Klout & Pinterest: Time Wasters Or Creativity Tools? – Are these social media sites a total time and energy suck, or is there some redeeming value?

Three People Who Never Belong In A Brainstorm Room – Hold on there, Negative Nancy. You can’t come in.

Screen Typography Is Falling Behind – iPads and other tablets are calling for screen typography evolution. It is not happening.

I’ll Never Fall In Love (With Ideas) Again – Every good new idea means an old idea must die. Do you have the heart for that?

The Three Ingredients Of Innovation – Are you cooking with the right creativity sauce?

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It Takes Two In The Innovation Tango – Which is better for innovation – a lone creative or a group of creatives?

Innovation And The Art Of The Story – The art of storytelling is nothing new. Storify co-founder and Hacks/Hackers founder Burt Herman discusses the next generation of the centuries-old craft.

A Running Shoe Inventor Shoots Himself In The Foot - How hard is it for an independent inventor to sell an idea to a multinational? Try running a mile in Lenn Hann’s shoes.

Social Technologies Speed Innovation – Research by McKinsey indicates that open innovation will only improve, as porous company borders increase external participation.

Creativity Is A Gamble – Whenever we start a project or pursue an idea, we’re risking our time, energy, and potentially money, on something that we can’t see the outcome of. It’s a gamble to try something new, to be creative.

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The Rise Of The New Groupthink – Creativity happens to a single person working alone, not in a group.

January Brainstorm – A few ideas to get your little gray cells percolating as we jump into 2012.

How To Maintain A Creative, Healthy Perspective – A change of perspective is what invokes new ideas.

Culture And The Climate For Creativity –  Organizations that invest in a climate of creativity create conditions for dealing with risk and develop an environment of trust.

10 Creative Ways To Use QR Codes –  Here are some of the most creative, fun and interesting examples of QR code marketing that show QR codes have the potential to enrich the product experience and offer the customer real value.

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Here’s a shout out to all guest bloggers. This is a new year and I want new voices here on THINKing.

You may be asking, “why would you want to write for this blog?” We had about 200,000 visitors to the site last year. So, it is a decent sized audience for your writing. We covered a variety of marketing related topics, ranging from advertising, PR and social media to creativity,  branding and writing. So, you will find a receptive audience for those topics.

Convinced? Read on.

If you have an idea for a guest post, here is what I want from you. First, send me a brief outline of your idea with reasons why your post would be a fit for our blog. This should include an explanation of who you are and why you are qualified to write the piece.

Let me know if this is a single post or part of a series of up to three posts that you propose. Final posts should be no more than 750 words, so point me to examples of pieces you have written in the 350 – 750 word range.

Oh, and I don’t want commercials for your company or yourself.

That’s it. Easy, right?

Times a-wasting. Send the information to me, harry at my-creativeteam.com.

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We’ve posted on a wide variety of topics in THINKing this year, and based on what you have been reading, you must like the variety. Let’s take a look at the Top 10 posts from 2011. You might find something on the list that you missed.

Creativity Boost #3 – Dictionary Excursion – This was far and away our most read – and commented upon – post. It’s an exercise to boost your creative writing skills.

Top 11 Free Resources To Improve your Blog’s Content - As part of a continuing series to help you in developing compelling content, this post provides you a list of the top 11 online resources to help you improve your writing skills.

How To Write Tweets That Get Noticed – This guest post from David Murton says you need to consider and understand two important rules: readability and retweetability when writing your tweets.

How Is Social Media Like A Mullet - As Joe Dirt said in the movie by the same name, a mullet is “business in the front, party in the back.” And that is how social media is like a mullet: it’s both business and personal.

LinkedIn – Branding – In our series on LinkedIn, we talked in this post about how to use the social network for branding purposes.

Top 19 Free Photo Sites For Bloggers -  This post outlines some of the best places to find free photos and images for your blog.

Creativity Boost #1 – The Mindtrip - A mindtrip is a way to find a novel solution to a problem by looking at it from a different perspective.

Pump Up Your Brain - According to Nobel prize-winning chemist Linus Pauling, the best way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas. In this post, we discuss brain exercises to help you generate more ideas.

Creativity 2011 Week#12 – Our weekly series of creativity links produced one of our Top 10 posts.

Top 15 Uses For QR Codes – QR codes were much discussed in 2011. We posted on some ways we think marketers should be using them.

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Start Thinking Like A Reality TV Star –  Reality shows offer us many parallels into the world of innovation.

5 Free Tools For Quick Online Brainstorming - The five services mentioned in this article are free and don’t require users to register.

Want A Creative Boost?-  Whenever you’re feeling like you shouldn’t stop working: stop. Stopping when you’re feeling in the prime of a work of art or a project can do a lot of good things for both you and the work.

How To Be Creative While Following The Rules - Knowing your constraints can help with your creativity.

Learn From 10 Creative Business People - Here are 10 bold thinkers who tell us how they use creativity at work, and the lessons they learned along the way.

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Raise your hand if you get a lot of emails from – or send a lot of emails to – “professionals” trying to sell the latest marketing and advertising answer to all your lead generating and new business problems.  Yeah, about that. If your “solution” works so damned well, you wouldn’t need to send me your email to let me know about it.

Your email tells me that you are desperate. You are shotgunning emails randomly, hoping that you will hit something. You haven’t done the heavy lifting. You have not identified your target audience. You haven’t crafted a compelling message, and you haven’t determined the best way to reach your audience. HINT: it is not initially through email because email is a permission-based medium.

Here’s the deal – marketing is all about building a relationship with prospects based upon their needs, not yours.

I’m going to help you, if you happen to be one of those desperate marketers who sends me your random, desperate emails.

First, stop sending me the emails. I am not going to read or respond to them.

Second, I’m an open networker on LinkedIn. If you send me a note from here, I’ll connect with you.

Third, now that we are connected,  learn about me and my company and my needs. And, don’t immediately start trying to sell me something. If you do, I assure you, I’ll delete every email you ever send me and will not answer your phone calls.

Fourth, provide good, solid information on your topic of expertise and I might subscribe to your email.

Fifth, remember, marketing takes time. You must nurture your prospects.  Just as you don’t ask the girl to marry you on your first date, you don’t start selling the first time you have contact with a prospect. I know this is not what you want to hear but it is what you need to hear.

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Creativity Apps For iPad – The iTunes store is crammed with apps. Here is a list of some very good ones to help boost your creativity.

20 Ways To Encourage Creativity In Children - If you want to encourage children to use their imaginations, to not be afraid of a blank page, to think for themselves, and to try new things; give this list a look. Some of the activities are for older children who already can read.

Solving Problems The Soviet Way – TRIZ was developed in the Soviet Union over 2 decades by a man named Genrich Altshuller who studied 40,000+ patents in order to reveal how invention runs in patterns. It teaches you to look at problems in a different way.

The Answer Is In Your Dreams - By thinking about specific dilemmas before bed, we can increase our chances that we will dream a solution.

17 Ways To Be More Right Brained - For all those who feel stuck in the left-side of their brain, and who desperately want to create something and begin to awaken their right-brain hemisphere, here are 17 resources–some free, some not–that will help get you started.

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To Cultivate Innovation, Work Like An Artist - How do we put ourselves in a frame of mind where we can receive inspiration when it comes to us? Think like an artist.

Writer’s Block: How To Break Through – Sometimes to break writer’s block, you need to start at the end and not the beginning.

The Creative Power Of Thinking Outside Yourself – New research shows that we can think of more creative ideas for other people than for ourselves.

23 Reasons Why Brainstorming Fizzles-  How many times have you participated in a brainstorming session, only to be underwhelmed by the utter lack of follow up? Unfortunately, in most businesses, this is often the norm.

Why Visualizing Creativity Is The Road To Marketing Success – Spontaneity and expression that are the hallmarks of inspiration and the creative mind can sometimes conflict with business environments that look for understanding, deliverables and accountability, meaning that the time spent on brainstorming ideas and gathering inspiration is limited.

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9 Ways To Keep Innovation Alive In Your Organization - When your company has an existing, proven method of conducting business, it can be a struggle to keep innovation alive.

How Good Stress Breeds Creativity – Those of us in the trenches know a little “good stress” can actually help boost creativity and innovation.

Failing To Innovate While Surrounded By Ideas - We have an inexhaustible source of creativity, ideas and innovation, which if applied correctly can create solutions to many challenges.

How To Thrive In A World Of Elusive Creativity - Very few companies actually know how to develop, retain, and unleash creativity to drive their business.

Clever Bench Advertising – Interesting ads on public benches.

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