NEWSROOM

OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLA. (May 15, 2012) – Creative Oklahoma announces the one-day Oklahoma Creativity Forum 2012 will be held on Tuesday, November 13 at the Cox Convention Center in downtown Oklahoma City.

Keynote speakers include internationally recognized creativity and education leader and author, Sir Ken Robinson, and Chairman and CEO of the XPRIZE Foundation, Peter Diamandis. “The forum is a rare opportunity to learn from some of the world’s foremost innovative leaders,” said Susan McCalmont, president of Creative Oklahoma. “The Oklahoma Creativity Forum 2012 will bring internationally renowned speakers together with Oklahoma practitioners for a dynamic conversation about how to become a more creative individual and make your school, workplace, or community a thriving environment for ideas and innovation.”

Sir Ken Robinson, Ph.D. is one of the world’s leading speakers with a profound impact on audiences everywhere. An estimated 200 million people in over 150 countries have seen the videos of his famous 2006 and 2010 talks at the prestigious TED Conference. His book, “The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything,” is a New York Times best seller and has been translated into twenty-one languages. His latest book is a 10th anniversary edition of his classic work on creativity and innovation, “Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative.” Robinson is also the founding advisor to Creative Oklahoma.

Dr. Peter Diamandis is the Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation, a non-profit focused on designing and launching large incentive prizes to drive radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity.  Diamandis is an international leader in the commercial space arena, having founded and run many of the leading entrepreneurial companies in this sector.  Diamandis is also the New York Times bestselling author of “Abundance – The Future Is Better Than You Think.”

Registration for the Oklahoma Creativity Forum 2012 will be available soon at stateofcreativity.com.

Creative Oklahoma also announces a Pre-Forum professional development workshop on November 12, 2012 that will be available to a limited number of registrants. The workshop will feature the Creative Oklahoma Experts in Residence, a group of nine Oklahoma academicians and practitioners in creativity and innovation. The workshop consists of four 90-minute in-depth sessions on creativity and innovation principles and how to apply those principles to your organization or business. Registration will be available July 1, 2012.

McCalmont added that Creative Oklahoma has year-round initiatives that encourage innovation in Oklahoma. The State of Creativity Awards program includes: Creative SPARKS!, awarding grants to Oklahoma students and their schools; Great Inspirations, recognizing inspiring past or current innovations by Oklahomans that contribute to the greater good; Oklahoma Innovation Prize, sponsored by SandRidge Energy, is a new award granting cash prizes to high school, college, and post-college youth for new ideas or innovations that address needs in the community, state, nation, or world. The Oklahoma Creativity Ambassador program honors nationally and internationally known Oklahomans for their creative contributions.

Other initiatives include the launch of the Oklahoma Innovation Challenge Index, a cross-sector project to investigate the creative inputs into Oklahoma K-12 education; the Oklahoma Creative Communities project, a creative-problem-solving initiative for Oklahoma rural communities; and the Oklahoma ArtScience Prize, a high-school after-school program using collaborative, aspirational thinking to resolve global issues. Additionally, Creative Oklahoma has been instrumental in changing public perceptions of Oklahoma through the national public television documentary series, ReCreating America, by award-winning producer David Kennard; educational workshops and webinars with renowned creativity experts; creation of the National Creativity Network, a network of 15 creative districts in the US and Canada; and representation as the only North American region in the 14 member international Districts of Creativity Network.

About Creative Oklahoma:
Formed in 2006, Creative Oklahoma is a statewide non-profit organization advancing Oklahoma’s creative economy through creativity and innovation based initiatives in education, commerce and culture. The mission is to transform the state of Oklahoma through projects and collaborative ventures that help develop a more entrepreneurial and vibrant economy and an improved life quality for its citizens. For more information please visit stateofcreativity.com.

###

Media Contact:
Meg Jackson at 405.232.5573
meg@stateofcreativity.com

By April Hill - KMRG

Oklahoma ranks third on a new list of best places to run a small business.

The national survey of small business owners was conducted by the Kauffman Foundation, an organization that promotes entrepreneurship.

Researchers talked to more than 275,000 small business owners.

The state ranked the third-best in the nation for small business creation, receiving an A or A+ for things like ease of starting a small business, cost of hiring a new employee, friendliness of regulations and tax code.

Oklahoma City was the number one city for overall small business friendliness.

Clay Clark owns DJ connection in Tulsa.

He says the big reason he has been successful is because of the workforce available to him.

Clark tells KRMG, “Because we don’t have the super super generous welfare, even though it’s more than I’d like, I think it does encourage people to get off the couch and move.

Listen to entire interview with business owner Clay Clark.

Clark says he started out poor, but was motivated to make more money than the welfare system had to offer.

He started a business out of a small bedroom apartment near 71st and Lewis in 1999 and now owns part of nine businesses in Tulsa.

He says strength in Oklahoma is city leaders who are willing to act quickly on granting permits.

“Usually about three months from the time you apply to the time that you start building. Where as, in other cities, I mean, it’s years.”

Clay believes lowering the state’s income tax would encourage even more people to open small businesses here.

Opponents say that would cut into money needed for important state programs like education.

Governor Mary Fallin says, “I’m now seeking further reforms to make Oklahoma more business friendly.  Simplifying our tax code and lowering the income tax rate will make us more competitive with neighboring states while letting families keep more of their hard-earned money.“

 

New technology in iPhone audio app speeds up training audio from videos and audio files that help individuals learn faster, save time, and even retain the information better.

Edmond, OK (PRWEB) April 27, 2012 - Cory Boatright and his team of experts have put their heads together to create the ultimate speed listening iPhone audio app . The acclaimed iTalkFast audio enhancing utility application will revolutionize modern day auditory learning. In this fast paced world the best audio application on the market promises to give back more of the worlds most precious commodity, time. Boatright, an expert at time management and educational tools for success, has implemented state of the art listening technology and placed it at the virtual fingertips of every technological device known to man.

 

The professional research team over at iTalkfast invite users to explore this new and exciting way to make the best use of the valuable gift of time. iTalkFast is an iPhone player that is designed to allow users to listen to favorite Podcasts or Audio books (that are not DRM protected) at 2.5 times the normal speed. In addition to learning benefits, users also get access to these great features; playing audio files using Dropbox, creating custom playlists, recording bookmarks tracked to audio second with edit/save/email notes, setting of sleep timers, quick searches for favorite musical artists, recording capability of personal voice and notes and the convenient ability to share audios on Facebook and Twitter.

The truth is that iTalkfast is simply the best audio player that saves time and energy while training the brains natural ability to process words faster. According to a recently published article entitled The Key To Optimal Learning Capability, “Regular Speed Listening … produces a much denser synapses network (a neural pathway with much more connection points between cells), capable of higher volume and higher speed of communication between brain cells. Studies have shown that reading and listening programs using advanced computer based technology can stimulate brain cells development and enhance 19 brain functions, improving the basis point of one’s IQ by 5% to 25%.”

Cory dares to ask the question, what is the inherit value of time in our society? A thought-provoking question to be sure and one that is too easily brushed aside in the rush for … lack of time. There is a well-publicized story by an unknown author relatable to many who strive to squeeze the maximum value from the time clock each day. The story is entitled Have You Been To The Bank? “ Imagine there is a bank that credits your account each morning with 86,400. It carries over no balance from day to day. Every evening deletes whatever part of the balance you failed to use during the day. What would you do? Draw out every cent, of course! Each of us has such a bank. Its name is TIME. Every morning, it credits you with 86,400 seconds. Every night it writes off, as lost, whatever of this you have failed to invest to good purpose. It carries over no balance. It allows no overdraft. Each day it opens a new account for you. Each night it burns the remains of the day. Invest it so as to get from it the utmost in health, happiness, and success!”

To learn more about how to get the most out of the iTalkfast mobile app click here http://italkfast.com/. For more information about Cory Boatright contact 888-476-4114 or email cory[at]italkfast.com.

By RICHARD FLORIDA - The Atlantic Cities

 

The human imagination is a bewildering process. How the brain comes up with great ideas is mysteriously complex.

Jonah Lehrer‘s ambitious new book, Imagine: How Creativity Works, takes a fascinating dive into the world of creativity and how it all works, not to mention devoting a chapter entirely to cities.

Lehrer recently took some time to chat withAtlantic Cities and expand on his ideas concerning the nexus of creativity and cities.

You title your chapter on cities “Urban Friction”and you go on to talk about the pioneering work of Geoffrey West, Luis Bettencourt, and their colleagues at the Santa Fe Institute on “urban metabolism.” How is it that cities come to stimulate and enhance our creativity abilities?

I think the basic logic was outlined long ago by one of our mutual heroes, Jane Jacobs. She attempted to understand the city by stepping out her front door, analyzing a stretch of Hudson Street in the Village. Jacobs compared the crowded sidewalk to a spontaneous “ballet,” filled with people from different walks of life. While urban planners had long derided such neighborhoods for their inefficiencies – that’s why Robert Moses, the “master builder” of New York, wanted to build an eight lane elevated highway through Soho and the Village – Jacobs argued that these casual exchanges were essential. She saw the city not as a mass of buildings, but as a vessel of empty spaces, in which people interacted with other people.

These sidewalk conversations came with real benefits. According to Jacobs, the virtue of Hudson Street was that it encouraged the “mingling of diversity,” allowing city dwellers to easily exchange information. The end result was a constant churn of ideas, as strangers learned from each other – “knowledge spillovers.”

What’s interesting is that the sheer disorder of the metropolis maximizes the amount of spillover. As Jacobs once wrote, “By its nature, the metropolis provides what otherwise could be given only by traveling; namely, the strange.” Cities force us to interact with strangers and with the strange. They pry the mind open. And that is why they are the idea that has unleashed so many of our new ideas.

The Talking Heads are one of my favorite bands, and you have a terrific section on the band’s brilliant frontman, David Bryne, who says the city is like a giant “sonic blender,” with “every street a mix tape.” Cities have long been hotbeds of musical and artistic innovation, but do you see any connection between this and their role in stimulating technological innovation and economic progress?

I see it as resulting from the same basic phenomenon, which is that blending of knowledge into new forms. In the book, David (one of my favorite musicians, too) talks about how he’d bicycle around downtown Manhattan, eavesdropping on all the different forms of music playing late at night. There were Latin jazz clubs and Nigerian music halls, punk rock at CBGB and whatever was playing at the Warhol Factory. His genius was to blend all these sounds together.

While it’s tempting to discount these urban interactions – what could possibly emerge from a late night bicycle ride? – they actually come with impressive payoffs. Look, for instance, at astudy led by Adam Jaffe, an economist at Brandeis University. He analyzed the paper trail of patent citations, which is the list of previous inventions cited in every patent application. Jaffe found that innovation is largely a local process, so that citations are nearly ten times as likely to come from the same metropolitan area as a control patent. This suggests that inventors are inspired by other inventors in their neighborhood, even when the research involves entirely unrelated subjects.

And this logic doesn’t just apply to patents. David Byrne, after all, wasn’t influenced by the Latin rhythms of some distant musician. Instead, Byrne was seduced by his local dance clubs, blasting those songs he could hear from the sidewalk. It is the sheer density of the city – the proximity of all those overlapping minds – that makes it such an inexhaustible source of creativity.

Silicon Valley has long been seen as the model of high-tech development. One writer called it a “nerdistan” of sprawling highways and office parks, tremendously dependent on the car and lacking the density, walkability, fabric and texture of great urban centers. Why and how exactly does it work?

It’s true that Silicon Valley looks like the West Coast antithesis of Jane Jacob’s Greenwich Village. And yet, I’d argue that culture of Silicon Valley manages to replicate the essential function of a dense city, which is to foster a diversity of interactions and knowledge spillovers. As Annalee Saxenian points out in her wonderful book, Regional Advantage Silicon Valley has managed for decades to foster the sort of cross-cutting connections that are essential for innovation. Because the San Jose area has traditionally consisted of small and fledgling startups, these firms have traditionally had to collaborate on projects and share engineers. As a result, it wasn’t uncommon for a scientist at Cisco to be friends with someone at Oracle, or for a co-founder of Intel to offer management advice to a young executive at Apple. These networks often led to high employee turnover, as people jumped from project to project: In the 1980s, for instance, the average tenure at a Silicon Valley company was less than two years.

Jane Jacobs might have frowned upon the sprawl of these California suburbs, but the engineers and scientists have managed to create their own version of Greenwich Village. They don’t bump into each other on the crowded sidewalk or gossip on the stoop of a brownstone. It’s not the ballet of Hudson Street, but it’s still a dance, and it’s the dance that matters.

Recently we’ve seen evidence of the rise of urban centers like New York, London, even Berlin as high-tech startup centers. Do you see a shift away from the nerdistan model of high-tech and toward a more urban tech?

I just find it slightly ironic that even the researchers inventing all these wonderful tools that allow us to interact remotely, such as email and Skype and Facetime, still organize themselves into local clusters. They know that they need to constantly interact in person, which is why they pay the exorbitant rents of Mountain View or San Francisco or Brooklyn. The city, it turns out, isn’t obsolete. Not even close.

Cities, especially big, world-class cities, are notoriously expensive and getting more so. Will this effect their ability to spur creativity?

Absolutely. If I might quote Jacobs one last time: “Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.” She might have been exaggerating a bit, but Jacobs point was that the most innovative people tend to cluster in the cheaper (and older) parts of town.Stewart Brand made a similar point in How Buildings Learn, as he explored the intertwined relationship between so-called Low Road Buildings – think of the Silicon Valley garage or MIT’s famed Building 20 - and the birth of many great ideas.

Cheap rents are part of the explanation, but they’re not the only thing that matters. These Low-Road spaces also tend to be flexible, allowing creative tinkerers to remake the room in their image.

I think we need to ensure that we don’t surrender too much of our cities to the loveliness of upscale boutiques, fancy espresso bars and high-end restaurants. Money in a metropolis typically buys isolation – we get a little peace of mind and our very own parking space – but the creativity of a city depends on our constantly mixing and mingling.

That said, I have no doubt that the best cities will always maintain a few Low Road neighborhoods. The Greenwich Village described by Jacobs ceased to exist decades ago – longshoreman no longer loiter in the bars alongside poets – but New York City has continued to supply its poor creators with a wealth of other spaces. There was Soho and then Soho became a mall. Williamsburg was hip until it was too hip. Nevertheless, there are still so many corners left in Chinatown and Brooklyn and Queens and the Bronx. When people start complaining that all the suffering artists in Staten Island are being evicted by yuppies, I’ll start to worry. Until then, I have little doubt that our cities will manage to survive the problem of too many rich people.

Photo credit: Vladitto / Shutterstock.com

 

By Dorie Clark, Contributor – Forbes

How would you like to make your team more creative, productive, committed, and collegial? It’s completely possible, says Harvard Business School professor Teresa Amabile – and it doesn’t require handing out huge bonuses. Instead, as she argues in her book The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work (co-authored with Steven Kramer), it’s a matter of focusing on the right things – namely, ensuring your employees feel a sense of progress at work. “On the days when people are feeling happiest, proudest, and most motivated,” she says, “the single most prominent event in those days is making progress in meaningful work.”

But, she says, “Most managers don’t have a clue about how important progress is.” Indeed, in an international survey she conducted, only 5% of managers correctly identified it as the #1 factor in creating fulfilled, engaged employees. “I think it might be because managers think progress is what people are supposed to do,” says Amabile. “They might say, ‘They’re supposed to do their work, so of course they’re going to make progress, and it’s not what I have to worry about as a manager.’ But they need to worry about it a lot.”

A sense of forward momentum is actually critical to humans’ psychological health. “We all have a need to feel effective in making things happen in the world,” says Amabile, “and work is centrally important for most people.” Through her extensive research – following 238 creative knowledge workers and collecting nearly 12,000 individual daily reports from them – she developed a real-time portrait of what matters to employees and helps them do their best work. Feeling a sense of progress can create a virtuous feedback loop where work feels enjoyable, leading to more creative success, which makes work even more enjoyable.

The impact of this positive spiral can be dramatic. “On those days when people are feeling most deeply engaged in their work, they’re most likely to perform well,” says Amabile, who is also Research Director at Harvard Business School. “We found that if people are in a better mood on one day, they’re more likely to come up with creative ideas on that day – and thenext day, regardless of the next day’s mood. There’s a carryover effect, an incubation effect, so that when you’re in a good mood, there seems to be a cognitive process that gets going where you’re making connections between things, which can show up in a new idea or a creative solution to a problem.”

So how can you harness “the progress principle” to improve your team’s creativity and performance? Here are three things you can do today.

Outline clear goals. No one can hope to make progress if they don’t know what they’re working toward.  Make sure your employees understand what you’re trying to achieve, why those goals matter, and how their contribution helps. And if your goals change, be sure to tell them – or, even better, bring them into the process so they understand what’s going on.

Give them autonomy. Clear goals are good – telling employees precisely how to achieve them isn’t. “When some managers hear about the need for goal clarity, they think it means they need to micromanage,” says Amabile. On the contrary, letting employees determine the best way to proceed helps them build skills, flex their creativity, and feel a sense of agency.

Set an example of support. Amabile’s research showed that little things can have an outsized impact on employees’ attitude toward work. So set an example for your team by giving compliments liberally and letting people know you appreciate their efforts. “You can get a positive contagion effect going if you treat your co-workers with respect,” says Amabile. With just a few words, “you’ll boost the inner work life of the person you say it to, and in turn, that can enhance how you feel at work.”

How do you help your employees feel a sense of progress? What strategies can you share?

Dorie Clark is CEO of Clark Strategic Communications and the author of the forthcoming Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future (Harvard Business Review Press, 2012). She is a strategy consultant who has worked with clients including Google, Yale University, and the Ford Foundation. Listen to her podcasts or follow her on Twitter.