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June 20, 2012

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Idea Champions is a consulting and training company dedicated to awakening and nurturing the spirit of innovation. We help individuals, teams and entire organizations tap into their innate ability to create, develop and implement ideas that make a difference.

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May 31, 2012

Innovation from the Inside Out

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1. "If you can dream it, you can do it." Walt Disney

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2. "Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, and magic and power in it. Begin it now." Goethe 3. "The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." - Michelangelo 4. "It's not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?" - Henry David Thoreau 5. "You don't lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case." - Ken Kesey 6. "If you want to build a ship, don't herd people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea." - Antoine de SaintExupery 7. "Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside awakens." - Carl Jung 8. "The empires of the future are empires of the mind." - Winston Churchill 9. "Vision is the art of seeing things invisible." - Jonathan Swift 10. "Management has a lot to do with answers. Leadership is a function of questions. And the first question for a leader always is: 'Who do we

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intend to be?' Not 'What are we going to do?' but 'Who do we intend to be?' - Max DePree

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11. "Vision without action is a daydream. Action with without vision is a nightmare." - Japanese Proverb

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12. "The best way to predict the future is to create it." - Alan Kay 13."Where there is no vision the people perish." - Proverbs 29:18 14. "Vision without execution is hallucination." - Thomas Edison

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15. "Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality." Warren Bennis

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16. "If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise." - Robert Fritz 17. "Create your future from your future, not your past." - Werner Erhard 18. "To the person who does not know where he wants to go there is no favorable wind." - Seneca 19. "You've got to think about big things while you're doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction." - Alvin Toffler 20. "To accomplish great things we must dream as well as act.: Anatole France 21. "A possibility is a hint from God. One must follow it." - Soren Kierkegaard 22. "A leader's role is to raise people's aspirations for what they can become and to release their energies so they will try to get there." David Gergen 23. "The very essence of leadership is that you have a vision. It's got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occasion. You can't blow an uncertain trumpet." Theodore Hesburgh 24. "Determine that the thing can and shall be done and then we shall find the way." - Abraham Lincoln 25. "Dreams are extremely important. You can't do it unless you can imagine it." -George Lucas 26. "Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements." - Napoleon Hill 27. "Pain pushes until vision pulls." - Michael Beckwith 28. "Vision animates, inspires, transforms purpose into action." Warren Bennis 29. "The master of the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which; he simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he is always doing both." - Buddha 30. "Rowing harder doesn't help if the boat is headed in the wrong direction." - Kenichi Ohmae

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31. "It's not what the vision is, it's what the vision does." - Peter Senge

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32. "In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield." - Warren Buffett

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33. "A leader will find it difficult to articulate a coherent vision unless it expresses his core values, his basic identity. One must first embark on the formidable journey of self-discovery in order to create a vision with authentic soul." - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

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34. "The best vision is insight." - Malcolm Forbes

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35. "You have to know what you want. And if it seems to take you off the track, don't hold back, because perhaps that is instinctively where you want to be. And if you hold back and try to be always where you have been before, you will go dry." - Gertrude Stein

Managing Creativity Poll Press Quotes

36. "The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge." - Albert Einstein 37. "I try to learn from the past, but I plan for the future by focusing exclusively on the present. That's were the fun is." - Donald Trump

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38. "Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world." - Arthur Schopenhauer 39. "People only see what they are prepared to see." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

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40. "The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision." - Helen Keller 41. "Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion." Jack Welsh 42. "A vision is not just a picture of what could be; it is an appeal to our better selves, a call to become something more." - Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Mitch Ditkoff, the Co-Founder and President of Idea Champions, has recently been voted a top 5 speaker in the field of innovation and creativity by Speaking.com, a leading speaker's bureau. Raise the bar for innovation now!

43. "If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants." - Isaac Newton

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44. "The future belongs to those who see possibilities before they become obvious." - John Scully 45. "If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours." - Henry David Thoreau

If you're looking for a powerful way to jump start innovation and get your creative juices flowing, Awake at the Wheel is for you. Written by Mitch Ditkoff, CoFounder and President of Idea Champions.

46. "Keep your eyes on the stars and your feet on the ground." - Franklin D. Roosevelt 47. "Looking up gives light, although at first it makes you dizzy." - Rumi 48. "You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus." - Mark Twain 49. "In order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles." - - David Ben-Gurion 50. "The real voyage of discovery consists of not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes." - Marcel Proust Big thanks to Val Vadeboncoeur for locating most of these quotes. Seize the Future Free the Genie Idea Champions Painting= Photo Photo Illustration Illustration Photo Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 02:34 PM | Comments (3)

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The Intuitive Mind is a Sacred Gift

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May 27, 2012

25 Awesome Quotes on Creativity box.

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"The things we fear most in organizations - - fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances - - are the primary sources of creativity." - Alfred North Whitehead

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"The chief enemy of creativity is 'good sense.'" - Pablo Picasso "Everyone who's ever taken a shower has had an idea. It's the person who gets out of the shower, dries off and does something about it who makes a difference." - Nolan Bushnell "I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones." - John Cage "As competition intensifies, the need for creative thinking increases. It is no longer enough to do the same thing better . . . no longer enough to be efficient and solve problems." - Edward de Bono "I make more mistakes than anyone else I know, and sooner or later, I patent most of them." - Thomas Edison "Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things." Theodore Levitt

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"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources." - Albert Einstein "Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep." - Scott Adams "Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things." - Ray Bradbury "Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity." - Edwin Land "There's room for everybody on the planet to be creative and conscious if you are your own person. If you're trying to be like somebody else, then there isn't." - Tori Amos "The key question isn't 'What fosters creativity?' But it is why in God's name isn't everyone creative? Where was the human potential lost? How was it crippled? I think therefore a good question might be not why do people create, but why do people not create." - Abraham Maslow "To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong." - Joseph Chilton Pierce "You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have." Maya Angelou "By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The non-existent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired." - Nikos Kazantzakis "Creativity is discontent translated into arts." - Eric Hoffer "A truly creative person rids him or herself of all self-imposed limitations." - Gerald Jampolsky "Things are only impossible until they're not." - Jean-Luc Picard "Anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity." - T.S. Eliot "Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous." - Bill Moyers "The new meaning of soul is creativity and mysticism. These will become the foundation of the new psychological type and with him or her will come the new civilization." - Otto Rank "The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards." - Arthur Koestler "It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see." - Henry David Thoreau "If you have nothing at all to create, then perhaps you create yourself." - Carl Jung Photo Image Illustration Thanks to Val Vadeboncoeur for finding these great quotes. Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 01:32 AM | Comments (4)

May 09, 2012

The Power of Pause http://www.ideachampions.com/weblogs/archives/quotes/index.shtml

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Who can wait quietly while the mud settles? - Lao Tzu

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May 06, 2012

The Mystery of "Anonymous" Revealed I have a confession to make. Actually, it's more like a revelation than a confession. You know all those fabulous quotes and articles you've read over the years with no attribution other than "anonymous"? It was me. It's true. I have written thousands of things I've never signed my name to. I couldn't. I mean - - the writing just came through me. Like a storm. In fact, I was in such a state of presence as these pearls of wisdom appeared, there wasn't even a "me" involved, so how could I sign my name? So I did the only thing I could do - - and that was to sign what I wrote with the now all-too-familiar word "anonymous". True, I did sign my birth name - Mitchell Ditkoff - - to some pieces, including most of the blog posts on Heart of Innovation and Heart of the Matter, but that was all free stuff. The vast majority of what I've written? All "anonymous". Bottom line, I've never really gotten my due. How could I when millions of my readers never knew that "anonymous" was my pseudonym? Please don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining, nor do I have any regrets about my decision. It felt right at the time. But now - - with one kid about to go to college and the other not far behind - - it's starting to make sense that I claim what is rightfully mine. After countless hours of consultations with pundits, epistemological savants, numerologists, and intellectual property lawyers, I've arrived at an approach that is not only honorable and fair, but flawless and timely with absolutely no carbon footprint. Nor were any animals harmed in the writing of this paragraph. I am pleased to announce that YOU, dear reader, get to play a key role going forward - - one that will take you less time than it will to read this anonymous pearl of mine - - or order a take-out pizza. Since I am claiming no royalties whatsoever from my past writings (many of which, by the way, went on to become blockbuster movies, novels, bumper stickers, and refrigerator magnets), I think it is only fair to request that every time,

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from now on in, you encounter anything attributed to "anonymous" you link it to my website or any of the following cyberpalatial residences of mine. Free the Genie cards Free the Genie online Awake at the Wheel Innovation Kits Idea Champions University It's AHAppening! The goal? To model what it is like to claim one's true inheritance and take the risk that this post will go viral and I will have to answer a lot of questions from slick talk show hosts more interested in their own TV ratings than my no longer anonymous success. A small example of what I've never been paid for Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 09:37 PM | Comments (7)

April 22, 2012

34 Awesome Quotes on Leadership 1. "Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things." - Peter F. Drucker 2. "If you don't understand that you work for your mislabeled 'subordinates,' then you know nothing of leadership. You know only tyranny." - Dee Hock 3. "A leader is best when people barely know he exists. When his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say 'we did it ourselves.'" - Lao Tzu 4. "The led must not be compelled; they must be able to choose their own leader." - Albert Einstein 5. "The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why." Warren Bennis 6. "The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you." - Max DePree 7. "If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader." - John Quincy Adams 8. "The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist." - Eric Hoffer 9. "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." - Abraham Lincoln 10. "Lead and inspire people. Don't try to manage and manipulate people. Inventories can be managed but people must be lead." - Ross Perot 11. "Those who try to lead the people can only do so by following the mob." - Oscar Wilde 12. "All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership." - John Kenneth Galbraith 13. "Leadership is practiced not so much in words as in attitude and in actions.†- Harold S. Geneen 14. "Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them." - John Maxwell

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15. "The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision."Theodore Hesburgh 16. "The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority." - Kenneth Blanchard 17. "Leaders conceive and articulate goals that lift people out of their petty preoccupations and unite them in pursuit of objectives worthy of their best efforts." - John Gardner 18. "Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be." - Ralph Waldo Emerson 19. "The ability to summon positive emotions during periods of intense stress lies at the heart of effective leadership." - Jim Loehr 20. "Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity." - General George Patton 21. As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others." - Bill Gates 22. "Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy." - Norman Schwarzkopf 23. I'm sad to report that in the past few years, ever since uncertainty became our insistent 21st century companion, leadership has taken a great leap backwards to the familiar territory of command and control." - Margaret Wheatley 24. "The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership." - Harvey S. Firestone 25. "One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency." - Arnold Glasow 26. "The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers." - Ralph Nader 27. "You don't lead by hitting people over the head. That's assault, not leadership." Dwight D. Eisenhower 28. "Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out." Stephen Covey 29. "No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings." - Peter Drucker 30. "The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it." - Theodore Roosevelt 31. "A leader is a dealer in hope." - Napoleon Bonaparte 32. "To be able to lead others, a man must be willing to go forward alone." - Harry Truman 33. "Example is not the main thing in influencing others; it is the only thing." - Albert Schweitzer 34. "People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader works in the open, and the boss in covert." - Theodore Roosevelt Big thanks to Val Vadeboncoeur for locating most of these quotes. Idea Champions Ingenious Leadership How Leaders Foster a Culture of Innovation Illustration Illustration Illustration Photo

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Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 09:06 AM | Comments (1)

April 11, 2012

20 Awesome Quotes on Beginning 1."Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 2. "There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth - - not going all the way, and not starting." - Buddha 3. "Be willing to be a beginner every single morning." - Meister Eckhart 4. "All great ideas and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning." Albert Camus 5. "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." - Lao Tzu 6. "Beginnings are always messy." - John Galsworthy 7. "When there is a start to be made, don't step over! Start where you are." - Edgar Cayce 8. "So many fail because they don't get started - - they don't go. They don't overcome inertia. They don't begin." - W. Clement Stone 9."Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end." Seneca 10."The beginning is the most important part of the work." - Plato 11."The beginnings of all things are small." - Cicero 12. "What's well begun is half done." Horace 13. "Every exit is an entry somewhere else." - Tom Stoppard 14. "The person who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones." Chinese Proverb 15. "No good ending can be expected in the absence of the right beginning." - I Ching 16. "Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step." - Martin Luther King 17. "Beginning is easy - - continuing hard." - Japanese Proverb 18. "There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning." - Louis L'Amour 19. "The greatest masterpieces were once only pigments on a palette." - Henry Hoskins 20. "Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible." - St. Francis of Assisi

Thanks to Val Vadeboncoeur for locating these quotes Idea Champions Free the Genie Awake at the Wheel Our webinars Illustration Photo Photo Photo

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Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 05:26 AM | Comments (1)

April 09, 2012

Be a Student of Life

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April 06, 2012

Punchline of the Day "Everyone has a plan until he's punched in the face." - Mike Tyson Idea Champions Innovation webinars Free the Genie Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 08:04 PM | Comments (0)

April 03, 2012

Miles Davis on Mistakes

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Rethinking Failure Our new webinars Idea Champions Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:09 AM | Comments (1)

March 28, 2012

The Joy of Outlandishness

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Does Laughter Enable Thinking?

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March 27, 2012

The Beauty of Bad

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Our new webinar series Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:35 AM | Comments (0)

March 23, 2012

Thomas Edison on Making Mistakes "I make more mistakes than anyone else I know, and sooner or later, I patent most of them." - Thomas Edison Rethinking Failure Risk taking quotes Innovation keynotes Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 06:46 PM | Comments (0)

March 18, 2012

Einstein on Stupidity "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." - Albert Einstein Idea Champions Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 09:44 PM | Comments (0)

50 Awesome Quotes on the Power of Your Ideas 1. "If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it." - Albert Einstein 2. "If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself." - Rollo May 3. "An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all." - Oscar Wilde 4. "Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them,

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and pretty soon you have a dozen." John Steinbeck 5. "The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away." - Linus Pauling 6. "There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come." - Victor Hugo 7. "Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them." - Alfred North Whitehead 8. "A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right man's brow." - Ovid 9. "All achievements, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea." - Napoleon Hill 10. "You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can't get them across, your ideas won't get you anywhere." Lee Iacocca 11. "No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there." - F. Scott Fitzgerald 12. "Nearly every man who develops an idea works it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then he gets discouraged. That's not the place to become discouraged." Thomas Edison 13. "It is the essence of genius to make use of the simplest ideas." - Charles Peguy 14. "Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have." - Emile Chartier 15. "I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didn't like it." Samuel Goldwyn 16. "An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself." - Charles Dickens 17. "Everyone is in love with their own ideas." - Carl Jung 18. "Why is it I always get my best ideas while shaving?" - Albert Einstein 19. "One's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions." - Oliver Wendell Holmes 20. "The air is full of ideas. They are knocking you in the head all the time. You only have to know what you want, then forget it, and go about your business. Suddenly, the idea will come through. It was there all the time." - Henry Ford 21. "Everything begins with an idea." - Earl Nightengale 22. "Capital isn't that important in business. Experience isn't that important. You can get both of these things. What is important is ideas." - Harvey Firestone 23. "A mediocre idea that generates enthusiasm will go further than a great idea that inspires no one." - Mary Kay Ash 24. "We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us."Friedrich Nietzche 25. "I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent. Curiosity, obsession and dogged endurance, combined with selfcriticism, have brought me to my ideas." - Albert Einstein

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26. "A pile of rocks ceases to be a rock when somebody contemplates it with the idea of a cathedral in mind." - Antoine St. Exupery 27. "If you want to kill any idea in the world, get a committee working on it." - Charles Kettering 28. "Right now it's only a notion, but I think I can get the money to make it into a concept, and later turn it into an idea." - Woody Allen 29. "Just because you're a musician doesn't mean all your ideas are about music. So every once in a while I get an idea about plumbing, I get an idea about city government, and they come the way they come." Jerry Garcia 30. "I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else." - Pablo Picasso 31. "New ideas pass through three periods: 1) It can't be done; 2) It probably can be done, but it's not worth doing; 3) I knew it was a good idea all along!" - Arthur C. Clarke 32. "Almost all really new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are just produced." - Alfred North Whitehead 33. "Adults are always asking little kids what they want to be when they grow up because they're looking for ideas." - Paula Poundstone 34. "You do things when the opportunities come along. I've had periods in my life when I've had a bundle of ideas come along, and I've had long dry spells. If I get an idea next week, I'll do something. If not, I won't do a damn thing." - Warren Buffet 35. "If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good, I am satisfied." - Alfred Noble 36. "Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life. Think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success. That is way great spiritual giants are produced." - Swami Vivekananda 37. "Money never starts an idea; it is the idea that starts the money." - William J. Cameron 38. "No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered." - Winston Churchill 39. "If you are possessed by an idea, you find it expressed everywhere, you even smell it." - Thomas Mann 40. "The ability to express an idea is well nigh as important as the idea itself." Bernard Baruch 41. "You can kill a man, but you can't kill an idea." - Medgar Evers 42. "After years of telling corporate citizens to 'trust the system', many companies must relearn instead to trust their people and encourage them to use neglected creative capacities in order to tap the most potent economic stimulus of all: idea power." Rosabeth Moss Kanter 43. "The man with a new idea is a crank - - until the idea succeeds." Mark Twain 44. "To turn really interesting ideas and fledgling technologies into a company that can continue to innovate for years, requires a lot of discipline." - Steve Jobs 45. "An idea is salvation by imagination." - Frank Lloyd Wright 46. "I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm

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frightened of the old ones." - John Cage 47. "The great accomplishments of man have resulted from the transmission of ideas of enthusiasm." - Thomas Watson 48. "The new idea either finds a champion or it dies. No ordinary involvement with a new idea provides the energy required to cope with the indifference and resistance that change provokes." - Tom Peters 49. "Our best ideas come from clerks and stockboys." - Sam Walton 50. "Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward: they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game." - Goethe Idea Generating Keynotes Idea Champions Free the Genie Innovation Kit Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 05:20 PM | Comments (0)

February 29, 2012

What Our Clients Say About Us Some readers of this blog think all we do is write this blog. Not true. Our main thing is helping organizations innovate. What we write about is the fruit of our experience. Better to hear what our clients say about us than what we say. Interested? See the value? Click here. Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 04:17 AM | Comments (0)

January 30, 2012

The Art and Science of Losing Count "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." -- Albert Einstein If you have even the slightest respect for the wild-haired father of modern physics, consider this: Your organization's fascination with metrics is often nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to quantify the unquantifiable - - a compulsive effort to validate that which you and everyone else already know to be true. I'm not suggesting you abandon metrics (I track, daily, how may unique visitors make it to my website) - - all I'm saying is not everything needs to be measured, at least not all of the time. The core of your company's "innovation process" is actually less about mind, and more about heart. (And if you're about to ask me how I know that, please read the Einstein quote one more time). More from Albert Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 08:17 AM | Comments (0)

January 17, 2012

24 Awesome Quotes on Good http://www.ideachampions.com/weblogs/archives/quotes/index.shtml

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Communication 1. "The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said." - Peter Drucker 2. "The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." George Bernard Shaw 3."Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people." - William Butler Yeats 4. "We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak." Epictetus 5. "Speak when you are angry - - and you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret." - Laurence Peters 6. "In the last analysis, what we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do." - Stephen Covey 7. "The most important things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them." - Stephen King 8. "Of all of our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language." - Walt Disney 9. "Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after." - Anne Morrow Lindbergh 10. "The two words information and communication are often used interchangeably, but they signify quite different things. Information is giving out; communication is getting through." - Sydney Harris 11. "Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing." - Rollo May 12. "Humor is the affectionate communication of insight." - Leo Rosten 13. "Science may never come up with a better office communication system than the coffee break." - Earl Wilson 14. "Communication is everyone's panacea for everything." - Tom Peters 15. "Two monologues do not make a dialogue." - Jeff Daly 16. "Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something." - Plato 17. "Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot." - D.H. Lawrence 18. "Any problem, big or small, within a family, always seems to start with bad communication. Someone isn't listening." - Emma Thompson 19. "When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen." Ernest Hemingway 20. "You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time." - Scott Peck 21. "The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug." - Mark Twain 22. "That which we are capable of feeling, we are capable of saying." Cervantes

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23. "I have an answering machine in my car. It says, 'I'm home now. But leave a message and I'll call when I'm out.'" - Steven Wright 24. "Give me the gift of a listening heart." - King Solomon Thanks to Val Vadeboncoeur for locating a bunch of these Idea Champions Cartoon Photo Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 09:01 PM | Comments (0)

January 15, 2012

Rene Descartes Had It Backwards Rene Descartes, the famous French philosopher, mathematician, and writer is remembered by many as the author of the famous phrase, "I think therefore I am." With all due respect to the probablyway-smarter-than-me Mr.Descartes, I don't buy it. Based on my non-Aristotelian, late night sojourns into the flip side of thinking, it's become very clear to me that a more accurate statement would be "I am therefore I think." Then again, since we all know Werner Heisenberg irrefutably proved that the experimenter affects the experiment, it is likely that the truest philosophical statement of being would probably take on the shape of the person who said it. And so, in a highly non-caffeinated fit of blogospheric bravado, I present to you 15 alternate statements of epistemological coolitude that give Descartes' tired phrase (and mine) a run for their money. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

"I "I "I "I "I

wink, therefore I am." - Sarah Palin blink, therefore I am." - Malcolm Gladwell link, therefore I am." - Larry Page and Sergey Brin sink therefore I am." - Davey Jones and his Locker stink therefore I am." - Pepe LePew

6. "I drink, therefore I am." - WC Fields 7. "I ink, therefore I am." - Kinkos 8. "I slink, therefore I am." - Marilyn Monroe 9. "I rink, therefore I am." - Wayne Gretzky 10. "I kink, therefore I am." - Ray Davies 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

"I clink, therefore I am." - Moet Chandon "I fink, therefore I am." - Vinny "The Rat" Scalucci "I pink, therefore I am." - Mary Kay "I tink, therefore I am." - Bob Marley "I plink, therefore I am." - Ernest Kaai

A big thank you to Cary Bayer and Barney Stacher for a bunch of the aforementioned pearls of wisdom. Others we might include on our list? Idea Champions Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 06:39 PM | Comments (0)

January 09, 2012

50 Awesome Quotes on Possibility

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1. "Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible." - St. Francis of Assisi 2. "Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." - Lewis Carroll 3. "The Wright brother flew right through the smoke screen of impossibility." - Charles Kettering 4. "In order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd." Miguel de Cervantes 5. "The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for the rest of your life. And the most important thing is, it must be something you cannot possibly do." - Henry Moore

6. "It's kind of fun to do the impossible!" - Walt Disney 7. "I am where I am because I believe in all possibilities." - Whoopi Goldberg 8. "What is now proved, was once only imagined." - William Blake 9. "Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't." - Mark Twain 10. "The limits of the possible can only be defined by going beyond them into the impossible." - Arthur C. Clarke 11. "Never tell a young person that anything cannot be done. God may have been waiting centuries for someone ignorant enough of the impossible to do that very thing." - John Andrew Holmes 12. "God created a number of possibilities in case some of his prototypes failed. That is the meaning of evolution." - Graham Greene 13. "Whether you believe you can or not, you're right." - Henry Ford 14. "Most people are not really free. They are confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves. They limit themselves to fewer possibilities by the narrowness of their vision." - V.S. Naipaul 15. "I don't regret a single excess of my responsive youth. I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions and possibilities I didn't embrace." - Henry James 16. "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's

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mind there are few." - Shunryu Suzuki 17. "The future belongs to those who see possibilities before they become obvious." - John Sculley 18. "One's only rival is one's own potentialities. One's only failure is failing to live up to one's own possibilities. In this sense, every man can be a king, and must therefore be treated like a king." - Abraham Maslow

19. "The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react." - George Bernard Shaw 20. "We all have possibilities we don't know about. We can do things we don't even dream we can do." - Dale Carnegie 21. "An optimist expects his dreams to come true; a pessimist expects his nightmares to." - Laurence J. Peter 22. "When nothing is sure, everything is possible." - Margaret Drabble 23. "Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand." - Albert Einstein 24. "I am neither an optimist nor pessimist, but a possibilist." - Max Lerner 25. "If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility!" - Soren Kierkegaard 26. "All things are possible until they are proved impossible. Even the impossible may only be so, as of now." - Pearl S. Buck 27. "Until you're ready to look foolish, you'll never have the possibility of being great." - Cher 28. "This has always been a motto of mine: Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work." - Bette Davis

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29. "You and I are essentially infinite choice-makers. In every moment of our existence, we are in that field of all possibilities where we have access to an infinity of choices." - Deepak Chopra 30. "Some people see things as they are and say 'Why?' I dream of things that never were and say 'Why not?'" - George Bernard Shaw 31. "The thing the sixties did was to show us the possibilities and the responsibility that we all had. It wasn't the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility." - John Lennon 32. "I love those who yearn for the impossible." - Goethe 33. "Every man is an impossibility until he is born." - Ralph Waldo Emerson 34. "If you can't, you must. If you must, you can." - Tony Robbins 35. "A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility." - Aristotle 36. "If someone says can't, that shows you what to do." - John Cage 37. "You must do the thing you think you cannot do." - Eleanor Roosevelt 38. "Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today." - Mark Twain 39. "Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done." - Louis D. Brandeis 40. "The possible's slow fuse is lit by the imagination." - Emily Dickinson 41. "I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it." - Pablo Picasso 42. "If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves." - Thomas Edison 43. "Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars." - Les Brown 44. If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." - Henry David Thoreau 45. "Everything you can imagine in real." - Picasso 46. "Everything that is done in the world is done by hope." - Martin Luther 47. "Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today." - James Dean 48. "I don't dream at night, I dream all day. I dream for a living." - Steven Spielberg 49. "The shell must break before the bird can fly." - Alfred Tennyson 50. "If not you, who? If not now, when?" - Rabbi Hillel Something else that's possible Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:11 PM | Comments (2)

January 05, 2012

21 Awesome Quotes on Intuition

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"The only real valuable thing is intuition." - Albert Einstein "Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do." - Benjamin Spock "Systems die; instincts remain." - Oliver Wendell Holmes "It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover." - Henri Poincare "Intuition becomes increasingly valuable in the new information society precisely because there is so much data." - John Naisbitt "A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something." - Frank Capra "It is always with excitement that I wake up in the morning wondering what my intuition will toss up to me, like gifts from the sea. I work with it and rely on it. It's my partner." - Jonas Salk "All human knowledge thus begins with intuitions, proceeds thence to concepts, and ends with ideas." - Immanuel Kant "Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else's. - Billy Wilder "Your time is limited, don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living the result of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinion drown your own inner voice. Everything else is secondary." - Steve Jobs "The more and more each is impelled by that which is intuitive, or the relying upon the soul force within, the greater, the farther, the deeper, the broader, the more constructive may be the result." Edgar Cayce "I feel there are two people inside me -- me and my intuition. If I go along against her, she'll screw me every time, and if I follow her, we get along quite nicely." - Kim Basinger "Intuition is the supra-logic that cuts out all the routine processes of thought and leaps straight from the problem to the answer." - Robert Graves "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift." - Albert Einstein "You must train your intuition. You must trust the small voice inside which tells you exactly what to say, what to decide." - Ingrid Bergman "The power of intuitive understanding will protect you from harm until the end of your days." - Lao Tzu "People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind." - William Butler Yeats

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"Conclusions arrived at through reasoning have very little or no influence in altering the course of our lives."- Carlos Casteneda "Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next." - Jonas Salk "Trust your hunches. They're usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level." - Dr. Joyce Brothers "Follow your instincts. That's where true wisdom manifests itself." - Oprah Winfrey Idea Champions Free the Genie Thanks to Val Vadeboncoeur for finding most of these quotes Photo Illustration Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 06:24 PM | Comments (0)

December 20, 2011

38 Awesome Quotes on Change 1. "It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." - Charles Darwin 2. "Change before you have to." - Jack Welch 3. "People don't resist change. They resist being changed!" - Peter Senge 4. "Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself." - Leo Tolstoy 5. "The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking." - Albert Einstein 6. "Nothing endures but change." - Heraclitus 7. "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." - Buckminster Fuller 8. "Never believe that a few caring people can't change the world. For, indeed, that's all who ever have." - Margaret Mead 9. "I put a dollar in one of those change machines. Nothing changed."-George Carlin 10. "The key to change... is to let go of fear." - Rosanne Cash 11. "When people are ready to, they change. They never do it before then, and sometimes they die before they get around to it. You can't make them change if they don't want to, just like when they do want to, you can't stop them." - Andy Warhol 12. "Be the change you want to see in the world." - Mahatma Gandhi 13. "Things do not change; we change." - Henry David Thoreau 14. "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." - St. Francis of Assisi 15. "We change whether we like it or not." - Ralph Waldo Emerson 16. "When you're finished changing, you're finished." - Benjamin Franklin

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17. "All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another." - Anatole France 18. "When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves." - Victor Frankl 19. "Without accepting the fact that everything changes, we cannot find perfect composure. But unfortunately, although it is true, it is difficult for us to accept it. Because we cannot accept the truth of transience, we suffer." - Shunryu Suzuki 20. "If you want to make enemies, try to change something." Woodrow Wilson

21. "Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof." - John Kenneth Galbraith 22. "Our only security is our ability to change." - John Lilly 23. "If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude." - Maya Angelou 24. "Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 25. "The only way to make sense of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance." - Alan Watts 26. "The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress." - Charles Kettering 27. "We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing." - R.D. Laing 28. "People change and forget to tell each other." - Lillian Hellman 29. "The rate of change is not going to slow down anytime soon. If anything, competition in most industries will probably speed up even more in the next few decades." - John Kotter

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30. "Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try, instead, to work with what you've got." - Peter Drucker 31. "In times of rapid change, experience could be your worst enemy."-J. Paul Getty 32. "Change your thoughts and you change your world." - Norman Vincent Peale 33. "Know what's weird? Day by day, nothing seems to change, but pretty soon...everything's different." - Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes 34. "We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the life that is waiting for us." - Joseph Campbell 35. "It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad." - C. S. Lewis 36. "If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading." - Lao Tzu 37. "The changes we dread most may contain our salvation." Barbara Kingsolver 38. "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got." - Anon Big thanks to Val Vadeboncouer for locating these quotes. Idea Champions Keynotes on Change Photo Photo Cartoon Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 01:00 PM | Comments (0)

December 19, 2011

15 Awesome Quotes on the Real Meaning of Work 1. "The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others." - Mahatma Gandhi 2. "Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time, and always start with the person

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