Do Your Employees Need Passion?

If you’ve ever written a job description that calls for passionate, hard-working candidates, did you ever stop to think about what that means? Sure, having engaged and loyal employees is the ultimate goal of any company, but the word “passion” is loaded.

The Eight Attributes of Bottom-Up Innovation Leaders

Bottom-up innovation is fueled by many ideas initiated by employees, as opposed to top-down innovation, which is fueled by a strong vision - often by the company’s founder. Bottom-up innovation leaders are entrepreneurial, supported by management’s emphasis on creativity and a can-do culture, and often share these eight attributes.

5 Traits that Make a Good Leader

Whether leaders are the captain of a team, the head of a household or the president of a company, their quest usually revolves around one thing: success. Quality leadership skills are often hard to measure on a daily basis, but their long-term effects are obvious and undeniable. Leaders are a lot of things and contain many traits, but there are five essential habits that, if practiced and pursued in an honest and consistent fashion, can help turn anyone into a leader and enable them to create their own success.

Innovation Lessons Learned from Students

Here are some lessons I've learned about innovation from working with high school and college students. If their passion and enthusiasm is any indication, we have a bright future ahead!

10 ways to expand your creative possibilities: The Free Thinking Method

Free Thinking Mode is a collection of best practices shared by the most creative companies and people Michelle Conrad and her team have come in contact with.

New paradigm of work requires a more whole-brained approach, says Michael Gelb

Accelerating change and complexity has resulted in ever greater demands on the individual's time and energy. To succeed today requires a balance of creative and pragmatic skills, explains creativity expert and author Michael Gelb.

Tom Kelly explains how to cultivate personal innovation for life

Thanks to my friends on Twitter, I recently came across an excellent series of video clips from a lecture by Tom Kelly of Ideo to a class of college students at Stanford, in which he shares five essential strategies for cultivating and nurturing personal innovation throughout life.