GREAT ADAPTATIONS

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Pump it up
Innovation is a way of using your brain. It can be developed, pumped up, just like what happens to your muscles when you spend half an hour lifting weights.

Use it consistently
Innovation grows into an asset when it’s consistently and enthusiastically engaged. It is tied to optimism. Naturally. Why would a pessimist innovate?

We’re catching on
You’re going to be seeing this word a lot now. It’s more than a trend. It’s like a cellular mandate: Innovate or die. Our world is changed in many ways, and many more changes are coming. Not a person on this earth will be able to completely ignore the changes. Stick your head in the sand? Sorry, the sand is moving, too. The context has changed, and that means we all are changed in relationship to something.

Social media is an innovation engine
Change is like one of the pistons on the engine of innovation. And I can see how social media is the engine itself. Since social media is changing the way we communicate (whether you realize it or not), it certainly has the potential to drive change in a number of directions. Did you notice what happened with the Presidential election? Social media.

Innovation is linked to opportunities
The current crisis in all its algae blooms is opening the door for social media to create opportunities like nothing we have ever seen. We do not know exactly what happens, for example, when tens of thousands of people suddenly become unemployed, but one thing seems clear: They start paying a whole lot more attention to the online world. It’s a safe bet that people will need training, and training in the use of technology is a humongous field of gold. Social media makes training accessible, affordable, and as unique as the players who provide it.

Playful and powerful
Social media tools are very powerful; the reasons why are simple:
The tools are free or nearly free, you need no special skills to engage it (just  motivation), and it interacts with you. Not always the way you want it to, but it does respond. Social media hands the world to you on a digital platter. It asks you to come out and play. It does silly dances, swells up and crashes systems (sometimes), and beckons us all into a different kind of world.

Meet an innovator
I learned about Laura Weiss through social media. A knowledgeable innovator, she advocates some of the best practices I know of to nurture innovation from within. Her article in the Chronicle, “Innovate—and plan your own economic stimulus,” drove home several points that I spend a fair amount of time making to my readership. Here are three of them:

1. Get focused NOW
2. Leverage what you know
3. Be compassionate with yourself

Ms. Weiss presents innovation as it can be useful to the corporate mind. That’s critical to our future as a sustainably productive nation (and planet). I like to help spread the butter across a bigger slice of population. I like to see individuals realize their innovative power. And I like to use social media to further that potential.

Got Innovation?
So what’s your innovation I.Q.? Do you enjoy solving problems? Invent anything lately? Have you started that recession-proof online business? What’s in your way today?

The Secret Key
To enter the kingdom of innovation, you have to step out of your zone. Think of it as a dance, follow the little spotlight on the floor, and make it playful and energetic. Be generous with your dance steps.

And here’s the golden thought: Think of innovation as an action. Create your map to prosperity through this myriad of open roads called social media. Begin with a blog, and make it your special piece of online real estate. From there, grow your new relationships, connecting to your community through the dance of new media constantly presenting itself.

Suzanna

Get your blog up to speed (and start stimulating your own economy!)