http://www.scottlondon.com/blog On Creativity, Innovation, and Renewal Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:43:49 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en It's a sad fact that while most of us spend a sizeable part of our lives communicating with others — in face-to-face conversations, over the phone, in committee meetings, via e-mail and social networks — we seem more separate and disconnected than ever. Genuine understanding seems to be the exception rather than the norm ... http://www.scottlondon.com/blog/archives/61 I believe the single most important step we can take toward leading happier and more fulfilling lives is to develop a spiritual practice. By that I mean some regular activity or set of rituals that quiet the mind and bring us into harmony with ourselves. Spiritual practices take many forms, from ... http://www.scottlondon.com/blog/archives/58 Gandhi famously said that "you must be the change you wish to see in the world." Few people embody that idea as well as Jerome Threlkeld, a young activist and community leader from Flint, Michigan. In a city reeling from the collapse of the American auto industry, Jerome is a champion ... http://www.scottlondon.com/blog/archives/57 Today it's widely recognized that we use only a fraction of our human capacities even though we carry within us an almost unlimited power to learn, develop, expand and evolve. Michael Murphy has devoted the better part of five decades charting our human potentialities. He co-founded the Esalen Institute in ... http://www.scottlondon.com/blog/archives/56 The German philosopher Hegel gave us what is still perhaps the most compelling model of how societies change and evolve. His theory of dialectical progression suggested that cultures evolve in much the same way as ideas or outlooks do. The prevailing concept — or thesis as he called it — over time gives ... http://www.scottlondon.com/blog/archives/55 The history of science shows that breakthrough lies not in discovering new facts so much as discovering new ways of thinking about and making sense of them. More: Thomas S. Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is still the best work on the subject Arthur Koestler's The Sleepwalkers is another favorite because of its ... http://www.scottlondon.com/blog/archives/54 For many of us, the word revolution conjures up images of political violence and social breakdown, of insurgent militias and defiant chants, of street barricades made from overturned vehicles and ragged mobs armed with makeshift weapons. For better or worse, the idea of revolution often goes hand-in-hand with images of ... http://www.scottlondon.com/blog/archives/53 What motivates people to work on behalf of the common good? In a study I'm leading for the Harwood Institute, I've been exploring this question with community leaders from across the country — civic entrepreneurs working to reduce homelessness, address poverty, work with inmates, clean up the environment, and generally strengthen our ... http://www.scottlondon.com/blog/archives/52 A Harris poll found that a full 90 percent of Americans would change their lives dramatically if they could. The survey showed that most people don't like the way they live now, but they simply don't know how to change. The statistic goes a long way toward explaining why advertising has ... http://www.scottlondon.com/blog/archives/51 I was dazzled by Ken Wilber's book Sex, Ecology, Spirituality when it appeared in the mid-1990s. Rarely had I encountered a writer and philosopher who expressed himself with so much energy and clarity of insight on the difficult business of human consciousness. His grasp of the complexities of evolutionary theory, ... http://www.scottlondon.com/blog/archives/50 Some 1,000 people came together in Canberra, Australia, over the weekend for a free-spirited "ideas summit" — a gathering of experts, activists, politicians, and celebrities aimed at soliciting innovative ideas to strengthen Australia's future. Over the course of two days, some 8,000 ideas were submitted. By the end of the weekend, the ... http://www.scottlondon.com/blog/archives/49 Over the past six months, I've been talking with civic leaders from across the country about what it means to build community. The process has challenged some of my preconceptions. Community is not something you can build, they tell me. It's a quality that has to be brought forward and actualized, ... http://www.scottlondon.com/blog/archives/48 It's been almost a half-century since the publication of Thomas S. Kuhn'sThe Structure of Scientific Revolutions, a slim little book that introduced the word "paradigm" into common parlance and shattered our conventional way of looking at change. Fifty years on, it still represents perhaps the best thinking on how transformation ... http://www.scottlondon.com/blog/archives/46 People often define genius as a set of character traits or a way of being. Books instruct us how to think like Einstein or Leonardo da Vinci. But I see genius as the fulfillment of our true calling in life, as the flowering of our unique potential, whatever it happens ... http://www.scottlondon.com/blog/archives/45 Some years ago, I was asked by the Pew Partnership for Civic Change to prepare a review of the literature on how change happens and how to make it happen. As I began mapping the literature in the field, I was staggered by the sheer volume of writing on a ... http://www.scottlondon.com/blog/archives/44