While Chicago may or may not be the innovation hub it desires to be, I enjoyed speaker John Barron, publisher of the Chicago Sun-Times, wax eloquent about the grand innovations of this midwestern home of mine, pointing to our brave history of reversing the flow of our river, inventing public conversation and public sobbing (Oprah), with a brisk wind chill to focus our thoughts.
The truth is, innovation continues to be a leading conversation topic in cities, within companies and among politicians and writers throughout this country. And the innovation imperative remains strong--we must continue to change and invent, as we always have. As Lewis Lapham wrote in Harper's earlier this year, what truly unites Americans is not their pride or armies or GDP or common ancestry "but rather their complicity in a shared work of the imagination...If America is about nothing else, it is about making it up as one goes along."
Here are some recent articles from thinkers and improvisers trying to steer us through a bumpy ride of needed innovation:
*Tom Friedman is back with a new book, That Used To Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back. Click here for a link to a free chapter, interviews and more.
*Harvard Business School's Teresa Amabile (one of the leading researchers on creativity and one of my mentors) recently published a book, The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work--read more about it here. More from me on it in the near future.
*Did you miss Fast Company's 100 Most Creative People in Business issue? Check out the list here and a great guide to creativity by Conan O'Brien here.
*How did 9/11 spawn creativity and innovation? Read this Inc. article here.
*Innovation is dead, say PayPal founders. Check out this Forbes article here.
*Can innovation be part of a small company's every day routine? Read this Crain's Chicago Business article. And check out the video below--can songwriting techniques help business?