Innovation, Brainstorming and Creativity Software | ThoughtOffice Innovation Solutions

Mindmap: Embed links in ThoughtOffice Session

2008-01-04T18:20:33-08:00

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Mind-mapping & creativity software by ThoughtOffice: video tutorial. How to add hyperlinks to a ThoughtOffice brainstorming session: link to documents, web sites, & add images. Free 15-day trial: www.ThoughtOffice.com Brainstorming Software

2007-12-27T01:18:23-08:00

Mind Maps Get Smart -- ThoughtOffice Adds Intelligence to Popular Brainstorming Solutions

We've just started using ThoughtOffice to storyboard ideas for our new Online Media broadcasting business, RichContent.com

ThoughtOffice Advertising Software Released

2007-09-29T21:29:35-07:00

Check out our take on ThoughtOffice Advertising Software... and let me know your thoughts.

Advertising And Storyboarding Software Brings Creative Process to the Desktop: Design Tool Yields Ads That Rise Above the Noise

ThoghtOffice Mentioned on Mindware...

2007-09-18T07:18:12-07:00

Bruce Eisner took a swing at sharing some of the cool features in the newest version of ThoughtOffice on his blog.

You can get a view of it here at the Mindware Forum.

Thanks for the great insights, and the IdeaFisher reference, Bruce!

Brainstorming Takes Courage...

2007-07-23T16:07:21-07:00

Brave - not exactly the first thing you think of when it comes to brainstorming, creativity, innovation.

But in reality, you're laughing in the face of convention.

Creatives, and the creative process, are often looked at as either:

1) Some weird, unpredictable and unplannable occurrence... the hand of God touching a select few at just the right moment, or...

2) Those freaks in your Advertising department.

Now, given those two definitions, don't you think it takes some cajones to speak out with an unconventional concept... an unproven idea?

That's one reason we built the Branding, Copyright and Author fields into ThoughtOffice. because more often than not, the truly creative idea ought to be both credited to its author, and tracked to its mother. (you remember, The Mother of Invention? Yeah, like Frank Zappa's band).

So... there's a lot more we could address on this subject... but in the interim, I'd love to have a few of your horror stories, and grand successes in sharing your creative ideas.

And I'll do a bit of my own on the next post.

To your wildly creative success,
Mark Alan Effinger
Chief Creatographer

The Creative's 11th Hour...

2007-04-06T22:02:15-07:00

"It goes on and on and on and on..." croons Steve Perry.

Yup. The development team and I are sequestered in Skyrocket Developments Open Source Lab, pushing code snippets of PHP, Perl, HTML and javascript through their paces...

It works. It's broke.

It works! Yea!

We're in the midst of developing the final interface and broadcast technologies for RichContent Media Momentum. It's a media optimization and distribution engine for "rich content": video, audio, images and text.

We've been developing it over the last few years, with real focus coming together this last 18 months.

Why? And what the heck does this have to do with the creative process?

Because we need to do this. And: Lots.

I founded an ecommerce company in 1998, and sold it in 1999. Then divorced and went through the whole rewriting of my life and hard drive.

I had a budget of $2500-$3000 per month for purchasing domains back then (those were the days of $70 domains).

I wasn't speculating. I wanted to build that many companies (as an internet incubator).

One of those names was ExitPath.com (because I've started and sold a business every 18-36 months ever since 1986). PerfectCars.com (because I love automobiles... even started a performance electric car company in '96 called LightningRods). Liquid8.com (building that this year).

So here we are in 2007. Broadband is ubiquitous. Google and Microsoft are building datacenters just 90 minutes away from us here in Portland.

And RichContent can now come out and play. And optimized correctly, good rich content will get your web site on top of the rankings, and saturate the search engines in less than 7 days.

And that's important.

If you're an online retailer. Or a brick and mortar player competing with industry giants. Or a politician who is underfunded.

So it goes live next week. And you'll get to see how ThoughtOffice helped our team develop, brand, expand-on and clarify this process.

So... watch this space for more on the launch, and why so much creativity comes down to the last pass, the final 4, the 11th hour.

Best of success to you,
Mark Alan Effinger
EntreVangelist.

Right and Left brain - Surprising Broca

2007-02-04T20:38:11-08:00

I just returned for the third time from Wizard Academy (thanks to David McInnis, CEO and Founder of PRWeb). It's my favorite place to jog the noggin' into high-gear, while working and playing with other really amazing and bright cohorts.

My experience this time helped to clarify ThoughtOffice, and how it presents two disparate brainstorming methods into one cohesive system:

1) Systematic Process. Topics, fleshed-out by industry experts, are organized by questions. Each top level question drills deeper into a specific area of the topic, helping the user gain clarity and open the mind to possibilities. This "drill-down and clarify" process is enhanced with

2) Associative Thinking. This is an open-ended exploration based on keywords and concepts. By plugging a word into the IdeaBrowser, the user accesses a database of over 7 million words, phrases, associations, images and linguistic elements all within 6-degrees association of the search term.

These two opposing approaches (drill down and expansive search) combine to form a holistic approach to creating new ideas and solutions.

It utilizes the three common exploratory frameworks:

what we know,
what we don't know, and
what we don't know we don't know.

It brings complex ideas into focus, then expands on the idea in hundreds of ways to help drive real solutions.

The program also organizes your responses into a very clear outline, complete with images, links and rich text. The final document drives the process from creativity to productivity.

That last part is a big component of what we're doing here.

I've learned that our process is the core of effective learning.

Not rote learning, not memorization.

But the organic process by which the human mind creates, synergizes, synthesizes ideas.

It's an interesting process clarified by Roy Williams at the academy. If you want to get some idea of what I'm talking about, I highly recommend you subscribe to his Monday Morning Memo. It's a nice slice of creative pie every Sunday evening about midnight.

Very useful.

I'll cover Broca (or more importantly, "surprising broca") a little later. Suffice to say, if you want to learn anything, you better exercise this cerebral pathway to the max.

best to your creative success,
Mark Alan Effinger
IdeaWizard

Great Creative Rarely Happens...

2007-02-01T08:05:48-08:00

At least, it rarely happens by chance.

Sure, you take cues from nature. Develop by blending existing elements into something new and unusual (gives the user some familiar elements to use as reference as you pull them forward into YOUR new innovation).

Waiting for the big lightbulb to go off and that killer idea to stream in is probably not the most effective solution.

But neither is working directly on the problem until you pass out.

What works most reliably appears to be a mixed blend of

pushing through creative blocks,
exploring alternative solutions, and
getting away from the problem to allow the mind to explore all of the possible options.

I have some examples we'll put together on this in a future post.

But for the moment, think on how you've developed your greatest breakthroughs. Go WAYYY back and think about the past element that leapt into the process and provided the epiphany that gave you the final, workable, winning innovation.

Have a great, creative week. Let's talk tomorrow.

best,
Mark Alan Effinger
Creative Catalyst
ThoughtOffice Corporation

Peter Pan & Superman...

2007-01-22T22:41:58-08:00

Oh, how I wish I was clever enough to have crafted that headline,
Maybe next year.

What I would like to do is invite all of you to check out The Monday Morning Memo by Roy Williams. This week's is especially valuable when it comes to Associative Thinking and "6-degrees of separation".

I'm going to take the liberty, as a graduate of the Wizard Academy, to post Roy's missive here... but please visit his site, read the complete memo (it's short... maybe 2-3 minutes to read at a conversational speed).

The focus on pattern Recognition is worth it to clarifying your creative process.

Pattern recognition is an important function of the right hemisphere of your brain.
Grouping is a form of pattern recognition.

The Atomists of the late 1800's believed the nature of things to be absolute and not dependent on context. Gestalt theorists disagreed. They believed the human mind instinctively creates wholes out of incomplete elements and that the nature of a thing is greatly altered by its context.

You've likely never heard of the Atomists. This is because they were wrong.
The Gestalt Theorists, however, were right. They said that humanity's instinctive grouping of characteristics causes us to interpret things in predictable ways.

The laws of organization that determine grouping are:
(1) proximity – items will be grouped according to their nearness
(2) similarity – items similar in some respect will be grouped together
(3) closure – items will be grouped to complete a larger entity
(4) simplicity – items will be organized into simple figures according to symmetry,
regularity, and smoothness.

Understand these laws of organization* and you will:
(A.) enlarge your power to transfer perception, communicate.
(B.) accelerate your ability to solve problems.

Now, I won't go into a pitch here. But you can see how lateral and associative thinking aligns with this applied theory.

More on associative thinking later this week.

To your creative success!
Mark Alan Effinger

From Monumental to Incremental...

2007-01-19T08:15:00-08:00

Anyone who knows me well knows I have this sort of overarching personal mission:

"To make a Monumental Improvement in Every Life I Touch".

Now that sounds really big and all, but it's not.

Mostly because I "fail" at that every day.

Monumental's a big word. Four syllables, usually reserved for descriptions of climbing Everest or performing face transplants.

But it does have a nice rhythm: Mon-you-men-tel.

What I've learned over the last 20 years in business is that you can make a few very small, incremental improvement's, changes, comments, ideas... and the end result is often more than cumulative.

There appears to be a lever "out there". Syncronicity almost always comes into being. People show up. Things happen. Momentum begins to take hold.

Suddenly you're not driving this thing... it's sort of on auto-pilot. Not completely, but enough that you can step away at times and just watch. And be amazed.

The gist of this post?

Do something incremental today. In fact, do a few incrementally positive and creative things. Write them down in your mental memory bank. And watch.

Get back to me in a week, a month, or a year. Let me know which of those incremental improvements has suddenly taken on a life of its own.

To your monumental success,
Mark Alan Effinger

P.S. The image at the link below ought to be changing and moving as an example of Time Synchronicity. Here's the explanation provided by Jim Levin:

A Time Gestalt, Principle Example: Synchronicity

When the animation stops, hold down the "Shift" key and push the "reload" or "refresh" button to start it again. If an animation never starts, check your browser preferences and turn on "Animated GIFs" and "Allow looping".