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Idea generation and creative thinking in the workplace

Research within creative thinking conducted by the mobile telephone company Sony Ericsson in England has revealed that 81 % of men and women working primarily within the field of IT and bio technology get their best ideas outside the office - particularly when driving their cars, or when lying in bed.

The results of the survey also show that 80 % believed that thought meetings helped, and even more believed that thought brainstorms were a good vehicle for creative thinking. Edward de Bono - creative guru and originator of the well-known De Bono thinking hats - is, however, not that keen on brainstorms that focus on generating unlimited numbers of ideas within a short time period. Instead, De Bono suggests other approaches that can enhance creative thinking in the workplace. Like, for example:

• allocating creative thinking time
• designating one person at work as a "new ideas champion"
• introducing formal creative training
• dedicating specific work areas for idea generation
• reorganising office layouts to enhance working relationships
• brain-priming exercises, where you focus on a problem, move on to something else, then come back to it

You can read more about the Sony Ericsson survey and De Bono's various suggestions here >>

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Test of unconscious thoughts and prejudice

Sometimes we consciously keep our opinions to ourselves. Other times we are simply not conscious about our attitudes. This field between consciousness and unconsciousness has been the research area for the two American psychologists Banaji and Greenwald from Harvard Faculty and the University of Washington respectively within the past 20 years. A couple of years ago they went together with legal scholar Linda Hamilton Krieger from the University of California in order to look further into the legal boundaries for discrimination and what they call "implicit prejudice".

One of the results of this work is the Implicit Association Test (IAT). The test helps uncovering unconscious attitudes and prejudice towards, for example, gender, age, race, handicap, sexuality and religion. The test has revealed that quite ordinary people - including the researchers themselves - that in no way express, appear to be or regard themselves as being prejudicial have negative associations towards particular social groups etc.

What do you think - are you free from prejudice towards, for example women and careeer, fat and thin people, skin colours and foreign names, mathematics versus art? You can test all this for free on the researchers' website. There you can use their demonstration test , or you can contribute to their research project as an active participant.

Read more about the project and test yourself at: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/

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Meditation cd for maintaining your daily balance

WOLIBA stands for WOrk-LIfe-BAlance and is a web shop with courses, cd's, DVD's and other tools that can help people obtain and maintain their balance in their everyday life.

Among their cd collection is a newly released Danish cd, "Guide til meditation", by MSc Bjarne Nybo, who has 16 years of business experience, 4 of them as CEO. Bjarne Nybo has himself during the past 10 years used and worked with meditational exercises, and is a certified meditation instructor from The Chopra Centre, USA, where he was a student of the world famous doctor and author Deepak Chopra.

As a business manager Bjarne Nybo has himself experienced what positive difference meditation makes both workwise and privately - and also knows how the continuous lack of time to read books and attend courses often prevents many people from finding out what meditation in fact is.

"Guide til meditation" therefore consists of a cd with enclosed booklet. Hereby the busy user gets a good and thorough introduction to what meditation is, and how it works, along with 3 exercises with recorded guidance.

You can read more at www.woliba.com

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T ania Ellis :: Skt. Peders Straede 24 :: 1453 Copenhagen :: Tel +45 26252295 :: te@taniaellis.dk :: www.taniaellis.dk