editors Jaclyn Jacobson & Paige Phillips.

More and more researchers and managers nowadays realize the importance of creativity in the organization. Unfortunately (and sometimes unintentionally) many managers are killing the creativity of their employees (and thus new ideas and innovation).

How can managers foster creativity in their organization?

The academic article reviewed lends advice to managers who want to foster their employees’ intrinsic motivation and, in turn, their creativity. Doing this will lead to employee satisfaction and retention as well as the generation of new ideas, reinvigorating the organization and even yielding financial gains.

In “Assessing the Work Environment for Creativity,” researchers Teresa Amabile, Regina Conti, Heather Coon, Jeffrey Lazenby, and Michael Herron describe a model for assessing creativity in the work place known as KEYS. The model attempts to measure and predict the potential for creativity taking into account 6 different possible stimulants and 2 possible obstacles.

Factors which encourage creativity include:

1. Organizational culture that promotes creativity
2. Encouragement from supervisors
3. Support from work groups
4. Sufficient resources (money, time, etc)
5. Challenging work that is equally suited for the employee, and
6. Freedom to decide how to carry out your own work.

The two obstacles pointed out are:

1. Organizational impediments, such as internal politics, rejection of new ideas, negative competition within the organization, and aversion to risk taking.
2. Negative pressures, including unrealistic productivity and time constraints.

Both of these obstacles may discourage intrinsic motivation that allows innovation and creativity to take root, and in doing so they kill the possibility of new ideas.

The researchers found that employee’s perceptions of the presence of stimulants and obstacles to creativity affected their capacity to do their work to the best of their ability.

In that sense, PERCEPTION can be more important than REALITY.

Challenge, organizational encouragement, work group supports, supervisory encouragement, and organizational impediments were found to be the dimensions that affect creativity the most.

Here are some examples of how some organizations are building a culture that fosters creativity (from WSJ - The Work Force of One):

• Clothing chain Men’s Wearhouse Inc. cultivates intrinsic motivation by establishing sales targets for its stores, but allowing employees the freedom to decide how to reach those targets to the best of their ability. “’Stores hit their goals in different ways, and that is not only tolerated but encouraged,’ says Charlie Bresler, president of Men’s Wearhouse.”
• Software company SAP Americas, promotes supervisory encouragement by making sure that human-resources professionals focus on coaching managers on how to provide informal feedback to their employees through coaching and mentoring.
• Sun Microsystems Inc. insures that their employees feel they have sufficient resources by asking them to identify the type of physical setting that suits them best — a private office, team room, satellite center, or their home office.
  

These companies offer a culture dedicated to the promotion of intrinsic motivation, and this organizational encouragement surely leads to more creativity and employee satisfaction.

CEOs of other corporations should take heed of the advantages (if not the necessity) of encouraging employee creativity and innovation. Many might offer monetary rewards (extrinsic motivation) to increase employee productivity. This research shows, however, that using the KEYS model will be a more beneficial way for managers to foster organizational creativity.

Establishing an organizational culture of creativity may be a difficult task, requiring work place leaders to completely transform their managerial practices. “However, companies that do it right will have unprecedented opportunities to develop the talent they need to become more competitive, high-performance organizations.” (WSJ - The Work Force of One).

By Senior Editors Johnna Wagner and Natalia Urbanowicz.

Ever wonder why some people are more creative than others? What factors contribute to that creativity? Like you, many others have asked the same questions which has resulted in a study of one hundred and fifty one psychology students at Brandeis University. The study was intended to cover a variety of types of creativity including problem solving (participants were given random materials and were told to build a fifteen inch structure), art (participants were told to make a collage using only supplied materials), and writing (participants were told to write an American Haiku poem). The researches used many different techniques to follow the participants’ thought processes:

• Videotaping the participants while they worked
• Having the participants fill out a questionnaire
• Telling 2/3 of the participants to think out loud as they worked

Researchers discovered that there was no difference in creativity between those who were told to think aloud and those who were not. Gender of the participant did not make a difference nor did the order in which the tasks were performed.

Each task yielded its own major creativity predictors. In the structure building task, the two strongest predictors of creativity were the participants’ attention to certain parts of the task (structure stability) and the number of times they second-guessed themselves. Much like the structure task, the collage activity showed that attention to certain aspects of the activity such as the planning process or even the participants’ playfulness during the task proved to be a strong behavioral predictor, and “Aha!” moments and changes in train of thought were positive predictions whereas speaking negatively of oneself or one’s project showed negative effects on creativeness. Following the pattern of the other two activities, the poetry portion of the study also showed a prediction pattern in the participants’ involvement with the task like their enjoyment and concentration.

To sum, people’s potential for creativity can be somewhat predictable if we study their behavior patterns and verbalizations while completing a task. Negative thoughts and uncertainty put a damper on creativity causing us to become frustrated and much less likely to produce anything of value.

The study shows that our involvement in, attentiveness to, and process of completing an activity is directly related to our intrinsic motivation, which, in turn, plays a major role in how creative we are.

In an article from the Sydney Morning Gerald the author states:

“But when their intrinsic motivation is undermined, they’re likely to substitute quantity for quality, they’re likely to learn less about complex tasks and be less creative.”

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1606395,00.html

I also found these interesting…
“The New Science of Happiness” from Time Magazine:
http://tinyurl.com/3353kz

Dilbert’s formula for happiness:
http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/03/happiness_formu.html

Finding utopia on a wiki page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia

Sign me up…

clipped from www.time.com Getting Serious About Happiness Studying happiness is hard. What one man loves another loathes. One woman’s joy is another’s junk. Social scientists, therefore, have generally left the contemplation of smiles and satisfaction to poets and philosophers. But that’s changing. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a leading expert on well-being, is establishing what he calls the world’s first Ph.D program focusing on positive psychology and the analysis of happiness, at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, Calif. “Even though the things that make people happy seem ephemeral and immaterial, they are the most important things in life, and they have not been studied very seriously,” says Csikszentmihalyi, a professor of psychology and management and author of Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience.

Tags:
dilbert Education health article Links new york times positive psychology Techniques utopia wikipedia

Here’s the short list:

Great Ideas Conference 2007, Jan. 27-30
Creative Engagements, Feb. 9-11
Florida Creativity Weekend, Mar. 2-4
Caribbean Creativity, Mar. 12-16
American Creativity Association. Mar. 19-24
ETech: Emerging Technology, Mar. 26-29
Creativity in Advertising, Mar. 29
HCI Educators 2007, Mar. 29-30
New Frontiers in Arts Sociology, Mar. 28- Apr. 1
Ideas2007, Apr. 7-9
Creativity and Innovation Day, Apr. 21
Applied Creativity & Entrepreneurship Encounter, Apr. 18-21
CREA Conference, Apr. 18-22
Future Problem Solving Program Int., May 31-Jun. 3
Creativity & Cognition, Jun. 13-15
IANIS+ Annual Conference, Jun. 13-15
World Children’s Festival, Jun. 23-25
IASP World Conference, Jul. 2-4
Alden B. Dow Creativity Conference, Jul. 12-15
European Conf. on Creativity & Innovation X, Oct. 14-17
The Next Idea Creativity Conference, Oct. 26-28

For a more detailed list visit IFCO:
http://www.ifoco.org/Events2007.html

~~~

Three of my favorite conferences that didn’t find their way to the list are:

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design), also available through Google Videos.

GEL (Good Experience Live)

and IT-Conversations, which is more of a hub for many innovation IT-related events and ideas (check out the “Highest Rate,” “Most Listened To,” or whichever series you’re interested in…

~~~

Do you know of any other conference or event related to creativity?

~~~