“The old ideas don’t work – and they shouldn’t because they are from  the past – and the problems rushing at us are in the present and are coming from the future.” P.41

Warning: You cannot read this book and come away uninspired. This is a truly wonderful read. The impact the book had on me was to continue to write in the margins — ideas that seemed to bubble up as I walked through this journey with Joey Reiman. Need inspiration? Read this book!

The following are some of my favorite excerpts:

“Ideas are what matters most in business, in life, and in society.” P. 12

“We live at a time when creative people can transform cultures in ways that used to be unimaginable.” P.14

I’ve got a bunch of flags on my boat. But there ain’t no white flags.” P.24.

“THE EMPIRES OF THE FUTURE ARE THE EMPIRES OF THE MIND.” — Winston Churchill.

“Lazy marketing creates a monologue with customers while an experience creates a dialogue.” P.60

“The best way to create a high-quality idea is to create a high-quantity of ideas. And the best way to do this is to think. Thinking takes time, so the longest stage of the ideation process is incubation.” P. 64

“If you want to find the answer, ask as many questions as possible.” P.66

ld, we  need to think in a nonlinear fashion because change is nonlinear.” P. 109

“Bastions of procedure create idea anorexia — thoughts that think they are big are really small.” P.110

“Anyone afraid of destroying the old to get to the new never will be able to achieve a worthwhile, breakthrough innovation.” P. 110

“The culture says, “Don’t think outside the square, or you may find yourself outside the company.” This is the kind of culture that rewards stodgy thinking and dull, safe ideas. At the same time, it strangles great thinking.” P.110

“Companies and environments that have a certain way of doing things – that are stuck in a rut of routine thinking – will undo any possibility of having breakthrough ideas.” P. 110

“Big ideas don’t appear, they evolve.” P. 66

“The biggest hurdle the human race faces now is finding a way to create as dynamic and nurturing an environment as possible on a global scale. The scary thing is we need to do it now more than ever before. The encouraging thing is we can do it now more than ever before.” P. 188

“The more we’re idea driven, entrepreneurial, open to opportunity, creating ideas, reinventing ourselves, the more we grow. The more we stifle ideas, sit on our lead, repeat ourselves, depend on a single model, the more we stagnate.” P. 189

“The inescapable truth of the twenty-first century will be that stupidity and stagnation will exact a price we can no longer afford to pay.” p.190

“Imagine children being taught that it’s more important to question than to provide an answer.” P. 191

Joey Reiman lives what he writes. Required reading for creative folks — once a year for life.

Sometimes, language blows my brain up – blows my hair back. I am going to get to an extensive review of this book here in a few days:  Smart World – Breakthrough Creativity and the new Science of Ideas by Richard Ogle – Harvard Business School Press Boston, MA USA Copyright © 2007 by Richard Ogle.

Until I do, blow your hair back with the essence of the following excerpt:

Imagination is not the poor cousin of reason, trafficking in desire-driven fantasy, dreaming, and delusion, but rather, as Fauconnier and Turner show, the very basis on which intelligent, sense-making thought builds. Independently, the philosopher Colin McGinn has reached a similar conclusion in his recent book Mindsight, arguing that without the faculty of imagination, there could be no thought, rational or otherwise. To think intelligently is to create webs of meaning about how the world might be, and this is the work of imagination. Reason follows, creating the rational links and chains of inference that validate and extend our knowledge of reality. Fundamentally we are, as McGinn asserts, Homo imaginans. P. 72

Photography by Bill Dahl – All Rights Reserved – 2010

“First, everyone should be a heretic. Our times demand it. These are not times for conventional wisdom. New ideas for new times are needed now. All around us imaginative people are rethinking and re-imagining the possibilities of what it means to be human.”

Burke, Spencer and Taylor, Barry A Heretics Guide to Eternity, Copyright © 2006 by Spencer Burke. JOSSEY-BASS Publishers, A Wiley Imprint P. 225

Human beings are the only creatures capable of recognizing the gap between what they are and what they can be expected to be, and of being embarrassed by that gap.

Kushner, Harold S.  How good do we have to be-A New Understanding of Guilt and Forgiveness, Little, Brown and Company Boston, MA  Copyright 1996 by Harold S. Kushner p. 35

“Today, more than ever, we need people with the courage to tell the plain truth. We need brave men and women who refuse to trumpet platitudes, or take stale ideas off the rack. That is why we must cherish those people who have the guts to speak the truth: mavericks, whistle-blowers, disturbers of the public peace.

Hamill, Pete Words Worth Fighting For, Fast Company Magazine, Issue Number 86, September 2004, © 2004 by Gruner + Jahr USA Publishing p.90-91

“If outsiders stop listening, we cannot just turn up the volume.”

P. 84 Kinnaman, David & Lyons, Gabe UNchristian – What A New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity…And Why It Matters Baker Books Grand Rapids, MI Copyright 2007 by Dabvid Kinnaman and Fermi Project.

“We live in an age of heretics: an age where unconventional ideas become conventional wisdom rapidly. And that’s a good thing. Because the future of industrial society depends upon our ability to transcend the destructive management of the past and build a better kind of future. That doesn’t mean embracing every unconventional idea. Nor does it mean flouting authority. A heretic is someone who sees a truth that contradicts the conventional wisdom.” Pp. 3-4 And yet corporate heretics may be the closest thing we have, in our self-contradictory time, to a true conscience of large organizations. Many of them have lost their jobs or failed to reach their potential because they would not turn back from the truth they saw. Despite all of these frustrations, it is better to be a heretic than to have one’s soul wither through the denial of a truth. And in the end, the corporations of our time are much, much better because heretics existed.” Pp. 13-14.

The Age of Heretics – The History of Radical Thinkers Who Reinvented Corporate Management: Copyright © 2008 by Art Kleiner – Published by Jossey-Bass: