Idea Sandbox

“There’s nothing worse than bad coffee brewed properly.” That’s a quote by Tim Kern. He was a coffee guru at Starbucks Coffee. A long-time employee who was caught a the lay-off sweep a couple of years ago. The artwork is from a notebook Starbucks handed out to participants in a leadership conference. The notebook was [...]

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Problems. Challenges. Opportunities. Whatever you call them at your company, we want them fixed. Our gut reaction is – come hell or high water – to find a solution. However, there are times when there is no fix… You’re stuck with it. For example, your business may be experiencing a challenge with the current “economic [...]

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Did use an abacus or slide rule to build your FY’10 budgets? To prepare and distribute information about next year’s Marketing Plan did you use a typewriter and make a duplicate with a layer of ink paper? Or did you hand crank copies on a Ditto (or Verifax) machine? Of course you didn’t. That would [...]

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While there are innumerable reasons for hosting a brainstorming session, the purpose for meeting can be summarized with four situations. They are the need to meet to: (1) Fix Something / Solve Problem, (2) Grow Something, (3) Think-Up Ideas / Fill Idea Pipeline, and (4) Innovate / Create Something New (1) Fix Something / Solve [...]

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Look under your desk at the clutter of power cords… from your CPU, monitor, speakers, perhaps a printer… I’ll bet, just like under my desk, it is a mess. A tangle of cords. But that’s just how it is, right? Well, designer Hyukjae Chang took a fresh look at the power strip and re-invented it [...]

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“If you can successfully promote sloppy joe sandwiches, you can perform marketing for anything!” That was my motto, early in my career, as marketing director for a food service company. We were hired to manage the school district’s food program. The school district could then focus on teaching children. Chicken nuggets, tater tots and a [...]

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It’s always an honor when someone cares to hear your advice. It is my pleasure to share with you a BlogRadio interview I was part of on Saturday evening that featured… well… me and Idea Sandbox! Jenny Ward, the Chief Play Activist at Playward, hosts the “Live In PLAY” talk show every Saturday afternoon at [...]

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Welcome to the final stop of the Post2Post Virtual Book tour featuring Ken Watanabe’s best-selling book, Problem Solving 101. But First…What Is Problem Solving? What the heck is problem solving or creative problem solving anyway? It’s simply a process of key steps to help – when you have a problem – to understand the problem, [...]

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Today is the fourth of our five-day virtual book tour featuring Ken Watanabe’s Problem Solving 101. Today, Peter Durand at the Center for Graphic Facilitation posted his take on the book. Yesterday, Katie Konrath at Get Fresh Minds gave her fresh opinion. And Tuesday, John Chandler at Creativityist provides great background about the book. An [...]

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Ken Watanabe’s book Problem Solving 101 was originally written to help kids in Japan with problem solving skills. The book was not only a huge success with children, but also with adults in Japan as well. After selling 370,000 copies in six months, Ken has translated and updated his book and re-published in English. As [...]

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We’re in the midst of World Creativity and Innovation Week. It takes place each year, beginning on April 15th (Leonardo da Vinci’s Birthday) and runs through April 21st. The purpose? To encourage and inspire people to use their creativity to make the/their world a better place and to make their place in the world better [...]

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Remember as a child – or perhaps you have a child at home – when asking one question, it often leads to a string of additional questions? How come? Why? Why is that? This is simply a way of of trying to understand the root answer, the root cause. As adults, this string of questioning [...]

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Did you see the article last week in USA Today about the teacher who is selling ads on tests to make money to afford to make copies? Tom Farber, a calculus teacher at Rancho Bernardo High School in San Diego, California “did the math” and calculated that at 3-cents per page he would need over [...]

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I think you’ll enjoy the below video. It’s a presentation by Tim Brown, the CEO of Ideo (the innovation and design firm) talking about the importance of play leading to creativity. He spoke in May ’08 at the Art Center Design Conference in Pasadena, California. The theme was “Serious Play”. One of the secrets to [...]

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I often write in this space about problem solving techniques. I plan to do so today as well, but with a different spin. When organizing a brainstorm or problem solving session, I always recommend taking great care when selecting the team of participants. Here are some tips… Make sure you include experts who know all [...]

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