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150 Power Up Your Mind

increasingly being referred to as intrapreneurs and being given the
support and encouragement they need to turn their ideas into new
products and services. Individuals are becoming brands in their own
right. Richard Branson was an early example of this phenomenon,
which is now becoming much more widespread.
Markets are dominated by ideas that, in John Grant’s words,
“catch on like viruses.” Good recent examples of these are products
such as the iMac, Pokemon, Volkswagen’s New Beetle, Starbucks,
Hotmail, and concepts like “organic” and “wired.”

What do you think? What would your list of characteristics look like? Were you taught to be
creative at school or college? Are you taught to be creative at work?
Who are the most creative people you know at work? At home? What makes them stand out?
Are you actively seeking to acquire some of the characteristics listed above?
What are you doing to identify the intrapreneurs within your organization?
What viral products or concepts have caught your imagination recently?

THEVALUEOF IDEAS

The capacity to learn and the capacity to generate ideas are linked
to our prosperity. If we want to be smarter and more successful, we
will want to know more about these processes.
My own view is that to be creative, you need both concen-
trated periods of activity and concentrated periods of apparent
inactivity. It is possible to achieve flow in both situations, and it is
one of the enjoyable mysteries of creativity that you never know
when a great thought is going to come to fruition.
While I was writing this book, I interviewed a number of
business leaders from a range of organizations. I asked them all
where they had their best ideas. Not one of them said that they had
their best ideas at work. Many of them gathered inspiration from
those around them and from their work outside their main job.
Each of them, in different ways, talked about moments of flow or
relaxation when they were elsewhere. They often described the
social processes in nurturing ideas.
Colin Marshall is clear about his creativity: