Google Guitar Doodle isn’t Lost Productivity

In honor the guitar legend, Les Paul, Google posted a guitar designed with the Google logo. The cool thing was that it allowed users to interactively strum the guitar. How fun is that! Well apparently over two days millions of Google users also thought it was wicked cool. It is estimated that 10.7 million man-hours were spent strumming the guitar strings.

Very quickly, a statistic came out saying that $268 million dollars were lost in productivity because of all the hours spent jamming out.

The part that struck me was “lost productivity.” I’m not convinced that is how we should look at the time spent strumming away during work hours. In fact, I think we should initiate another study that shows the great ideas, brilliant solutions and new thinking that came just after people played away.

Play ignites the curious mind. It engages our sense of discovery and wonder, which in turn, increases our creativity. So for that, I say play away. Maybe a few minutes of playful fun is exactly what you need to get those ideas flowing.

In fact, due to the popularity of the Google guitar they have decided to give it a permanent home.

Here is the link. Make some beautiful music!
www.google.com/logos/2011/lespaul.html

You Know You’re An Entrepreneur When (Part 2)

Some might call you eccentric. Those who know you well might describe you as quirky and others may just call you odd but deep down you know you see the world a little differently. You, my friend, are an entrepreneur. To me, being an entrepreneur isn’t a job title, it’s a mindset and a way of life.

Not sure if you fit the bill? Let me help…

You know you are an entrepreneur when (part 2)….

1. Every morning you roll over and eagerly check your mobile phone for that big break email that was sure to come in over night while you put out thoughts of abundance into the universe

2. The reason you sing out loud while alone in a car isn’t just because you like the song. It’s because you are psyching yourself up and putting yourself in the right state of mind before a big meeting

3. Watching Ted videos makes you feel like a kid in a candy store. PS – to start, you know that Ted isn’t someone’s single, yet happening cousin but a place where ideas thrive.

4. Your longest stint as an employee was maybe 2 years and that’s if you include the vacation time and sick leave you took

5. Your neurotic behavior includes listening to one too many self improvement cds

6. You get so excited after a great coffee meeting with a potential partner or client where you really click that you describe them as your new bff (best friends forever) to other friends

7. A meeting over a pedicure or at the gym makes perfect sense in your world

For You Know You’re An Entrepreneur When part I, click here.

Have some of your own? Share with us in the comments section below.

Day 15 of 30 Ideas, 30 days challenge

The official idea smack down is in full swing! How’s it going? Need some inspiration? Check out all the tools and tips in our Imaginarium.

Have some awesome idea to share? Post in the comments below or on our Imaginibbles fan page.

And now, a message from our Chief Imaginator…

Great Ideas Can Withstand The Heat

In The Making Of The Incredibles, the creators of this pioneering movie share their journey from a lofty idea to a block buster hit. One of the things they talk about is the team’s ability to debate, challenge and build ideas. To quote the director of the movie, Brad Bird, “make it ok for people to challenge an idea. Good ideas can with stand it and the weaker ideas fall away and make room for something else.”

The video is 10 minutes and 44 seconds full of amazing stories and inspiration. Believe me, you will want to pull out some blank paper and a pen while you watch this one.

For this article, I want to focus on the idea of making it ok to challenge ideas because I think people often confuse challenging with simply not liking an idea. I think that is because we see any challenge or push back as a personal attack on ourselves. It’s hard to put your ideas out into the world and have others–you know what–all over them. But what if you believed so strongly in your ideas and yourself that you not only welcomed, but sought out challenges?

Let’s be clear, I’m not talking about the ideation phase when you are going far and wide and every idea should be explored. I’m talking about the time when the rubber meets the road and it’s time to move an idea forward and make it a reality. Great ideas will absorb any challenge to make it stronger.

I once had a boss that used to push me to improve by poking holes in my presentations. At first I cursed his name every time I left his office but over time I came to realize that he was making me and my work stronger. If I had a solid response to his challenge, he backed off. The questions I didn’t have answers to forced me to think differently and often more thoroughly about my work. It was a lot of work but man did he make everything I touched stronger, faster, better (like the million dollar man – 70s reference).

Ask yourself, are you open to feedback? Are you encouraging people to poke holes because you know it will make the idea stronger? Or, are you hoping everyone will talk to you with rose colored glasses on?

Watch this video! I think you’ll be inspired to challenge debate and bring on the heat!

8 ideas down, 22 to go

A lot of you have joined me in the idea throw down of the century – 30 day, 30 ideas challenge (Vegas here we come). It’s day 8 and the idea challenge is in full swing. I can feel my creative wheels picking up speed. As I suspected, the commitment to just one idea a day for 30 days has lead to many more. I’m particularly excited about idea #8 – café big room.

Right now, I’m sitting in a café working because I needed a break from my office. Don’t you find something totally inspiring working in café? People chatting, cool music in the background, the enticing coffee aroma swirling around you and…

That leads me to idea #8 – café big room. I’m planning my dream office. It’s a few years off but I want to be prepared when the time arrives (and I love to dream). As I sit here sipping my gynormous latte an aha struck. Instead of having a tradition reception or common area, the Imaginibbles headquarters will have a café big room. Latte machine, dessert case, multiple tables and music included. Need a break from your desk? Go sit in the café. Need to run an ideation session? Set up in the café. Meeting with an outside partner? Have them join you in the café. In fact, I think I’ll put in dry erase walls and idea-cache stations too.

Wow, I love this idea and it’s only day 8! So many more to come.

Ideas lead to more ideas so share your ideas with us in the comments section below!

One man’s junk, another man’s treasure

Just because something doesn’t work for someone else doesn’t mean it won’t work for you.

Today, I bought a road bike that someone else didn’t want. Perhaps it didn’t fit them quit right or maybe they got too busy to ride. Either way, their junk became my treasure. After my first glorious ride through the park, I started to think about that old saying, one man’s junk is another man’s treasure.

I think it’s true for more than just stuff. I think it’s also true for ideas, for business and for opportunities. Just because an idea didn’t work for one person, doesn’t mean it’s not perfect for you.

In fact, the best treasures can often be found in the discarded bins of old ideation sessions and tossed out journals. You never know when you will come across an idea labeled junk just because that person couldn’t make it work. But maybe with a little imagination and some courage that junk could be turned into bright, shiny gold for you!

Get out there and turn junk into treasure!

PS – if you live in Denver and want to buy a road bike check out the Bike Depot on Fairfax and 28th (North Park Hill). It’s a non-profit bike shop. People donate, they fix up and you either work off your fee or buy your bike. Mine has pink handle bars

30 Day, 30 Ideas Challenge

I’m throwing down the ultimate creative challenge. It’s the 30 days, 30 ideas challenge.

Watch the video to find out more. Don’t forget to BRING YOUR A GAME!

PS- share your ideas with us in the comments section below. We want to know about your wild and crazy ideas.

Where is the hidden treasure box?

Kid: “I’m looking over and over again and I can’t find it. Maybe it’s somewhere else?”
Adult: “Keep looking, it has to be here.”
Kid: “But, it’s not.”
Adult: “It can’t be anywhere else!”

This weekend I took my kids geo-caching. Geo-caching is a game where you get the latitude and longitude of a treasure box along with a few hints. The treasure box is usually hidden somewhere clever like hanging in a tree or in a crevice under a bench. Once you find the box its customary to take a trinket out and put a new one in. Basically, it’s a fun treasure hunt in city parks, suburban streets and hikes all across the globe. It’s a wildly fun adventure for kids of all ages – geocaching.com.

This weekend I found myself really stuck. According to my gps app the treasure box was in an area with only one possible hiding area, a low bush with thick branches and lots of room underneath. My kids and I scoured the bush. I even sent them on their bellies under the bush to scour for the box. I must have pulled apart every branch in a desperate search for the treasure box. After about 30 minutes of searching the same areas over and over again I came to the conclusion that someone had moved the treasure box. Obviously if we couldn’t find it, it wasn’t there. Funny, enough there was another family in the same desperate search. All of us tugging at this poor bush for something that clearly wasn’t there.

We gave up and decided to move on to the next geo-cache. As we mounted our bikes we heard yelling. The other family had found it. We turned around immediately. But, the other family wasn’t by the bush, they were at the base of a very large metal lamppost. What? I didn’t even remember seeing the lamppost when I arrived. The treasure box was hidden under the base of the lamp post. Duh!

I got it totally stuck in my head that the treasure was in the bush that I didn’t even see the lamppost. It’s funny how sometimes we get one way of thinking so engrained in our heads that we aren’t able to see all the possibilities.

Remember, the next time you are looking at the same bush over and over again, back up and see what else is possible. If I had just taken three steps back to look at my surroundings, I may have noticed the lamppost.

Don’t get so stuck in one solution that you can’t see the others. Always look around.

And kudos to the other family for finding the treasure!

The New Economy of Ideas

“Why would I share my ideas. What if someone steals them? And I don’t want to give someone else all my good thinking!” an old colleague said to me.

What a shame my colleague even thinks like that. That type of thinking is seriously outdated. My colleague had no idea that what he said really hit a nerve. I’ve been in innovation for almost 18 years and I’ve seen a drastic shift in what I call the “economy of ideas.” In the old days, anything prior to 2008 and the great recession, hoarding ideas was perfectly acceptable and standard practice. Big companies went into their labs and gave projects non-descriptive names like “whirlwind” and “jackpot”. They emerged when the idea was fully baked. Entrepreneurs would keep their nugget of a great idea to themselves until it was fully formed and ready for market.

But the world has changed and the future belongs to those that embrace sharing and collaboration, not to those that hoarde and hide. The New Economy Of Ideas is built on a premise of abundance, not scarcity. See, in the old days people felt that there weren’t enough ideas to go around. That is what lead to the hoarding of ideas. In total contrast, today is about abundance of ideas. In fact there are so many great ideas out there that one might say we have an idea surplus. Thinking in abundance is a Greenlight Entrepreneur behavior: always believing there are a million ideas to pluck from the sky!

How did we go from a mindset of scarcity to a mindset of abundance? Simple, when the world changes and things cease to be as we know them, new amazing opportunities arise. It’s an idea smorgasbord out there!

If you are like my colleague, still in the Old Economy of Ideas thinking you’ll get left behind. However, if you are part of the New Economy of Ideas the future is yours to conquer. Those who are willing to share freely, collaborate, help others, get help from others and continually express themselves are the winners.

Get out there and conquer the world with ideas!

Need a starting point? Join us at our next – public ideation session for entrepreneurial minds, corporate mavericks and those ready to join the New Economy Of Ideas!

Stop listening and learning…stop innovating

Do you know the know it all? That guy who has the answer to every question? Or the gal who has been there done that? Nothing you say is of interest to them. And, everything you tell them is old news? I hate that guy!

As I once told a friend of mine, “I think great innovators are always listening and always learning. If you stop listening and learning, you stop innovating.” I didn’t realize how true my words were. I truly believe it’s the Greenlight entrepreneur way. It’s part of learning in motion and always striving to move forward.

Two weeks ago, at the DaVinci Institute I learned about Anythink Library, a revolution in front range libraries. A week ago at Integer, I learned that people consider Martha Stewart a great innovator and Imaginator. It seems like every time someone in my audience speaks, I’m listening and learning. WOW, could I be any luckier? What’s more important, I realized that these quick interactions, these moments of storytelling fuel my innovation. They give me stories, ideas and inspiration I can’t get from surfing the web or even reading a book. They allow me to connect dots and see things differently.

When talking about the success of Pixar Films (7 block buster hits in a row), Steve Jobs mentions how they always work to be naïve. It’s that sense of naïveté that allows you to listen and learn. Without it, you think that you’ve heard it all and done it all. Open your curious mind and the new ideas will flood in.

So if you are feeling stuck in a rut, perhaps it’s your turn to listen and learn. Perhaps you are doing too much talking and not enough listening right now. I hate to say it, but could it be you’ve become the know it all you hate?
I encourage you to never stop being open to new perspectives and the value of someone else’s experience. That person may help you get to the next great idea!