Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention is a powerful book written by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Csikszentmihalyi offers deep insight into the creative process. Don’t worry if you cannot pronounce his name, this book is not a difficult read.

Overview

Drawing on 100 interviews with exceptional people, from biologists and physicists to politicians and business leaders, poets and artists, as well as his 30 years of research on the subject, Csikszentmihalyi uses his famous theory, Flow, to explore the creative process. His goal is to give the reader enough understanding about creativity and what leads to creative moments that they will be able reproduce creativity in their own lives.

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In my last post How To Identify Emerging Trends Part One I provided some advice and steps on finding emerging trends. Now I would like to give you some resources that will assist you in the process. These resources can help you confirm, test, and challenge emerging trends.

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The level of success for any innovation depends on identifying emerging trends three to five years before they emerge. Too often the process of finding emerging trends is hit or miss. How do you know that the trend will emerge? Better yet, how do you find the trend to begin with? If you haven’t already done so, check out the value of emerging trends and then come back to this post.

Before you begin to identify an emerging trend you must know that this process is extremely subjective. You will not find a sign that says in five years this will change. Instead you will find many little hints pointing towards a trend. Sometimes the possibility of the trend emerging is small, other times it seems imminent. If the possibility is small you need to access the risk involved. Sometimes it is better to know what too look for and be prepared for the change. Other times you will be able to innovate in advance of the trend with little risk. Nonetheless, if you can identify a trend three to five years in advance of it going big, the payoff is enormous.

In this post I will give you some tools to help you identify emerging trends. In my next post, how to identify emerging trends part two, I will give you some resources on emerging trends.

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Emerging trends are the most important factor in determining if an innovation will be enormously successful or just moderately successful.

When I talk about emerging trends, I do not mean fads. A fad comes and goes in about one or two years. Moreover, fads are accompanied by a lot of buzz right from the beginning.

Emerging trends on the other hand bubble up slowly until the culture itself shifts. It is only during the cultural shift that the media buzz occurs. If you come in at the point of the shift you are late. You will still find success, but the most successful innovations occur before the cultural shift.

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Before you take your next big idea and turn it into a reality, ask yourself these 50 questions. Use these questions to tweak and enhance your idea. Some questions will help you assess and alter the quality of your idea. Others will help you tailor the idea to you personal preferences.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it should give you a jump start on the competition!

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Idea generators can get you off the ground when you are attempting to come up with a new idea, but they can later hinder your creativity. You need to know the good and the bad sides of idea generators so that you can use them to your advantage.

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I came across a new innovation network, Fellow Force, on the Connected Collective Innovation blog.

The concept behind Fellow Force is that organizations post their problems and anyone can pitch a solution. The organization then selects the best solution and rewards a prize. This is basically like a job board only instead of making a proposal you give your idea to the organization.
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Canada received a “D” on innovation. The Conference Board of Canada release a 154 page report on Canada’s economy, innovation, environment, education, health and society compared to 16 other major industrialized countries. Canada’s “D” on innovation placed us 4^th last in that category.

“We’re not a low-wage economy, we’re a high-wage economy. We’re never going to be able to compete just on price. We have to compete on innovation, on new technology, on new products, high-level services in unique niches. And we’re not doing that.”

This is a scary result for Canada. The impact won’t be seen for five or ten years, but this failure to innovate will have drastic economic impact in the future. That isn’t to say it is too late. As someone who lives around innovation I see the positive side everyday.

If you would like to learn more about the report, Anne Golden will present the findings during a webcast on Wednesday, June 13 at 1:30 p.m. ET.