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Every four years, the worldwide calendar reminds us of a secret.

Leaping.

Leaping powers innovation, it is the engine of not only our economy, but of a thrilling and generous life.

Of course, you can (and should) be leaping regularly. Like bathing, leaping is a practice, something that never gets old, and is best done repeatedly.

But we don't need a worldwide holiday (one that lasts an entire year) for you to leap. You're already doing it.

No, the benefit of the holiday is to give you an excuse to encourage others to leap. It's socially acceptable to say, "Happy leap year." And then explain. Every four years we get to spread this subversive idea.

The existing power structure wants to maintain the status quo, and is generally opposed to the concept of leaping. In fact, if you want to make change happen, if you want to give others a chance to truly make a difference and to feel alive, it's essential that you encourage, cajole and otherwise spread the word about what it means to leap.

Right now, tell ten people about how you're leaping. Ask ten people about how they hope to leap...

An opportunity to help the people around you level up. It's an obligation, an opportunity and a chance that I hope you'll accept. Tell the others.

Culture changes everything.

To celebrate this magical day, a few suggestions. First, two projects I've done as fundraisers for Acumen's educational work (all of my share goes to their essential work in building a new way to educate social entrepreneurs):

Leap First, a short audio program I recorded for Sounds True. There's a special price today in honor of leap year.

Also...

My much celebrated Leadership Workshop is now available in a more traditional online-course format. That link takes you to + Acumen and a significant discount if you sign up with them. You can find the course page here.

Thanks to people like you, we've already raised more than $120,000 for Acumen.

Here are some quotes and reviews from the first two disruptions on offer:

"So eye opening! Thank you so much for sharing with us and for contributing your knowledge to benefit a larger cause"

"No more standing on the sidelines. If it's change we are going to make, we are in good company"

"Seth does it again, in a calm and clear voice, sharing ideas that will empower you to think and leap towards working and shipping with intention."

"I consider myself a student of Seth's concepts, ideas and work, if you are like me you will find it refreshing and with sharpened insights, if you are new, prepare to live and work in a truly different way."

"Terrific three hours. Plenty to think about. Plenty to do..."

And two more to consider, when you're ready to help people get serious about the opportunity:

You can buy 120 copies of Your Turn for $96 off today only using code LeapYear. What would you do with 120 books? How about starting a conversation across your entire organization about what it means to leap?

And,

Today's a great day to forward this link about the altMBA. Applications have just opened for session 5, our last session before the summer.

Une dernière chose : Si vous parlez français, vous pouvez consulter cette édition ...

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Every four years, the worldwide calendar reminds us of a secret. Leaping. Leaping powers innovation, it is the engine of not only our economy, but of a thrilling and generous life. Of course, you can (and should) be leaping regularly....

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If you could freeze time and make space to take ANY of MIT's open courses, which one would you take and why?

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If you could freeze time and make space to take ANY of MIT's open courses, which one would you take and why?

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Find Courses by Topic | MIT OpenCourseWare | Free Online Course Materials

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MIT OpenCourseWare makes the materials used in the teaching of almost all of MIT's subjects available on the Web, free of charge. With more than 2,400 courses available, OCW is delivering on the promise of open sharing of knowledge. Learn more "

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Write your list of ‘things worth thinking about.’

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Write your list of ‘things worth thinking about.’

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That's one of the most important lists you can have. The list of things worth thinking about.

We live in the age of information surplus, when there are answers and shortcuts and highlights and notes and summaries for everything. But not nearly enough time to even be aware of them.

The key question isn't, "what's the answer?"

The key question is, "what's the question?"

Is this area worth thinking about?

Should I maintain the status quo?

Is this good enough?

Your focus is the heart of your organization's future. Your attention is irreplaceable.

The real question, then, is, "how much time are you spending deciding what to spend time on?"

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That's one of the most important lists you can have. The list of things worth thinking about. We live in the age of information surplus, when there are answers and shortcuts and highlights and notes and summaries for everything. But...

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Check out the shortlist for the 2016 Sony photography competition.  Which photo do you think should win and why?

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Check out the shortlist for the 2016 Sony photography competition.  Which photo do you think should win and why?

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The Sony World Photography Awards have just released their stunning shortlisted entries for 2016. This year, a record breaking 230,103 images from all across the globe were submitted to the three categories of Professional, Youth and Open. The competition remains one of the most influential and respected of its kind, and with over 1 million images received since the initial launch, it has grown to be the world's largest photography competition. This year over 270 photographers participated from nearly 60 countries, creating a diverse collection of international moments.

This year an honorary jury, made up of Dominque Green (Consultant, UK) and Sue Steward (Writer/ Curator, UK), have shortlisted some of the exceptional entries from both seasoned and emerging photographers. Overall winners are set to be announced April 21 st and will then be displayed at the Somerset House, London from April 22 through May 8 th, but in the meantime we have hand-picked some of our favourite images from the spectacular contenders.
Above: Open Shortlist, SplitSecond
Too Much Practice ..... by khairel anuar che ani, Bali

Image was taken in Bali during Melasti Festival. This Festival is conducted once a year in conjunction with Nyepi or Silent Day. These young girls were waiting for their turn to perform. They looked stunning with their bright coloured costumes and heavy make-up on, however the expression on each of the girls' face especially the yawning girl gives this image an extra 'ummpph'.
Open Shortlist, Arts and Culture
Lightning Dream by Minh Ngo Thanh, Vietnam

Annually on holidays Vu Lan - signaling parents. people want them to pray for his parents. They were released on river use candles temple.
Open Shortlist, Enhanced
Dream - The Little Dancer by Mickael Szymanski, France
Open Shortlist, Travel
Farming the Sea by Tugo Cheng, Hong Kong

A fisherman is farming the sea in between the bamboo rods constructed for aquaculture off the coast in southern China.
Open Shortlist, Arts and Culture
By Nader Saadallah, Egypt

This is the Impression Lijiang, it is a cultural theatrical show that describes the lifestyle and several interesting traditions of the Naxi, Yi and Bai people in a colourful and flamboyant outdoor production.The show is innovatively staged in the morning and afternoon. Lijiang city, China.
Open Shortlist, Travel
Gangasagar Fair by Abhijit Banerjee, India

Every year in the month of January few lacks of devotee come to Gangasagar fair in West Bengal. It is the 2nd largest fair of India. Captured the devotees while they worship sun just after their bath.
Open Shortlist, Smile
Reindeer Farmer Kids by Peter Voss, Germany

Reindeer farmer kids in Mongolia.
Open Shortlist, Split Second
Creation of Love by Cheung Yin Fang, Malaysia

A boy creatively made a LOVE shape at the River of Tukad Yeh Unda in Klungkung Sub-District, Klungkung Regency, Bali, Indonesia.
Professional Shortlist, Environment
Art in the Wild- Respect the Tusk by Mohammed Yousef, Kuwait,

Series of Wildlife Images Taken in Masai Mara Reserve in Africa; The love story between the lion and the lioness in Masai Mara is fascinating. Anger in this case is translated as romance and care.
Professional Shortlist, Staged
Feral Children by Julia Fullerton-Batten, United Kingdom

A feral child is one which has lived isolated from human contact, often from a very young age. As a result the child grows up with little or no experience of human care, behaviour or language. Some were cruelly confined or abandoned by their own parents, rejected perhaps because of their intellectual or physical impairment, or the parent's belief that this was the case. In other instances the loss of both parents was the cause. Others ran away after experiencing abuse. Yet more ended up in the wild and were "adopted" by animals as a result of a wide variety of circumstances getting lost, being taken by wild animals, etc.

Documented cases of feral children are geographically spread over four continents, and vary in age from babies taken by wild animals up to eight year olds. Of course, these cases are only known of because the child survived. It is not difficult to think that there are probably untold cases where the outcome was less favourable.As a mother of two young boys I was appalled and intrigued in turn when I first learned about feral children. My initial reaction was to think how parents could either neglect or lose their child. My maternal instinct goes into overdrive when I consider these young people experiencing their lives alone or in the company of wild animals. Then I consider and admire the fortitude they must have shown to survive such isolation and extreme circumstances. In any of the circumstances that I have read about, it completely overwhelms the boundaries of my comprehension.

However, I have risen to the challenge of trying to capture my thoughts photographically about the isolation under which these youngsters found themselves, wondering at the same time if those living in the companionship of wild animals were perhaps better off than those whose young lives were spent with no companionship at all. I chose 15 cases to portray, these range from a girl who as a toddler was confined by her parents to a potty chair for ten years to that of a baby boy who was stolen by a leopardess and found three years later in the company of her and her latest cubs. My idea was not to replicate the exact scenes, but to interpret and duplicate the feelings and actions of each feral child living their experience. Some spent most of their time indoors, even in close proximity to or inside human habitation. Yet others spent the duration of their feral life outside, exposed to the elements, depending on their own ability and that of their wild companions for shelter and food and water, not to mention constantly having to avoid danger and health problems. Life is complex, for some more than others, even when we are considering a normal human life. Its complexity varies from one part of the globe to the other. In considering feral children, who are fully human, at least at the start of their lives, how can we not look at my images and question and wonder about the tenacious survival instincts of these 15 human beings.
Professional Shortlist, Campaign
RIC Hornets by Rob Gregory, United States

These images were created for the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago's Adaptive Sports Program and the RIC Hornets wheelchair basketball team.
Professional Shortlist, Architecture
Pools by Stephan Zirwes, Germany,

The Pools series is a study of water, one of the most precious resources for life on our planet. The artistic approach of photographer Stephan Zirwes is to show how the important resource is in contrast between being the consummate location for entertainment and the incredible waste of drinking water "not only for being used in private pools but also the trend to privatise what is a public asset and use it for commercial reasons. Public pools can still be a symbol for the importance that water should be free accessible to everyone. The clean formal language and the simple design of the pictures focus our interest on this newsworthy issue with elegance and almost playful. A deep dive into the blue as Zirwes copied parts of the original pool tiles and enlarged them in a simple, visible way to create a kind of mount in patterns.
Open Shortlist, People
Open Air by Karolis Janulis, Lithuania,

People on mass yoga exercise in the central park of Vilnius.
Open Shortlist, Nature and Wildlife
Dancing with Stars by Imre Poty, Hungary

The mass swarming of Danube mayfly (Ephoron virgo) in Ruba and Danube rivers is one of the most exciting phenomenon for me.
Open Shortlist, Nature and Wildlife
Polar Bear Enjoying His Bath by Michaela mdov, Czech Republic
Professional Shortlist, Landscapes
Land of Nothingness by Maroesjka Lavigne, Belgium,

A country named after a desert. One of the least densely populated places on earth. Defined by its rich variety of colors yet in a forever changing, yet completely barren landscape. Namibia's landscape draws you in, through a vast brown plain of scorched earth, and steers you over the white surface of a salt pan to finally arrive in the gold tones of the sand dunes. Patience is required to discover the wide range of Namibia's subtle scenery. It literally takes you hours, driving though nothing, to at long last arrive at...more of nothing. The sight of other people is rare and only the strategically located gas stations are a reminder of the world beyond. This country is in another time zone"time seems to move slower but it feels more logical, somehow. Captivated by these washed out yet delicately colored landscapes, you can drive for hours. Chaperoned by herds of giraffes or zebras, shadowed by flocks of flamingos, suddenly stumbling upon a family of elephants. The animals look up curiously, but soon forget about you and slowly continue their journey, unhurried by your presence, at their own pace.
Open Shortlist, Nature and Wildlife
Blue Moon by Simona Tedesco, Italy

Four centimeters of mightyness that moves slowly and relentlessly on a tree, while the moon rises on the background. The rhinoceros beetle is a nocturnal insect, during the day they stay safe under the cortex of the trees and with the summer they become very active flying at dusk to find a mate.
Professional Shortlist, Contemporary Issues
The Death of Migratory Birds by Yong An He, China

In the migratory season, there's still some people to catch the migratory birds by erecting the net in order to get a large profits although the government have prohibited to do that. Thousands of migratory birds are killed each year, and the ecological balance is destroyed deeply. Day by day, the ultimate victims will be the man himself. I wish these photos can play a role for the protection of migratory birds.
Professional Shortlist, Campaign
Dead End - Oil Exploration in the Arctic by Christian Aslund, Sweden (Calved ice from a glacier at Scoresby Sund fjord, east coast of Greenland)

Climate change is taking its toll on the Planet and its inhabitants. Nowhere else, is this more visible than in the Arctic. On our warming globe, the Arctic experiences temperature rise twice as high than elsewhere. Over the last few decades, Arctic sea ice has experienced a dramatic decline. Its a bitter irony that a rapidly changing Arctic is not seen as a stark warning to our way of life, but instead exploited by governments and oil companies to further drill for the very same oil that caused the melting in the first place. Despite rapid and profound changes, the Arctic is very much still an incredible inhospitable place to drill for oil.
Open Shortlist, Nature and Wildlife
Sea Baby by Andrey Narchuk, Russia,

Bering sea. Commander islands, Baby fur seal
Open Shortlist, Split Second Professional Shortlist, Daily Life
Running Away with the Circus by Stephanie Sinclair, US,

There are more than 300 people that with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus blue unit, representing 25 different countries and speaking everything from Russian to Arabic to Guarani. A few travel in cars and trailers, but a majority, 270, live on the trains. Most come from multigeneration circus families, to the extent that collectively, the circus staff represents thousands of years of circus history. The men and women all say that only circus people like them can understand the lifestyle. They spend 44 weeks of the year traveling an average of 20,000 miles from coast to coast on a train that is 61 cars "a full mile" long. It is a life of close quarters and rigorous training, a life that many of the performers began in childhood. Their job is to convince the world that the circus still matters.

World Photography Organisation: Website | Facebook
via [ Adventures of Yoo, The Atlantic, CreativeBoom]

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2016 Sony World Photography Awards Announces Extraordinary Shortlisted Entries

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The Sony World Photography Awards have just released their stunning shortlisted entries for 2016. This year, a record breaking 230,103 images from all across the globe were submitted to the three categories of Professional, Youth and Open. The competition remains one of the most influential and respected of its

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Do you have an amazing pet and PS skillz? Check this out, and try to emulate the stylings of Christopher Cline.

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Do you have an amazing pet and PS skillz? Check this out, and try to emulate the stylings of Christopher Cline.

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Photographer Christopher Cline and his Goldendoodle Juji (pronounced Joo-ji) are a match made in Photoshop heaven. After moving from Virginia to Minnesota a few years ago, the artist was feeling homesick and "sliding into a sad place in life." Then, his girlfriend Christine brought home Juji. "I wasn't exactly open to getting a dog," Cline told Mrs. Sizzle, "but I immediately fell in love with him. He has turned my life completely around and we are now absolutely inseparable. I have found a new outlook on life and in my artwork and I owe it all to him."

After Juji came into his life, Cline began expressing himself through Photoshop. He'd take photos of himself and Juji and later alter them to make it look as though his canine pal was a giant. "I just wanted to share a little of our adventures together," Cline explains, adding that he wants his edits to have a "kids' book feel." Whether they're lounging on the couch or taking on outdoor adventures, both Juji and his human seem to have a ton of fun together-no matter what their size!

Just in case you're wondering what these two look like without Photoshop:

Christopher Cline: Facebook | Instagram
via [ Mrs. Sizzle, The Pet Matchmaker]

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Imaginative Photographer Takes His "Gigantic" Dog on Extraordinary Adventures

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Photographer Christopher Cline and his Goldendoodle Juji (pronounced Joo-ji) are a match made in Photoshop heaven. After moving from Virginia to Minnesota a few years ago, the artist was feeling homesick and "sliding into a sad place in life." Then, his girlfriend Christine brought home Juji.

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Read up on the history of emoji here. Which emoji would you invent, and why?

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Read up on the history of emoji here. Which emoji would you invent, and why?

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Why did emoji become part of Unicode? Until Unicode decided to standardize emoji, the symbols wouldn't look the same across different platforms, according to Mr. Davis of the Unicode Consortium. So, an emoji might not display in a message where the sender and receiver used different carriers. Now, with one standard alphabet for companies to use, the emoji can be displayed more successfully across platforms.

So it all works perfectly now? It's worth noting that not all the kinks are gone, and when an emoji symbol isn't compatible, you'll see an empty square box typically.

Who controls emoji? Well, Unicode's Mr. Davis says that the Unicode Consortium is the one managing requests for new emoji symbols -- a subcommittee is tasked with all things emoji. They convene once a quarter to review requests for new emoji and decide which ones they should focus their time on. But each individual carrier decides which characters to include on their keyboards.

There's an emoji I'd really like to see. How can I make that happen? The emoji characters in Unicode now were added because they were already in use on smartphones and other platforms. Unicode says that for new characters to be considered, they typically need to be in widespread use. You can fill out an application for a new emoji via Unicode, though it's probably easier to reach out to your tech company of choice to see if they can enable a certain emoji on their keyboard. It's possible that the emoji you want already exists but isn't yet on your device's keyboard.

How often are emoji keyboards on each device updated? It varies with each company. For instance, since Apple made emoji available with its launch of iOS5 in June 2011, the emoji keyboard has changed with iOS6 but not with iOS7.

How do I enable emoji on my phone?

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Why did emoji become part of Unicode? Until Unicode decided to standardize emoji, the symbols wouldn't look the same across different platforms, according to Mr. Davis of the Unicode Consortium. So, an emoji might not display in a message where the sender and receiver used different carriers.

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Interested in being an innovative business-leader? Read this. Discuss how these ideas can put of use to you now, in your academic career.

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Interested in being an innovative business-leader? Read this. Discuss how these ideas can put of use to you now, in your academic career.

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What's Possible We tend to believe that true innov

What's Possible

We tend to believe that true innovators are a rare breed. But most people are quite capable of original thinking, and leaders can set them up for success by building a culture of nonconformity.

What Gets in the Way

Unfortunately, leaders often fail to do this because they have trouble moving past their flawed assumptions-for instance, believing that doing fewer things leads to better work, and that strong cultures squash originality.

What to Do

Give employees ways and reasons to generate lots of new ideas (being prolific actually increases quality). Have fellow innovators evaluate the ideas (they do the best job of predicting success). And strike the right balance between cohesion and dissent in your organization (you need both).

If there's one place on earth where originality goes to die, I'd managed to find it. I was charged with unleashing innovation and change in the ultimate bastion of bureaucracy. It was a place where people accepted defaults without question, followed rules without explanation, and clung to traditions and technologies long after they'd become obsolete: the U.S. Navy.

But in a matter of months, the navy was exploding with originality-and not because of anything I'd done. It launched a major innovation task force and helped to form a Department of Defense outpost in Silicon Valley to get up to speed on cutting-edge technology. Surprisingly, these changes didn't come from the top of the navy's command-and-control structure. They were initiated at the bottom, by a group of junior officers in their twenties and thirties.

When I started digging for more details, multiple insiders pointed to a young aviator named Ben Kohlmann. Officers called him a troublemaker, rabble-rouser, disrupter, heretic, and radical. And in direct violation of the military ethos, these were terms of endearment.

Kohlmann lit the match by creating the navy's first rapid-innovation cell-a network of original thinkers who would collaborate to question long-held assumptions and generate new ideas. To start assembling the group, he searched for black sheep: people with a history of nonconformity. One recruit had been fired from a nuclear submarine for disobeying a commander's order. Another had flat-out refused to go to basic training. Others had yelled at senior flag officers and flouted chains of command by writing public blog posts to express their iconoclastic views. "They were lone wolves," Kohlmann says. "Most of them had a track record of insubordination."

Kohlmann realized, however, that to fuel and sustain innovation throughout the navy, he needed more than a few lone wolves. So while working as an instructor and director of flight operations, he set about building a culture of nonconformity. He talked to senior leaders about expanding his network and got their buy-in. He recruited sailors who had never shown a desire to challenge the status quo and exposed them to new ways of thinking. They visited centers of innovation excellence outside the military, from Google to the Rocky Mountain Institute. They devoured a monthly syllabus of readings on innovation and debated ideas during regular happy hours and robust online discussions. Soon they pioneered the use of 3-D printers on ships and a robotic fish for stealth underwater missions-and other rapid-innovation cells began springing up around the military. "Culture is king," Kohlmann says. "When people discovered their voice, they became unstoppable."

Empowering the rank and file to innovate is where most leaders fall short. Instead, they try to recruit brash entrepreneurial types to bring fresh ideas and energy into their organizations-and then leave it at that. It's a wrongheaded approach, because it assumes that the best innovators are rare creatures with special gifts. Research shows that entrepreneurs who succeed over the long haul are actually more risk-averse than their peers. The hotshots burn bright for a while but tend to fizzle out. So relying on a few exceptional folks who fit a romanticized creative profile is a short-term move that underestimates everyone else. Most people are in fact quite capable of novel thinking and problem solving, if only their organizations would stop pounding them into conformity.

When everyone thinks in similar ways and sticks to dominant norms, businesses are doomed to stagnate. To fight that inertia and drive innovation and change effectively, leaders need sustained original thinking in their organizations. They get it by building a culture of nonconformity, as Kohlmann did in the navy. I've been studying this for the better part of a decade, and it turns out to be less difficult than I expected.

For starters, leaders must give employees opportunities and incentives to generate-and keep generating-new ideas, so that people across functions and roles get better at pushing past the obvious. However, it's also critical to have the right people vetting those ideas. That part of the process should be much less democratic and more meritocratic, because some votes are simply more meaningful than others. And finally, to continue generating and selecting smart ideas over time, organizations need to strike a balance between cultural cohesion and creative dissent.

Letting a Thousand Flowers Bloom

People often believe that to do better work, they should do fewer things. Yet the evidence flies in the face of that assumption: Being prolific actually increases originality, because sheer volume improves your chances of finding novel solutions. In recent experiments by Northwestern University psychologists Brian Lucas and Loran Nordgren, the initial ideas people generated were the most conventional. Once they had thought of those, they were free to start dreaming up more-unusual possibilities. Their first 20 ideas were significantly less original than their next 15.

Matt Carr/Getty Images; Photo illustration: Stephen Webster

Across fields, volume begets quality. This is true for all kinds of creators and thinkers-from composers and painters to scientists and inventors. Even the most eminent innovators do their most original work when they're also cranking out scores of less brilliant ideas. Consider Thomas Edison. In a five-year period, he came up with the lightbulb, the phonograph, and the carbon transmitter used in telephones-while also filing more than 100 patents for inventions that didn't catch the world on fire, including a talking doll that ended up scaring children (and adults).

Of course, in organizations, the challenge lies in knowing when you've drummed up enough possibilities. How many ideas should you generate before deciding which ones to pursue? When I pose this question to executives, most say you're really humming with around 20 ideas. But that answer is off the mark by an order of magnitude. There's evidence that quality often doesn't max out until more than 200 ideas are on the table.

Stanford professor Robert Sutton notes that the Pixar movie Cars was chosen from about 500 pitches, and at Skyline, the toy design studio that generates ideas for Fisher-Price and Mattel, employees submitted 4,000 new toy concepts in one year. That set was winnowed down to 230 to be drawn or prototyped, and just 12 were finally developed. The more darts you throw, the better your odds of hitting a bull's-eye.

Though it makes perfect sense, many managers fail to embrace this principle, fearing that time spent conjuring lots of ideas will prevent employees from being focused and efficient. The good news is that there are ways to help employees generate quantity and variety without sacrificing day-to-day productivity or causing burnout.

Think like the enemy.

Research suggests that organizations often get stuck in a rut because they're playing defense, trying to stave off the competition. To encourage people to think differently and generate more ideas, put them on offense.

That's what Lisa Bodell of futurethink did when Merck CEO Ken Frazier hired her to help shake up the status quo. Bodell divided Merck's executives into groups and asked them to come up with ways to put the company out of business. Instead of being cautious and sticking close to established competencies, the executives started considering bold new directions in strategy and product development that competitors could conceivably take. Energy in the room soared as they explored the possibilities. The offensive mindset, Carnegie Mellon professor Anita Woolley observes, focuses attention on "pursuing opportunities...whereas defenders are more focused on maintaining their market share." That mental shift allowed the Merck executives to imagine competitive threats that didn't yet exist. The result was a fresh set of opportunities for innovation.

Test Yourself

Psychology Quiz

The answers, based on decades of research, might surprise you.

Solicit ideas from individuals, not groups.

According to decades of research, you get more and better ideas if people are working alone in separate rooms than if they're brainstorming in a group. When people generate ideas together, many of the best ones never get shared. Some members dominate the conversation, others hold back to avoid looking foolish, and the whole group tends to conform to the majority's taste.

Evidence shows that these problems can be managed through "brainwriting." All that's required is asking individuals to think up ideas on their own before the group evaluates them, to get all the possibilities on the table. For instance, at the eyewear retailer Warby Parker, named the world's most innovative company by Fast Company in 2015, employees spend a few minutes a week writing down innovation ideas for colleagues to read and comment on. The company also maintains a Google doc where employees can submit requests for new technology to be built, which yields about 400 new ideas in a typical quarter. One major innovation was a revamped retail point of sale, which grew out of an app that allowed customers to bookmark their favorite frames in the store and receive an e-mail about them later.

Since employees often withhold their most unusual suggestions in group settings, another strategy for seeking ideas is to schedule rapid one-on-one idea meetings. When Anita Krohn Traaseth became managing director of Hewlett-Packard Norway, she launched a "speed-date the boss" initiative. She invited every employee to meet with her for five minutes and answer these questions: Who are you and what do you do at HP? Where do you think we should change, and what should we keep focusing on? And what do you want to contribute beyond fulfilling your job responsibilities? She made it clear that she expected people to bring big ideas, and they didn't want to waste their five minutes with a senior leader-it was their chance to show that they could innovate. More than 170 speed dates later, so many good ideas had been generated that other HP leaders implemented the process in Austria and Switzerland.

Bring back the suggestion box.

It's a practice that dates back to the early 1700s, when a Japanese shogun put a box at the entrance to his castle. He rewarded good ideas-but punished criticisms with decapitation. Today suggestion boxes are often ridiculed. "I smell a creative idea being formed somewhere in the building," the boss thinks in one Dilbert cartoon. "I must find it and crush it." He sets up a suggestion box, and Dilbert is intrigued until a colleague warns him: "It's a trap!!"

But the evidence points to a different conclusion: Suggestion boxes can be quite useful, precisely because they provide a large number of ideas. In one study, psychologist Michael Frese and his colleagues visited a Dutch steel company (now part of Tata Steel) that had been using a suggestion program for 70 years. The company had 11,000 employees and collected between 7,000 and 12,000 suggestions a year. A typical employee would make six or seven suggestions annually and see three or four adopted. One prolific innovator submitted 75 ideas and had 30 adopted. In many companies, those ideas would have been missed altogether. For the Dutch steelmaker, however, the suggestion box regularly led to improvements-saving more than $750,000 in one year alone.

The major benefit of suggestion boxes is that they multiply and diversify the ideas on the horizon, opening up new avenues for innovation. The biggest hurdle is that they create a larger haystack of ideas, making it more difficult to find the needle. You need a system for culling contributions-and rewarding and pursuing the best ones-so that people don't feel their suggestions are falling on deaf ears.

Developing a Nose for Good Ideas

Generating lots of alternatives is important, but so is listening to the right opinions and solutions. How can leaders avoid pursuing bad ideas and rejecting good ones?

Lean on proven evaluators.

Although many leaders use a democratic process to select ideas, not every vote is equally valuable. Bowing to the majority's will is not the best policy; a select minority might have a better sense of which ideas have the greatest potential. To figure out whose votes should be amplified, pay attention to employees' track records in evaluation.

At the hedge fund Bridgewater, employees' opinions are weighted by a believability score, which reflects the quality of their past decisions in that domain. In the U.S. intelligence community, analysts demonstrate their credibility by forecasting major political and economic events. In studies by psychologist Philip Tetlock, forecasters are rated on accuracy (did they make the right bets?) and calibration (did they get the probabilities right?). Once the best of these prognosticators are identified, their judgments can be given greater influence than those of their peers.

So, in a company, who's likely to have the strongest track record? Not managers-it's too easy for them to stick to existing prototypes. And not the innovators themselves. Intoxicated by their own "eureka" moments, they tend to be overconfident about their odds of success. They may try to compensate for that by researching customer preferences, but they'll still be susceptible to confirmation bias (looking for information that supports their view and rejecting the rest). Even creative geniuses have trouble predicting with any accuracy when they've come up with a winner.

When aviator Ben Kohlmann set out to build a culture of nonconformity in the U.S. Navy, he found inspiration in many sources. Here's a sampling of the items he recommends to people who want to think more creatively, along with his comments on how they've influenced his own development.

Speeches

"Lead Like the Great Conductors"
TED talk by Itay Talgam
Much can be learned from professions we have no understanding of. People are people-and recognizing the commonalities is useful.

"How Great Leaders Inspire Action"
TED talk by Simon Sinek
Sinek cracks the code of influence: Deep-seated desire is what inspires followers and builds movements.

Fiction

Dune
by Frank Herbert
A compelling story about insurgency and taking on established powers, Dune explores the ambiguous nature of messianic saviors.

Nonfiction

TV Shows

Sherlock (BBC series)
Each episode is pure fun-but yields lots of learning at the same time.

Ralph Orlowski/Getty Images; Ben Pruchnie/Getty Images

Research suggests that fellow innovators are the best evaluators of original ideas. They're impartial, because they're not judging their own ideas, and they're more willing than managers to give radical possibilities a chance. For example, Stanford professor Justin Berg found that circus performers who evaluated videos of their peers' new acts were about twice as accurate as managers in predicting popularity with audiences.

Make it a contest.

Idea competitions can help leaders separate the wheat from the chaff, whether they're sifting through suggestion-box entries or hosting a live innovation event. At Dow Chemical, for example, employees participate in an annual innovation tournament focused on reducing waste and saving energy. The tournament calls for ideas that require an initial investment of no more than $200,000, and those costs must be recoverable within a year. Peers review the submissions, with monetary rewards going to the winners. Innovation researchers Christian Terwiesch and Karl Ulrich report that over more than a decade, the resulting 575 projects have produced an average return of 204% and saved the company $110 million a year.

When an innovation tournament is well designed, you get a large pool of initial ideas, but they're clustered around key themes instead of spanning a range of topics. People spend a lot of time preparing their entries, which can boost quality, but the work happens in a discrete window of time, so the contest is not a recurring distraction.

Thorough evaluation helps to filter out the bad ideas. The feedback process typically involves having a group of subject matter experts and fellow innovators review the submissions, rate their novelty and usefulness, and provide suggestions for improvement.

With the right judges in place, an innovation contest not only leverages the wisdom of the crowd but also makes the crowd wiser. Contributors and evaluators get to learn from other people's successes and failures. Over time, the culture can evolve into one where employees feel confident in their ability to contribute ideas-and develop better taste about what constitutes quality. Because successful innovators earn recognition and rewards, everyone has an incentive to participate.

So start by calling for ideas to solve a problem or seize an opportunity, and then introduce a rigorous process for assessment and feedback. The most promising submissions will make it to the next round, and the eventual winners should get the staff and resources necessary to implement their ideas.

Cultivating Both Cohesion and Dissent

Building a culture of nonconformity begins with learning how to generate and vet ideas, but it doesn't end there. To maintain originality over time, leaders need to keep fighting the pressures against it.

We used to blame conformity on strong cultures, believing they were so cultish and chummy that members couldn't consider diverse views and make wise decisions. But that's not true. Studies of decision making in top management teams show that cohesive groups aren't more likely than others to seek consensus, dismiss divergent opinions, and fall victim to groupthink. In fact, members of strong cultures often make better decisions, because they communicate well with one another and are secure enough in their roles to feel comfortable challenging one another.

Here's the evidence on how successful high-tech founders in Silicon Valley built their start-ups: They hired primarily for commitment to the mission, looking for people who would help carry out their vision and live by their values. Founders who looked mainly for technical skill or star potential didn't fare nearly as well. In mature industries, too, research shows that when companies place a strong emphasis on culture, their performance remains more stable.

Yet there's a dark side to strong, cohesive cultures: They can become homogeneous if left unchecked. As leaders continue to attract, select, and retain similar people, they sacrifice diversity in thoughts and values. Employees face intense pressure to fit in or get out. This sameness can be advantageous in predictable environments, but it's a problem in volatile industries and dynamic markets. In those settings, strong cultures can be too insular to respond appropriately to shifting conditions. Leaders have a hard time recognizing the need for change, considering different views, and learning and adapting.

Consider BlackBerry: After disrupting the smartphone market, senior leaders clung to the belief that users were primarily interested in efficient, secure e-mail. They dismissed the iPhone as a music player and a consumer toy, hired like-minded insiders who had engineering backgrounds but lacked marketing expertise, and ultimately failed to create a high-quality web browser and an app-friendly operating system. The result? A major downsizing, a billion-dollar write-off, and a colossal collapse of market share.

So to balance out a strong culture, you also need a steady supply of critical opinions. Even when they're wrong, they're useful-they disrupt knee-jerk consensus, stimulate original thought, and help organizations find novel solutions to problems. In the navy's rapid-innovation cell, the norm is "loyal opposition," says Joshua Marcuse, one of Ben Kohlmann's collaborators in the Pentagon. "Agitating against the status quo is how we contribute to the mission."

In short, make dissent one of your organization's core values. Create an environment where people can openly share critical opinions and are respected for doing so. In the early days of Apple, employees were passionately committed to making the Mac a user-friendly household product. But each year, the Mac team also gave an award to somebody who had challenged Steve Jobs. Every one of those award winners was promoted.

Cohesion and dissent sound contradictory, but a combination of the two is what brings novel ideas to the table-and keeps a strong culture from becoming a cult. Here are some ways to hold these principles in productive tension:

Prioritize organizational values.

Give people a framework for choosing between conflicting opinions and allowing the best ideas to win out. When companies fail to prioritize values, performance suffers. My colleague Andrew Carton led a study showing that across hospitals, heart attack readmission rates were lower and returns on assets were higher when leaders articulated a compelling vision-but only if they spelled out no more than four organizational values. The more values they emphasized beyond that, the greater the odds that people interpreted them differently or didn't focus on the same ones.

istockphoto; Photo illustration: Stephen Webster

Values need to be rank-ordered so that when employees face choices between competing courses of action, they know what comes first. At the software company Salesforce.com, trust is explicitly defined as the number one value, above growth and innovation. That communicates a clear message to employees: When working on new software, never compromise data privacy. At the online shoe and clothing retailer Zappos.com, CEO Tony Hsieh prioritizes employee happiness over customer happiness. The airline WestJet identifies safety as its most important value. And at GiveForward, a company that helps people raise money for causes, compassion tops the list. Although media coverage is critical to the company's success, cofounder Ethan Austin notes, "We will not push a story in the media unless we are certain that the customer whose story we are sharing will benefit more than we do."

Once you've prioritized the values, keep scrutinizing them. Encourage new hires to challenge "the company way" when they disagree with it. They're the ones with the freshest perspective; they haven't yet gone native. If they familiarize themselves with the culture before speaking up, they'll have already started marching to the same drummer. At Bridgewater, when new employees are trained, they're asked about the company's principles: Do you disagree?

Solicit problems, not just solutions.

When working with executives, organizational psychologist David Hofmann likes to ask them to fill in the blanks in this sentence: "Don't bring me ____; bring me ____." Without fail, they shout out, "Don't bring me problems; bring me solutions! "

Although leaders love it when employees come up with solutions, there's an unintended consequence: Inquiry gets dampened. If you're always expected to have an answer ready, you'll arrive at meetings with your diagnosis complete, missing out on the chance to learn from a range of perspectives. This may be especially common in the United States: In a recent study comparing American and German decision groups, the Germans made twice as many statements about problems and 30% fewer statements about solutions. "Americans are driven to find solutions quickly," the researchers observe, "often without a complete and thorough analysis of the problem."

When individual members of a group have different information, as is usually the case in organizations, it's smarter to get all the problems out there before pursuing solutions. At the digital music company Spotify, instead of working on projects, people organize around long-term business problems. "If they were easy to solve," chief technology officer Oskar Stål notes, "we would have solved them already. When we create a new team, people typically stay together on a business problem for at least a year. If it becomes successful, the team and mission will exist for a long time." Angie's List cofounder Angie Hicks holds weekly office hours to hear concerns from employees. And when Anita Krohn Traaseth became the CEO of the Norwegian government's innovation efforts, she again used "speed dates" to give employees a voice. To make sure she had full visibility into problems, she asked people to name their three biggest bottlenecks and what they would like to safeguard or change. Only after gathering problems across a tour of 14 offices did she begin implementing solutions.

Don't appoint devil's advocates-go find them.

Research by UC Berkeley psychologist Charlan Nemeth shows that assigning someone to play devil's advocate doesn't overcome confirmation bias. Though people may pay lip service to considering the counterargument, they'll stick to their own views in the end.

To make a difference, the devil's advocate has to actually hold a dissenting view, not just voice it for argument's sake, and the group has to believe that the dissent is authentic. Under those circumstances, groups look at more information against the majority view than for it, and they're less confident in their original preferences. It's rare that role-played disagreement is forcefully argued or taken seriously; actual disagreement is what stimulates thought.

Inti St. Clair/Getty Images; Photo illustration: Stephen Webster

Groups with authentic dissenters generate more-and better-solutions to problems. Abraham Lincoln famously asked his political rivals to join his cabinet, knowing they would genuinely hold contrarian views. At a recent Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting, Warren Buffett invited a trader who was shorting the stock to share his criticisms. Of course, this strategy works only if the dissenter's input is clearly valued and respected.

Model receptivity to critical feedback.

Many managers end up promoting conformity because their egos are fragile. Research reveals that insecurity prevents managers from seeking ideas and leads them to respond defensively to suggestions. Employees quickly pick up on this and withhold ideas to avoid trouble. One way to overcome this barrier is to encourage people to challenge you out in the open.

Years ago at the software company Index Group, CEO Tom Gerrity gathered his full staff of about 100 people and had a consultant give him negative feedback in front of everyone. When employees saw their CEO listen to critical opinions, they were less worried about speaking up. And managers became more receptive to tough comments themselves.

You can also get people to challenge you by broadcasting your weaknesses. "When you're the leader, it is really hard to get good and honest feedback, no matter how many times you ask for it," Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg says. "One trick I've discovered is that I try to speak really openly about the things I'm bad at, because that gives people permission to agree with me, which is a lot easier than pointing it out in the first place." For example, Sandberg tells her colleagues that she has a habit of talking too much in meetings. "If I never mentioned it, would anyone walk up to me and say, 'Hey, Sheryl, I think you talked too much today'? I doubt it."

For a culture of originality to flourish, employees must feel free to contribute their wildest ideas. But they are often afraid to speak up, even if they've never seen anything bad happen to those who do.

To fight that fear in the navy, Ben Kohlmann rejected the military's traditional emphasis on hierarchy. Everyone communicated on a first-name basis, ignoring rank. "If you have an idea, pitch it to the crowd and run with it," he told members of his rapid-innovation cell. And he introduced them to people who had successfully championed creativity and change in the navy, to show them it was possible.

Other ways to nip fear in the bud include applauding employees for speaking up, even when their suggestions don't get adopted, and sharing your own harebrained ideas. Without some degree of tolerance in the organization for bad ideas, conformity will begin to rear its ugly head. Ultimately, listening to a wider range of insights than you normally hear is the key to promoting great original thinking.

If at first you don't succeed, you'll know you're aiming high enough.

A version of this article appeared in the March 2016 issue (pp.86-94) of Harvard Business Review.

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What's Possible We tend to believe that true innov What's Possible We tend to believe that true innovators are a rare breed. But most people are quite capable of original thinking, and leaders can set them up for success by building a culture of nonconformity.

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Write a shout-out for a coach you’ve had at some point in your life 

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Write a shout-out for a coach you’ve had at some point in your life 

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My former high school basketball coach, Kevin Grieman, passed away this past week. He was not just a coach to me, but he was like a second dad growing up, and he was affectionately known by my friends as simply "Coach". His impact on my learning and leadership at such a young age, has stuck with me for years, and I would venture to say that no other "teacher" had as much of an impact on my life. I lived and breathed basketball, but Coach was about so much more than that.

Two stories that came to mind...

In my grade 11 year, we had a pretty good team, and we won a coveted tournament for the first time in a long time. We didn't just win, but we won easily. In fact, we really started showboating and got a little mouthy to other players, coaches, and maybe even fans. After we were handed the trophies and went back to the dressing room, Coach ripped us apart. Winning was great, but how we carried ourselves meant more than anything, and we had let him down. I remember being so bothered by getting in trouble after winning, I mean, we won the tournament, right? Isn't that what we were supposed to do? But Coach wasn't developing basketball players, he was focused on developing good people that were basketball players. Although he could be extremely hard on us, I know that he wanted the best for us, and I think of all my friends that played on those teams (that I am still friends with) and how well they are all doing now. Coach had a tremendous influence on us today by what he did then.

The second story I remembered was in my last couple of games in high school. We were off to provincials, and I had won MVP of the team that year. It really meant a lot, but my last two games I was off. This was not the way that I wanted to go out, and no matter how hard I tried, I just was playing the way I usually had. We lost in the provincial semi-finals, and were now playing for bronze. Down by 9 points with about 30 seconds to go, we thought we had no chance, but somehow had now come back and were down by 3 with about 15 seconds left. Coach called a time out and said, "We need to foul them as soon as they get the ball, and hopefully they miss their free throws and we will see what happens." They threw the ball in and right to a player in front of me, who I immediately fouled. Since this was my last foul, I watched the last game of my basketball career from the bench and we miraculously won the game by two. There were so many heroics in this game, in which I didn't play well, but we won, and we were all so excited. A few years later, a player on the current team came up to me and told me how Coach always told the story that when I was asked to do something for the team, that would ultimately leave me watching from the side, that I didn't even think twice about it, and did what was best for the team. I never thought about it until then, but I realized that the kid who started playing in grade 10 would have done everything to not be out of that game, but Coach taught us that the team was more important than any individual. It was the way we had all thought, not just me. These lessons stick with me to this day.

All I know is that the world lost a great man who had an impact on so many youth growing up, and the town I grew up in was better off because of him, as well as all of the other places that his influence has spread through the people he has developed. His last post on Facebook was about the 25th anniversary with his wife Susan (who I have always called "mom" because of her caring nature) and how he proposed at the half time of one of our games to her, and my mom had to calm her down after. People like Coach do not come around too often, and his impact was immense.

Rest in peace Coach Grieman...you will be deeply missed.

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My former high school basketball coach, Kevin Grieman, passed away this past week. He was not just a coach to me, but he was like a second dad growing up, and he was affectionately known by my friends as simply "Coach".

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Start by watching this 59 second video: how have you benefited from a difficult experience?

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Start by watching this 59 second video: how have you benefited from a difficult experience?

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Buy the book (UK): http://goo.gl/9JaJx3 Buy the book (USA): http://goo.gl/0lGtDR Richard Wiseman is based at the University of Hertfordshire http://www.herts.ac.uk Intro and Outro animations by Cognitive http://www.wearecognitive.com Music: https://cameronwattmusic.wordpress.com

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Take a crash course via this Youtube channel: share your learnings with us.

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Take a crash course via this Youtube channel: share your learnings with us.

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At Crash Course, we believe that high-quality educational videos should be available to everyone for free! Subscribe for weekly videos from our current courses! The Crash Course team has produced more than 60 courses on a wide variety of subjects, ranging from the humanities to sciences and so much more! We also recently teamed up with Arizona State University to bring you more courses on the Study Hall channel.

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Every April since 2012, a group of designers, artists, and musicians has gathered in Belgrade, Serbia, for Resonate. The conference bills itself as a "forward-looking debate on the position of technology in art and culture," and its lineup of speakers is predictably eclectic: This year's roster includes a pioneering data-viz designer, a machine learning scientist, the founder of a line of DIY technology kits, and a slew of digital artists. Whatever their industry, these are the people at the forefront. You can imagine that no two years of Resonate are alike.

With that in mind, Jody Hudson-Powell and Luke Powell created a visual identity for Resonate that's primed for change. The jumble of circles and lines comes off as a bit avant-garde (the festival's monogram is an abstracted 'R' comprised of a circle and two lines), but the graphic designers, who are brothers and work at Pentagram's London office, built the bespoke font with logic in mind. It lives atop a grid, and the vectors and points of each glyph follow one basic rule: They must pass through points on the grid. The idea, the designers say, was to create a framework for the typeface that would enable future Resonate-rs to easily repurpose it. "As long as your work fits on this grid in some way, then anything is fair game," Powell says. It's a little like a elementary school handwriting chart, in that each letter gets drawn within preexisting scaffolding.

Resonate thrives on what Hudson-Powell calls "a culture of collaboration." Much of the festival exists thanks to the work of volunteers, so some of its basic infrastructure-the website, the signage, the marketing-is created by different people each year. The designers see their geometric font as a framework for those volunteers-Hudson-Powell calls it "a graphic kit-of-parts for people to play and explore"-and a tool that lets them exercise some creativity. "I don't feel anyone feels completely engaged when they're just handed something," Hudson-Powell says. "Instead of asking people to stick to a rigid set of guidelines ... this fosters a really vibrant energy."

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Pentagram's Punchy, Shapeshifting Typeface Takes Countless Forms

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Every April since 2012, a group of designers, artists, and musicians has gathered in Belgrade, Serbia, for Resonate. The conference bills itself as a "forward-looking debate on the position of technology in art and culture," and its lineup of speakers is predictably eclectic: This year's roster includes a pioneering data-viz designer, a machine learning scientist, the founder of a line of DIY technology kits, and a slew of digital artists.

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The NBA all-stars are coming if you could put together a team of any five basketball players living or dead, who would be on your starting roster and why?

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The NBA all-stars are coming if you could put together a team of any five basketball players living or dead, who would be on your starting roster and why?

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Make a pop up card for someone, document the process and explain why they deserve this special effort.

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Make a pop up card for someone, document the process and explain why they deserve this special effort.

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How to Make A Bouquet Flower Pop-up Card

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Check out this how to  video and then make your own flip book, describe your process.

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Check out this how to  video and then make your own flip book, describe your process.

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How To Make a Quick & Easy Flipbook Flip book Drawing of a Flower Growing

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Check out Austin Kleon’s list of 100 things that made his year.  Review anything from that list or come up with a list of things which are ‘making your year.’

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Check out Austin Kleon’s list of 100 things that made his year.  Review anything from that list or come up with a list of things which are ‘making your year.’

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Grilled pimento cheese with red onion and tomato sandwiches. Crying on airplanes. Watching Buster Keaton's The General with J Dilla's Donuts as the

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If you could solve any problem: what problem would you solve and why?

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If you could solve any problem: what problem would you solve and why?

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Write up a review of any of these podcast episodes

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Write up a review of any of these podcast episodes

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Introducing students to the wild world of podcasts

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Inspiring new listeners interested in stories and the podcast form

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Ann Makosinski: Teenage inventor uses TEDx Teen talk to call on young people to ditch their smartphones. Do you agree with Ann? Why or Why Not?

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Ann Makosinski: Teenage inventor uses TEDx Teen talk to call on young people to ditch their smartphones. Do you agree with Ann? Why or Why Not?

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Being told to put down their smartphone and live in the moment is nothing new to most teenagers. But how many teens are the ones doing the telling?

Ann Makosinski is urging thousands of people to ditch their devices and do something else instead with their time. The 18-year-old Canadian university student does not even own a smartphone and never has done, giving her an unlikely kinship with the actor Eddie Redmayne, who last week revealed he had swapped to an analogue handset - albeit temporarily.

Makosinski, who has won global acclaim for inventing a torch powered solely by the heat from your hand, was speaking at TEDx Teen, a youth-orientated offshoot of the TED Talks programme, held in London. "The main moral of my talk is, next time you pick up your phone, think about all the possibilities off it," she told The Independent on Sunday ahead of the event.

She wants to encourage children - and adults - to be more creative, which requires independent thinking. She described how as a child her parents would refuse to give her toys or let her watch television. And she was never allowed a mobile phone. "My parents didn't want me distracted and playing games on it, because that would be wasting time," she recalls. "So to entertain myself I made my own toys. Not being given everything encourages you to create .... That was one of the first steps for me learning to invent things."

Makosinski, whose mother is Filipino and her father Polish, already has a string of high-profile international awards for her own inventions. As well as the torch, which she came up with for a friend in the Philippines who didn't have electricity at home so couldn't study, she has designed a phone-charging travel mug; last month she won 50,000 Canadian dollars (£24,000) from Shell Canada for her prototype, which uses heat from hot water to funnel electricity to mobile devices. She appreciates the irony, given her antipathy, but says: "It'll appeal to the masses." A recent report by digital specialists eMarketer predicted 94 per cent of UK teens would have a smartphone in 2016.

Despite shunning smartphones -"I just don't see the point" - Makosinski is no technophobe. She has started making YouTube videos and has an iPod Touch, which she uses to contact her boyfriend via Facebook Messenger. Yes, this requires wifi, but: "If you don't have wifi, you just don't text people. Like, 'Oh well!'."

Gadgets and tech news in pictures

She also has an analogue "flip phone", which she bought in September before starting at the University of British Columbia, where she studies arts and science. She laughs, remembering how she had bought a phone with a touch screen but made her father double back to the shop so she could switch it for her analogue handset, which is made by ZTE and is on a basic call plan. She chose hers over one with huge keys "because it was for an old person. I got the hint!"

At UK border control on 14 January, she was asked what she was doing in London. She told the passport officer about her talk. "This guy was like, 'We don't call them flip phones! We call them old phones'," she says. "But it isn't old! I just bought it!"

She warns that constant fiddling with your phone adds up. "The overall interaction every day is huge .... You need to put it down. Just for a day! Try it and see what happens."

Not having a phone in school made her more sociable, she adds. "With everyone texting in high school, I had to interact with people so I didn't look like that awkward person standing in the corner not saying anything." Now she'll ring up for an actual chat. "People nowadays are so afraid of talking on the phone it's ridiculous. They're like, 'I'd rather text'. But if they don't want to talk to you ... then that's probably a sign that they don't value you as a friend. Or they have issues that they need to deal with!"

Her favourite social media is YouTube; she likes nothing better than making a snack and a cup of hot chocolate and settling down to watch vloggers - Zoella or Tyler Oakley, say - on her laptop. "Phone screens are too small to properly appreciate YouTube videos ... Plus I won't be distracted." She avoids Facebook, Twitter and Instagram where possible, but admits they are useful for promoting her nascent YouTube channel.

Her tips for parents who want to bring up potential inventors include lots of activities - "sport is one way of keeping kids off their phones" - and limiting screen time; she was allowed half an hour of weekend TV. "And don't give them as many things as they could possibly want. Which is hard, because I'm sure you want to give your children everything."

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This young inventor calls on teenagers to ditch their smartphones

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Being told to put down their smartphone and live in the moment is nothing new to most teenagers. But how many teens are the ones doing the telling? Ann Makosinski is urging thousands of people to ditch their devices and do something else instead with their time.

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Discuss your Goodreads ‘To Read’ shelf:  which books are you MOST looking forward to reading this year, and why?

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Discuss your Goodreads ‘To Read’ shelf:  which books are you MOST looking forward to reading this year, and why?

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Review a TED talk: why do you want everyone you know to watch it?

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Review a TED talk: why do you want everyone you know to watch it?

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Get a daily email featuring the latest talk, plus a quick mix of trending content.

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Check out any of the PBS Idea Channel videos available here.  Propose an idea for the channel to explore in the future.

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Check out any of the PBS Idea Channel videos available here.  Propose an idea for the channel to explore in the future.

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pbs art technology "idea channel" "mike rugnetta" "pop culture"

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Here's an idea: a PBS show that examines the connections between pop culture, technology and art. Mike Rugnetta posts new videos every Wednesday.

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Read all about the world’s MOST creative cities here. Where is the MOST creative place you’ve ever been?

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Read all about the world’s MOST creative cities here. Where is the MOST creative place you’ve ever been?

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Forbes Welcome page -- Forbes is a global media company, focusing on business, investing, technology, entrepreneurship, leadership, and lifestyle.

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Check out Vi Hart’s “Mathed Potatoes”: describe your favorite meal in a creative ‘Vi Hartesque’ way.

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Check out Vi Hart’s “Mathed Potatoes”: describe your favorite meal in a creative ‘Vi Hartesque’ way.

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With Thanksgiving just around the corner here in the US, it is important to know how to arrange mathed potatoes on your plate for maximum gravy. Also shown are bread spheres, butter prism, and gelatinous cranberry cylinder.

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Create a Spine-Poem and discuss your choices in doing so.

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Create a Spine-Poem and discuss your choices in doing so.

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What do you think are the most important skills a student in 2016 needs?

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What do you think are the most important skills a student in 2016 needs?

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What is your all-time favorite book? Why?

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What is your all-time favorite book? Why?

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Select any of the cue-cards from Indexed and use it to fuel your thinking for a post

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Select any of the cue-cards from Indexed and use it to fuel your thinking for a post

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PUBLISHED WEEKDAY MORNINGS as the COFFEE BREWS. FOR MORE randomness GO TO jessicahagy.info

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How does this video change the way you think about poverty? In what ways have you learned to think about poverty and potential solutions?

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How does this video change the way you think about poverty? In what ways have you learned to think about poverty and potential solutions?

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Kathleen Kerridge's family food budget is £40 per week - to feed five people. She says there is a big gap between the public perception of poverty and what it means for people like her. We should stop talking about poverty, she argues, until we know what being poor in this country really means

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I live in real poverty, and it's not what you think - video

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Kathleen Kerridge's family food budget is £40 per week - to feed five people. She says there is a big gap between the public perception of poverty and what it means for people like her.

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Watch THIS first. Narrate your own doodling.

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Watch THIS first. Narrate your own doodling.

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Doodling in Math Class: Squiggle Inception

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 What do you think are the FIVE most beautiful words you know (you may use any language, but please translate the word to English for your readers)?

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 What do you think are the FIVE most beautiful words you know (you may use any language, but please translate the word to English for your readers)?

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Words like mother and love often appear on lists of beautiful English words. But so do defenestration and lollygag. Obviously, they are not all chosen for the same reason. Some words tug at the heart, some pique the mind and others are simply euphonious. Perhaps the strangest member of the last category, the purely harmonious, is the otherwise ordinary phrase cellar door.

The claim that cellar door is beautiful to the ear - in opposition to its prosaic meaning - has been made by and attributed to a wide variety of writers over the years. "Poetry, in fact, is two quite distinct things," H. L. Mencken wrote in a 1920 magazine column. "It may be either or both. One is a series of words that are intrinsically musical, in clang-tint and rhythm, as the single word cellar-door is musical. The other is a series of ideas, false in themselves, that offer a means of emotional and imaginative escape from the harsh realities of everyday."

More recently, the superior sound of cellar door was mentioned in the 2001 movie "Donnie Darko," in which a cellar serves as a time-twisting portal. In one scene, the main character, Donnie, sees the phrase on a schoolroom chalkboard. He asks his teacher why it's on the board, and she explains that the words are thought to be especially lovely, vaguely attributing the idea to a "famous linguist."

The fantasy writer J. R. R. Tolkien, who was also a philologist, might well be the linguist she had in mind. He mentioned the idea of cellar door's special beauty in a speech in 1955 and is often given credit for it. Other supposed authors abound; the story is tangled. But Tolkien, at least, can be ruled out as the originator. He was, after all, just 11 years old in 1903 when a curious novel called "Gee-Boy" - which also alludes to the aesthetic properties of cellar door - was published by the Shakespeare scholar Cyrus Lauron Hooper. Hooper's narrator writes of the title character: "He even grew to like sounds unassociated with their meaning, and once made a list of the words he loved most, as doubloon, squadron, thatch, fanfare (he never did know the meaning of this one), Sphinx, pimpernel, Caliban, Setebos, Carib, susurro, torquet, Jungfrau. He was laughed at by a friend, but logic was his as well as sentiment; an Italian savant maintained that the most beautiful combination of English sounds was cellar-door; no association of ideas here to help out! sensuous impression merely! the cellar-door is purely American."

There is no reason to conclude that Hooper was the founder of the cellar door fan club, either, but it is notable that he used a template according to which the story often has been told since: a person of note - brainy, foreign or both - declares the sounds of cellar door to be exceptional, to the surprise of native but less discerning English speakers.

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Words like mother and love often appear on lists of beautiful English words. But so do defenestration and lollygag. Obviously, they are not all chosen for the same reason. Some words tug at the heart, some pique the mind and others are simply euphonious.

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How can Neil Gaiman’s advice for writers be useful in other ways?

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How can Neil Gaiman’s advice for writers be useful in other ways?

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Neil Gaiman: 8 Good Writing Practices - Gotham Writers Workshop

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The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you're allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it's definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written.

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Sign up with CANVA. Design something and discuss your artistic process.

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Sign up with CANVA. Design something and discuss your artistic process.

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Canva is a free-to-use online graphic design tool. Use it to create social media posts, presentations, posters, videos, logos and more.

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Create a listl

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In journalism and blogging, a listicle is a short-form of writing that uses a list as its thematic structure, but is fleshed out with sufficient copy to be published as an article.[citation needed ] A typical listicle will prominently feature a cardinal number in its title, with subsequent subheadings within the text itself reflecting this schema.

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How has technology changed the way you relate with others? Is the change for the better?

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How has technology changed the way you relate with others? Is the change for the better?

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Why Are You Ignoring My iMessages?? | Idea Channel | PBS Digital Studios

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Tweet us! http://bit.ly/pbsideachanneltwitter Idea Channel Facebook! http://bit.ly/pbsideachannelfacebook Talk about this episode on reddit! http://bit.ly/pbsideachannelreddit Idea Channel IRC! http://bit.ly/pbsideachannelirc Email us! pbsideachannel [at] gmail [dot] com Why are you ignoring my messages? Are read receipts AMAZING or INFURIATING?

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Discuss the uses of any of these creativity techniques

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Discuss the uses of any of these creativity techniques

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This A to Z of Creativity and Innovation Techniques, provides an introduction to a range of tools and techniques for both idea generation (Creativity) and converting those ideas into reality (Innovation). Like most tools these techniques all have their good and bad points.

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What are your thoughts on the uses of failure?

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What are your thoughts on the uses of failure?

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Weigh in on this intelligence squared debate.

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Weigh in on this intelligence squared debate.

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Check out this illustrated quotehttp://zenpencils.com/comic/goodall/ courtesy of Zen Pencils: review any work from Zen Pencils OR animate your own quote, and explain why that quote matters to you.

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Check out this illustrated quotehttp://zenpencils.com/comic/goodall/ courtesy of Zen Pencils: review any work from Zen Pencils OR animate your own quote, and explain why that quote matters to you.

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189. JANE GOODALL: The power of one

Dr. Jane Goodall is an environmentalist, humanitarian, author, UN Messenger of Peace and one of the most famous scientists alive. Her groundbreaking studies of chimpanzees changed our perception of our primate cousins and consequently, how humans looked at themselves.

Goodall was 23 when she first visited Africa and met the famous palaeontologist Louis Leakey. Although she didn't have a university degree, Leakey was so impressed with Goodall's knowledge of Africa and its wildlife, he hired her as his assistant. Goodall was the first of Leakey's 'Trimates' who were chosen to study primates in the wild, the other two being Diane Fossey (gorillas) and Birute Galdikas (orang-utans). In 1960, aged 26, Goodall arrived at what is now known as Gombe National Park where she began her painstaking study of chimpanzees, living among them in their natural habitat.

Besides being the first human to be accepted into a chimpanzee community, Goodall made several pioneering discoveries. She was the first to record chimpanzees eating meat (they were previously believed only to be vegetarian) and use tools for finding food. Tool making was previously one of the traits that scientists believed made humans 'special', but with Goodall's discovery that notion was shattered. Leakey famously said "Now we must redefine tool, redefine Man, or accept chimpanzees as humans." Even though some experts criticised the unscientific methods of Goodall (she later earned her Ph.D in 1965), her findings were hugely important and defined our understanding of chimpanzees.

In 1977, Goodall founded The Jane Goodall Institute, dedicated to protecting chimpanzees, preserving their habitats and improving the world we all share. In 1991, she founded Jane Goodall's Roots & Shoots, a global youth program dedicated to environmentalism, which now has over 150,000 members in 130 countries. Goodall, at 81 years old, still works tirelessly today as an advocate for the planet and its wildlife, travelling for most of the year and spreading her message.

The passage used in this comic is taken from an article Goodall wrote for Time magazine in 2002. In it, Goodall outlines the reasons for hope she has for our planet despite the overwhelming odds facing us. Thankfully, Goodall has recently updated her article for 2016, which can be read in full here.

RELATED COMICS:
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Dr. Jane Goodall is an environmentalist, humanitarian, author, UN Messenger of Peace and one of the most famous scientists alive. Her groundbreaking studies of chimpanzees changed our perception of our primate cousins and consequently, how humans looked at themselves. Goodall was 23 when she first visited Africa and met the famous palaeontologist Louis Leakey.

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Write an entry for the New York Times Editorial Competition! :

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Write an entry for the New York Times Editorial Competition! :

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We have announced our Fourth Annual Student Editorial Contest, open to student entries from March 2 to April 4, 2017.

Here are the 10 winners, 20 runners-up and 24 honorable mentions, as well as a list of all 125 finalists, for our Third Annual Student Editorial Contest.
An Overview
Every day during the school year we invite teenagers to share their opinions about questions like these - on topics from cheerleading to police tactics - and hundreds do, posting arguments, reflections and anecdotes to our Student Opinion feature.

And for the third year in a row, we're inviting you to channel that enthusiasm into something a little more formal: short, evidence-based persuasive essays like the editorials The New York Times publishes every day.

The challenge is pretty straightforward. Choose a topic you care about, gather evidence from both New York Times and non-New York Times sources, and write a concise editorial (450 words or fewer) to convince readers of your point of view.

Because editorial writing at newspapers is a collaborative process, you can write your entry as a team effort, or by yourself. When you're done, post it in the contest form below by March 29, 2016, at 11:59 p.m. Eastern.

With our judges, we will then use this rubric (PDF) to select winners to publish on The Learning Network.

As teachers know, the persuasive essay has long been a staple of high school education, but the Common Core standards seem to have put evidence-based argumentative writing on everybody's agenda. You couldn't ask for a more real-world example of the genre than the classic newspaper editorial - and The Times publishes, on average, four of them a day.

So what issue do you care about? Climate change? Sexism? Government surveillance? You decide. Then use the facts to convince us that you're right.
Contest Resources and Rules
To help with this challenge, Andrew Rosenthal, The Times's editorial page editor, made the video above, in which he details seven pointers. And we published two related lesson plans, " For the Sake of Argument: Writing Persuasively to Craft Short, Evidence-Based Editorials" and " I Don't Think So: Writing Effective Counterarguments " that offer additional teaching ideas.

We have also culled a list of our 100 most popular argumentative writing prompts, along with a longer collection of 301 prompts organized by category, to help inspire you - although, of course, you are not limited to those topics.

We encourage you to look at both our comments on last year's winners and the winning essays themselves. They can serve as excellent models, and they cover topics ranging from fighting in the N.H.L. to plastic surgery.
Rules
1. Use at least one Times source. You can write your editorial about any topic, as long as you use at least one source from The New York Times. That should pretty much open the whole world to you, as you may be surprised how much you can find in The Times.

Be advised that NYTimes.com has a digital subscription system in which readers have access to 10 free articles each month, but after that you will be asked to become a digital subscriber. However, all Times articles linked from The Learning Network, as well as The Learning Network itself, are free. That means you can use any of the articles we have linked to on this blog for the editorial contest without exceeding the 10-article limit. (The Times has also introduced a new K-12 subscription plan, which covers digital access schoolwide.)

2. Use at least one non-Times source. Make sure, however, that the source you use is a reliable one.

3. Always cite your sources. If you found evidence in an article on the Internet, link to it. If you used a print source, state the title and author, linking to additional information about it if possible. If you interviewed an expert, state his or her name and position. Readers (and judges) should always know where you got your evidence.

4. Be concise. The editorial must be no more than 450 words. Your title and list of sources are separate, however, and do not count as part of your 450-word limit.

5. Have an opinion. Editorials are different from news articles because they try to persuade readers to share your point of view. Don't be afraid to take a stand.

6. Write your editorial by yourself or with a group. If you are working as a team, just remember to submit all of your names when you post your entry. However, please submit only one editorial per student. If you're submitting as part of a team, you should not also submit as an individual.

7. Be original and use appropriate language. Write for a well-informed audience, but include enough background information to give context. Be careful not to plagiarize: Use quotation marks around lines you use verbatim from another source, or rephrase and cite your source.

8. Submissions must be from students who are 13 to 19 years old, although students can come from anywhere in the world. Unlike in previous years, students can now use their entire name if they want.

9. All entries must be submitted by March 29, 2016, at 11:59 p.m. Eastern time using the contest form above. If you have questions about the contest, please feel free to post them in the comments section as well, and we'll answer you there.

10. Follow these instructions if you need proof that you entered this contest. Within an hour of submitting your editorial, you should receive an email from "The New York Times" with the subject heading "Thank you for your submission to our Student Editorial Contest." If you don't receive the email within an hour, even after checking your spam folder, then you can resubmit your entry. Be sure your settings allow emails from nytimes.com.

After two attempts and waiting over one full day, if you still have not received a confirmation email, you can email us at lnfeedback@nytimes.com using the email address you used in the contest form with the subject heading "Please send me an email confirmation for my editorial contest submission." Be sure to include your name and editorial title (or subject) in your email. You may have to wait up to one week for a reply.

11. We will use this rubric (PDF) to judge entries, and the winning editorials will be featured on The Learning Network.
Additional Resources Suggested by Teachers
Writing an Editorial Unit Plan by Lindsay Thompson

Reader Idea | He Said, She Said, I Say: A Researched Argument Essay by Danielle Harms

Reader Idea | Using an Op-Doc Video to Teach Argumentative Writing by Allison Marchetti

Reader Idea | Using Room for Debate to Teach Argumentative Writing and Discussion Skills by Gerard Dawson and Justin Rex

Good luck and have fun. We welcome your questions and comments in case we have somehow omitted details that might be useful. Let us know how we can help.

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Our Third Annual Student Editorial Contest: Write About an Issue That Matters to You

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We have announced our Fourth Annual Student Editorial Contest, open to student entries from March 2 to April 4, 2017. Here are the 10 winners, 20 runners-up and 24 honorable mentions, as well as a list of all 125 finalists, for our Third Annual Student Editorial Contest.