CREATIVITY is CONTAGIOUS! PASSitON
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Open Sustainability, Creativity and Innovation

Creativity & Design

Design with Innovative vision

Sustainability and Innovation

European Smart Cities

WRITTEN BY: Boyd Cohen VIA fAST cO.eXIST

Which city in Europe is working the hardest to be the most advanced urban landscape?

In 2012, Co.Exist published my smart city rankings. This year, I sought to more accurately rank cities based on a holistic model of smart cities around the globe. This year, we are going to release two separate rankings. This first ranking represents the top 10 smart cities in Europe, and the follow-up will be the top 10 smart cities in North America.

Innovation & Disruption

50 Disruptive Companies for 2013 By MIT Technology Review

50 Disruptive Companies

Cyclehoop Ltd, a company that designs cycle parking products.

Design & Tech

Airocide: NASA’s Answer to the Home Air Purifier

By Jeff McIntire-Strasburg via Sustainablog.org

I’ve gotten a number of pitches to profile/review air purifiers in recent years. Generally, I’ve turned them down. While I have no problem with cleaner indoor air – who does? – I know an awful lot of products on the market don’t deliver like they claim. That was the mindset I had when a PR friend approached me with the Airocide; just a little digging, though, showed me that this wasn’t the average product in this niche.

Why’s that? Well, in one word (or acronym), NASA. That’s right, the agency that contracted the research and development for everything from solar panels to microwave ovens to Tang also needed a way to protect space station astronauts from polluted indoor air: specifically, ethylene gas produced by plants for accelerating the ripening of fruit. The technology that differentiates the Airocide from conventional air purifiers was the result of this research: the technology’s ability to remove ethylene particles was so impressive that the grocery and fresh flower industries were the next customers. Further research showed that Airocide’s filterless method of destroying particles with chemical reactions (that produce no harmful emissions) worked with volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and even common allergens.

Social Intelligence & Innovation

How Empathy Paves The Way For Innovation

By Michael Carroll via Fast Company

, the best weapon to have in your business arsenal is a little empathy. Learn how you can help yourself by thinking about others. In my role as an executive coach, I often work with leaders who have difficulty building support for their ideas and priorities. Especially in complex organizations, such as pharmaceuticals and universities, leaders can often become disoriented by the political landscape, where diverse stakeholders compete for shrinking resources and allegiances are fluid. Yet in all cases, my clients can point to someone in their organizations who has mastered the politics and garnered support for their ideas. And while much distinguishes those who can successfully maneuver in these complex settings, a prominent characteristic is their ability to "resonate."

In his best-selling book Social Intelligence: The Revolutionary New Science of Human Relationships, Daniel Goleman goes beyond his prior work on emotional intelligence to "lift the curtain on an emerging science, one that almost daily reveals startling insights into our interpersonal world. The most fundamental revelation of this new discipline is: we are wired to connect."¹

Excellent metaphor:

"Cultivating a Culture of Innovation"

By Idea Champions via ideachampions.com

Innovation, the endless effort to find a better way, cannot be achieved by robotically lining up best practices and imitating them. The real catalyzing agent for innovation is the ground from which these best practices spring -- the confluence of purpose, people, and processes better known as culture.

From where will the next wave of groundbreaking innovation come?

Not from organizations mechanically mimicking each other's best practices, but from organizations with the commitment to take their stand on ground that has beencultivated for breakthrough.

If you check the contents of the most popular books on innovation, the same topics show up again and again: strategy, systems, process, leadership, customer focus, risk, speed to market, prototyping, metrics, mass collaboration, market intelligence, technology, and creative thinking.

Innovation & Culture

Open Education Week

via Creative Commons

It is time to celebrate and spread the dream that everyone in the world can access a high quality, affordable education if we collectively share our educational resources and spend our public resources wisely!

The second annual Open Education Week will take place March 11-15, 2013 (see schedule). Open Education Week is a five-day celebration of the global Open Education movement, featuring online and local events around the world, video showcases of open education projects, and lots of information. The week is designed to raise awareness of both the movement and its impact on teaching and learning worldwide.

Creativity & Education

Ken Robinson: Do Schools Kill Creativity?

By Sir Ken RoBinson via TED

Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.

"A key component of whatever successes I've had has been what I've learned from my failures." @ariannahuff

Arianna Huffington's Rule for Success: Dare to Fail"

via INC

The co-founder and editor in chief of the Huffington Post explains the relationship between inventiveness, risk taking, and being willing to fail. Full article via INC.

The “BenefitCorporation”Movement

By Leslie Brokaw via MitSloan

A new corporate structure requires companies to look beyond the interests of shareholders and to consider the effect of decisions on employees, the environment and the surrounding community.

“B Corp certification is to sustainable business what Fair Trade certification is to coffee”

Sustainability & Business

Sustainability: The Key to Small Business Survival?

By Julie Urlaub Taiga Company

The report, The Impact of Regulatory Costs on Small Firms via Small Business Administration, assessed the overall cost of federal regulation on small businesses in five major sectors of the U.S. economy. According to the post, Small Businesses Are Hit Harder by Regulations, “the report showed that costs are particularly disproportionate in the manufacturing sector. Small manufacturers’ compliance costs per employee are more than double the costs for mid-sized and large firms. What specific types of regulations are the most costly? Compliance with environmental regulations costs nearly four times as much in small businesses than in large ones, while the cost of tax compliance is more than twice as high in small firms than in large ones."

Sustainability & Innovation

Newsweek's 2012 Green Rankings: This time it's serious

By Joel Makower via GreenBiz | Green Rankings

The fourth annual look at the most environmentally-friendly companies, we compared the world’s largest 500 companies according to their environmental footprint, management (policies, initiatives, controversies), and transparency. We partnered with Trucost and Sustainalytics, two leading research companies. The methodology was developed in consultation with an advisory panel of experts in corporate sustainability. The resulting ranking is the most comprehensive available on the topic.

The latest Green Rankings from Newsweek are out, and while there aren’t any show-stopping changes from last year, at least at the top of the list, this year’s rankings represent the first meaningful, apples-to-apples comparison of company performance in the rankings’ four-year history.

James Bond’s 50th Anniversary 007 Gallery

Why Men Bond with the 007 Theme

By MARC MYERS via Wall Stret Journal, Photos: Everett Collection

Maybe it's the stealthy bass line. Or the machine-gun guitar solo. Or the swaggering wail of the horns. Or maybe it's all three shaken together. Whatever the reasons (and there are many), the "James Bond Theme" still has a way of making guys feel, well, more guy-ly.

Fifty years after appearing in "Dr. No"—the first James Bond film, which had its premiere in London on Oct. 5, 1962—the jaunty theme is back with a vengeance. At the Olympics' opening ceremony, the theme played as Britain's "queen" parachuted from a helicopter. On Oct. 5, Vic Flick, the theme's original guitarist, will perform his signature solo during "The Music of James Bond: The First 50 Years" at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. And it will be laced throughout the latest Bond film, "Skyfall," opening on Nov. 9.

Innovation & Business

How Innovative Leaders Maintain Their Edge

By Hal Gregersen and Jeff Dyer via Forbes

This issue marks our second year collaborating with Forbes to rank the The World's 100 Most Innovative Companies (Forbes - Full list) based upon an innovation premium. Since last year’s inaugural list was published, we’re often asked: “Why are some companies able to create and sustain a high innovation premium while others don’t?” While still in the early stages of an in-depth analysis of high- versus low-innovation premium companies, our initial results show at least three key things that the innovative companies do to create and sustain an innovation premium.

How well companies leverage people, process, and philosophies (what we call the 3Ps) differentiates the best in class from the next in class when it comes to keeping innovation alive and delivering an innovation premium year after year.