A MESSAGE FROM OUR EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR As we come to the end of another financial year, we will spend the next few weeks analyzing our results, but more importantly looking into the future with great optimism. At the start of the calendar year 2007, we said that our watch word for this year is ‘LIFTING THE BAR’ i.e. TO RAISE OUR STANDARDS. One of the ways to achieve this is to welcome from all employees new ideas. We now quote from Chic Thompson, “What a Great Idea”, and the article on ‘Creativity Today - The Innovative Mind Set’ Most of us are not naturally born innovators or visionaries. Indeed, by nature, most people resist change and innovation. For example, in 1899, the nation’s steward of innovation- the director of the U.S. Patent Office- said that ‘everything that can be invented has been invented.’ He then proceeded to request that the Patent Office be dismantled and that he be transferred to a new position in government. To foster change and creativity, to establish an organization where, quoting Jack Welch, CEO of General Electric, ‘people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody,’ we need to make idea generation and idea implementation firmly ingrained habits. A mind-set, if you will. To produce this idea friendly frame of mind, we need to understand and honor the creative inventors, thinkers, writers, leaders and artists. Great ideas grow in organizations with a vision, a mind-set devoted to innovation and continuous improvement- to finding a better way everyday. And this outlook must be acknowledged the primacy of the individual imagination- of creative freedom. As a teacher of creativity to audiences around the world, I have had the opportunity to interview and survey more than ten thousand senior executives and researchers in private and public organizations. My work has consisted largely of helping creative people gain access to universal ways of discovering new ideas. In this book you’ll learn proven, flexible techniques that can help you or your organization generate ideas immediately. At the same time, you will probably become empowered to make creativity a more conscious and powerful part of your life and work. You’re already abundantly creative. The techniques that follow can allow you greater freedom to understand, access, enjoy and use that creativity. By cultivating our creative freedom, we can all join more fully in the underlying movement of this decade and the coming century. We begin, as we end, with recognition of the free human spirit, one of the greatest of the world’s truly great ideas.