Written by Art Licensing Coach J’net Smith

Rule #6

Educate yourself about retail channels.  

It is important to have a clear understanding of the types of licensed products you want your art to appear on, as well as which type of retail channels, and retailers, carry those types of products.

Art licensing doesn’t mean you need to be in Wal-Mart. And while the landscape is always changing, today there are more products featuring licensed art sold in specialty retail channels (Spencer’s Gifts, Hot Topic, etc.), independent retailers (privately owned gift or card stores), and upscale department and chain stores (Bloomingdales, Nordstrom’s, etc.). And less than half of licensed art on products are sold through mass-market channels.

You need to think about where you want your product to ‘live at retail,’ and then plot your strategy for getting there. You, as the licensor (artist), need to make a decision as to where your art fits on products—what type of products, retail price points and retail channels are best for your style of art, and the brand you want to build. And when you make that decision, then you have to stick with it and be determined to make it happen.

There are a lot of manufacturers out there who will get you in department stores, but they also have distribution in drug stores, deep discounters and even ‘dollar’ stores. It’s up to you to ask about a manufacturers’ channel(s) of distribution and to come to an agreement as to where your product will be distributed.

No discussion of retail channels would be complete without the dual acknowledgement that retailers today are being held hostage by the economy, corporate mergers and price-driven consumers, while at the same time acting as the gatekeepers who hold the key to distribution (or not!) for manufacturers. This means retailers are both unusually stressed and powerful at the same time.

Regarding your art licensing business, keep in mind those retailers—whether brick and mortar, catalogs, or online e-tailers—allow or prevent the flow of products to consumers. So, they can help you reach consumers, or they can prevent your licensed products from reaching the consumers’ hands.

Today there are more and more online retailers who can take your art from production all the way to the consumer. But online sales of art licensing products are still miniscule compared to the level sold at brick and mortar retailers.

So, retailers still have the ultimate power. But years from now we may be stating something entirely different here. Understanding who the gatekeeper is—who has the power in an industry—will absolutely affect your marketing plan and how you create and manage your business.

About J’net Smith

Jeanette Smith is the consummate art licensing coach—she is passionate about helping you achieve a level of success beyond imagining and definitely knows how to do it! In just six short years, J’net turned Dilbert™ from a relatively unknown syndication-based comic strip into a 200 million dollar a year global brand. Then in 2000, J’net translated and expanded on her extensive experience to train, advise and license all types of creators. She has helped hundreds of artists, graphic designers, painters, photographers, authors, illustrators, design firms, fine artists, creative companies, non-profits and agents to maximize the power of their brands and talents.

J’net is best described by her combination of specialties—she is one of those very rare people who possess a balanced combination of creative sensibility and extraordinary business acumen. It is this combination that has served J’net over the span of a very impressive career,and has garnered her equally impressive press and testimonials!

From her early days in New York building new divisions for such corporate giants as Official Airline Guides, MacMillan Publishing, Paramount Communications, and VIACOM International, to her six years of work at United Media spearheading the astronomical growth of Dilbert, Jeanette has compiled a long list of satisfied clients and has gained an enormous amount of respect and experience in marketing, licensing, advertising, PR, agenting, negotiating, and much more.

Written by Bruce Nussbaum appeared on Co.DESIGN

Designers are merging their ways of thinking with startup culture. The result, writes Bruce Nussbaum, is greater innovation and astounding VC success rates.

I recently walked into a packed hall of 200 Parsons students for an event called “Start Something–Why Creatives Need to Become Entrepreneurs,” organized by the NYCreative Interns group. Four women entrepreneurs, including Laurel Touby, the founder of Mediabistro, were up front, talking about their experiences of launching their respective businesses. The incredible energy in the room highlighted an emerging trend–the headlong crash of creativity into capitalism to forge a startup model for the future. In this new model, designers drive the force of American entrepreneurialism.

This business model is a cause for true optimism. It’s not the big business capitalism that no longer generates jobs or income or tax revenues. Nor is it the old, slow attempts by design and design thinking to reform big corporations to make their culture more innovative, with limited success. Rather, it’s the capitalism of Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic–the original, early form of entrepreneurial capitalism. It’s the promise of design fusing with startup culture to increase innovation by raising the success rate of venture capital from 10% to as high as 80%. This growing desire among designers to bring their user focus, strategic vision, iterative methodologies, and propositional thinking to the still-geeky, tech/engineering-centric world of startups promises to be transformative and explosive.

The pattern can be broken down into a series of dots. There’s the dot of students at Parsons, RISD, RCA, the Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship, and Aalto University, in Helsinki, beginning to embrace the world of startups. (Stanford has been there for a while, thanks to David Kelley.)

There’s a dot of small design/innovation consultancies, such as Ammunition, Fuse, and Smart Design, which are developing and selling more of their own products, independently and through corporate partnerships. (Yves Béhar has been an entrepreneur for a decade; his latest product, a great new urban bike called Local, is now in production.) In addition, we have IDEO now supporting incubators such as General Assembly, Excelerate, and TechStars, and helping to launch products such as the Yoomi self-warming baby bottle.

Perhaps the most important dot of all is the one of innovative startups started by entrepreneurs with design degrees or backgrounds–YouTube, Flickr, Slideshare, Tumblr, Airbnb, Slideshare, Vimeo, and Feedburner, and YCombinator. These successful examples have inspired countless design students who want to start their own companies. They see that it can be done.

Another dot is Idiom, India’s answer to IDEO. The cutting-edge design/innovation consultancy has successfully launched 80 companies, out of 100 attempts, over the past six years, with the average launch taking about nine months from concept to profitability. (Idiom calls its process Mind to Market.) By applying the approaches and tools of design to the traditional startup process, Idiom increased the success rate of VC from 10% to 80%.

Led by its cofounder Sonia Manchanda, whom I consider to be the intellectual heir to the great C.K. Prahalad, Idiom is pioneering an entirely new VC model called Dream:In. I was lucky enough to participate in it last year. It goes like this: Hundreds of students were trained to interview and tape thousands of people about their dreams–their aspirations, not their needs. The dreams were collected, categorized, and presented to business people, consultants, and folks like me to help draw up business plans to enable those dreams. Those plans are now in a portfolio, from which venture capitalists can choose by category, by individual concept, or by investing in the fund itself. Each year, students go out, dreams come in, business plans replenish the portfolio. When was the last time we even thought about a radical change in the VC model? This made-in-India idea does.

What does this new direction of design toward entrepreneurship and away from big business mean? For me, two things. The less important is epistemological. The Parsons event by NYCreative Interns says it all–“Why Creatives Need to Become Entrepreneurs.” Creativity is a more inclusive term than design. Creativity is more easily accepted by venture capitalists, engineers, business people (and maybe even design students) than design. In addition, as design goes social, it moves toward industries such as advertising, with a long tradition of having “creatives” as part of its culture. In the past, I’ve said we should forget nomenclature–design, design thinking, innovation–it’s all a banana. Now that banana for me is creativity. But if anyone is uncomfortable with the term, just use the D-word.

The more important change from big business to new business is conceptual. We need new conceptual categories to deal with the new turn toward entrepreneurship. Zuckerberg, Hurley, Fake, Chase, Stone, Jobs–why and how and where they innovate require entirely different categories of design thinking, if you will, than we’ve used before. We need to learn much more about leadership and the roles of charisma and calling, and the transformation of inspiration into execution. Entrepreneurs are a lot like religious prophets–they embody their following, they “know” their tacit dreams and longings, and they express them. It’s no accident that The Economist put Jobs on its cover with a halo around his head while he held the newly launched iPad as a “tablet.”

Another critical concept is framing. One key to entrepreneurs’ success is that they frame things differently, they connect existing dots in unique ways. The two guys who started Method, for example, frame-changed the market for sustainable cleaning products from a “suffering-is-good-for-you” space to a “cool-design-that’s-good-for-the-planet” space.

We also need to know a lot more about “meaning,” not just the data gathered by ethnography but knowledge that takes us much deeper into understanding culture. We need to know more about shared spectacle and why we crave it, and how honing craft and skill to near perfection can enable you to make and do the unique–which is what entrepreneurs do.

The encouraging news is that we are seeing a dynamic expansion of the scale, range, and power of traditional design. It promises to revive a broken VC model, capture the imagination and energy of a new generation of young designer/creators, and perhaps even regenerate Western capitalism (yes, no small thing). But perhaps most important of all, the creative turn to the entrepreneurial is hopeful. Optimism has always been at the heart of design. This takes it to a new level.

To read more about creative capitalism, go here.

About Bruce Nussbaum
Bruce Nussbaum blogs, tweets and writes on innovation, design thinking and creativity. The former assistant managing editor for Business Week is a Professor of Innovation and Design at Parsons The New School of Design. He is founder of the Innovation & Design online channel; founder of IN: Inside Innovation, a quarterly innovation supplement. More here…

Failing your way to success. Yup. That’s how it’s done. It takes a LOT of support and a pretty great attitude too. That’s hard to do on your own. Kind of like weight loss I think. Best done with a herding mentality. That’s why Weight Watchers has been so successful. They understood the power of a “herd” early on.

But since I began 6 years ago- reinventing myself from my spare bedroom blogging to an audience of none- to where I am now?  I have to say it has been littered with set backs and disappointments that I could have allowed to loom larger than life and stop me cold in my tracks. AFTER ALL THIS TIME  I really never thought that the IAE WOULD STILL NOT HAVE the funding resources we need to achieve the grand plan. Love is blind! Thank God for my clarinet customers who are supporting me. Every customer who buys an instrument from me is donating $50.00 bucks to my school. Last year Lisa’s Clarinet Shop donated $27,500 to the IAE and my husband and I and a few others donated again 2 times that sum.

Lisa’s Clarinet Shop is the little engine that could. My husband has been out of work- downsized from one of those big corporate jobs- for over a year and my clarinet customers just keep coming and coming to support IAE. It’s like a miracle. Really.

This is the power of small business. Of passionate purpose driven living. ANYTHING IS possible. ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN if you know who you are and what you simply MUST express with your time on this earth. ANYTHING is possible but you have to have the ability and DESIRE to sustain your effort and to never EVER give up.

And I believe the future is bright. Not just because I am an optimistic person, but because so many people around me are increasingly excited to see what is happening with our students at the IAE.

Every rose began hidden under the mud before it revealed itself and BLOOMED. My dream to realize the IAE does not get to skip any of the steps to Bloomin’ Success. We are walking the walk just like our students and I am searching for another little steam engine to help me over the hill…

THE LITTLE ENGINE THAT COULD
(Watty Piper)

A little steam engine had a long train of cars to pull.

She went along very well till she came to a steep hill. But then, no matter how hard she tried, she could not move the long train of cars.

She pulled and she pulled. She puffed and she puffed. She backed and started off again. Choo! Choo!

But no! the cars would not go up the hill.

At last she left the train and started up the track alone. Do you think she had stopped working? No, indeed! She was going for help.

“Surely I can find someone to help me,” she thought.

Over the hill and up the track went the little steam engine. Choo, choo! Choo, choo! Choo, choo! Choo!

Pretty soon she saw a big steam engine standing on a side track. He looked very big and strong. Running alongside, she looked up and said:

“Will you help me over the hill with my train of cars? It is so long and heavy I can’t get it over.”

The big steam engine looked down at the little steam engine. The he said:

“Don’t you see that I am through my day’s work? I have been rubbed and scoured ready for my next run. No, I cannot help you,”

The little steam engine was sorry, but she went on, Choo, choo! Choo, choo! Choo, choo! Choo, choo!

Soon she came to a second big steam engine standing on a side track. He was puffing and puffing, as if he were tired.

“That big steam engine may help me,” thought the little steam engine. She ran alongside and asked:

“Will you help me bring my train of cars over the hill? It is so long and so heavy that I can’t get it over.”

The second big steam engine answered:

“I have just come in from a long, long run. Don’t you see how tired I am? Can’t you get some other engine to help you this time?

“I’ll try,” said the little steam engine, and off she went. Choo, choo! Choo, choo! Choo, choo!

After a while she came to a little steam engine just like herself. She ran alongside and said:

“Will you help me over the hill with my train of cars? It is so long and so heavy that I can’t get it over.”

“Yes, indeed!” said this little steam engine. “I’ll be glad to help you, if I can.”

So the little steam engines started back to where the train of cars had been standing. Both little steam engines went to the head of the train, one behind the other.

Puff, puff! Chug, choo! Off they started!

Slowly the cars began to move. Slowly they climbed the steep hill. As they climbed, each little steam engine began to sing:

“I-think-I-can! I-think-I-can! I-think-I-can! I-think-I-can! I-think-I-can! I-think-I-can! I think I can – I think I can – I think I can I think I can–”

And they did! Very soon they were over the hill and going down the other side.

Now they were on the plain again; and the little steam engine could pull her train herself. So she thanked the little engine who had come to help her, and said good-by.

And she went merrily on her way, singing:

“I-thought-I-could! I-thought-I-could! I-thought-I-could! I-thought-I-could! I thought i could – I thought I could – I thought I could – I thought I could – I thought I could – I thought I could I thought I could –”

On Thursday January 26th The Institute for Arts Entrepreneurship (IAE) will be teaming up with WBEZ’s new project Front & Center to host a resource fair for the self employed, small businesses, start-ups, and freelancers.

Mini seminars and presentations will run through out the evening at the fabulous Catalyst Ranch located at 656 W Randolph St # 3W in the Polka Room.

Mini Seminar Topics Include: 

Entrepreneurship 101
Presented by Institute For Arts Entrepreneurship

Receiving small loans as an independent worker
Presented Accion Micro Lending

Doing your taxes as a freelancer, small business owner, or independent
Presented by Center for Economic Progress

Create. Innovate. Repeat: featuring 4 fabulous presenters, 7 slides and just 5 minutes each to pitch their most innovative business idea to you.
Presented by Institute for Arts Entrepreneurship.

Partial List of Participants Include:

Co-Lab Evanston providers of shared office spaces.

Northside Freelancers Network  who can help you connect to the growing Chicago self-employed community. Make sure to ask them about their weekly “freelancers soup” lunch.

Accion will be on hand to discuss how to get a  micro-loans to jump start your own business.

Northside Community Bank can help you find funding for your small, local project.

IndieMade is itself a small business. They create websites for independents, artist, small businesses, and start-up projects.

Rockstar CPA offers CPA services specifically geared towards the self-employed, with a specialty in creative projects.

The Law Project offer affordable legal resources for freelancers, independents, and small businesses, such as creating contracts, negotiating pay, etc.

Chicago! Come on out and celebrate self-employment with us! We hope to see you on January 26th.

Fair begins at 6pm @ Catalyst Ranch  656 W Randolph St # 3W, in the Polka Room

While 2011 was a big year for political unrest, another uprising was afoot in the world of content creators and artists. Everywhere you look, artists are taking more control over their own economic well being, in large part because the Internet has enabled them to do so. You see it in all forms of content, from books, to video to music.

A few examples from this year:

e-books: Probably the most active area in large part because there is huge shifts taking place in digital publishing. From former mid-list writers like Barry Eisler to superstars like JK Rowling, writers are increasingly making waves in digital publishing.

Video: The story of the year for artists-as-entrepreneur came at the tail-end, with Louis CK saying no thank you to corporate middlemen and putting his new concert video online for $5 a pop.

Radio/Music: All sorts of independent entrepreneurs are putting audio entertainment online, from the rise of podcast kings like Leo Laporte to a huge number of independents like Adam Carolla and Marc Maron. Music artists are being given freedom too, through new platforms to create and share their music like Soundcloud.

So what is driving this movement towards the artist-entrepreneur that will give it huge momentum in 2012?  Here are a few underlying trends:

The distribution chain is collapsing across content verticals

The middleman is under attack on all fronts, whether its in video, music/audio and e-books. As devices like TVs become connected, as books become e-readers and tablets, and music is now digital, the storefront is fast-becoming the entire distribution chain.  With e-books it’s Amazon or Apple, with radio it’s iTunes, with video it’s Google/YouTube, Netflix and other upstarts who are investing in original content, or simply direct-to-consumer efforts using web-payment platforms like Paypal.

Louis CK, who created his own site, paid for bandwidth, and used Paypal for payment, captured how many artists are beginning to think when he said in an interview with Bill Simmons that he “didn’t want to cut out the middleman, I just didn’t need one. There wasn’t any reason to have someone there. I just thought make this thing and put it up.”

Content production, distribution and monetization tools are becoming democratized through the web

In e-books, distribution and storefronts have already collapsed into one, but managing distribution across multiple channels is difficult since storefronts are still siloed (Amazon is separate from Apple iBooks, which is walled off from Barnes&Noble, etc). However, companies like Smashwords enable creation and distribution across multiple storefronts, while Vook, post-pivot, is working on SaaS tools to create e-books and manage their distribution, complete with reporting and management dashboards.

In music, artists are starting to embrace sites like Soundcloud to create music and share it, while others direct-to-fan sites like Topspin Media are enabling artists to create commerce sites to sell music in turnkey fashion. And it’s not just music sales, but actual concert tickets. The Pixies used Topspin to sell tickets for a recent concert, utilizing email campaigns and to notify fans and processed the tickets using an iOS app at the door.

With video, big middlemen still dominate, but that is changing as video creation and distribution costs come down in a world of connected devices. As Ryan Lawler wrote in a piece for GigaOM Pro:

“independent content creators stand to gain the most through massive reductions in the cost of recording equipment and editing software, as well as the greater availability of streaming video service on connected devices. They gain new distribution opportunities for their content and greater possibility for monetization. Consider any of the top YouTube video channels, which probably wouldn’t be able to survive in the pay-TV universe but have created thriving businesses due to the cost structure online.”

Generational shifts towards technology savvy-artists

As Matt Mullenweg put in in his New Year’s resolution on GigaOM:

“For a year now, I’ve said scripting is the new literacy. That’s something I strongly believe. In Douglas Rushkoff’s latest book, he talks about “program or be programmed.” That is, if you’re not in control of your inputs, you’re not really in control of your outputs either. You’re just a reactionary force.”

Matt is right, in that scripting is the new literacy, and a growing form of artistic expression. Tech-savvy artists are creating apps and developing sites to put their art into the world. Whether its Matt Inmann creating his work and coding his site at The Oatmeal or young app developers like Robert Nay, artists are becoming coders and vice versa, since, as Mullenweg states, scripting is “new literacy”.

No doubt, the vast majority of economic wealth is still distributed through large corporate media, but as new technologies enable artists to reach consumers directly through push-button creation and distribution, there is a movement afoot. Expect this movement to expand in 2012 as more artists take control of their own economic destinies and become part of the artist-entrepreneur generation.

Dear Colleagues:

I am writing to let you know about an exciting new initiative and to ask that you forward this information to your professional networks. Artivate: A Journal of Entrepreneurship in the Arts (ISSN 2164-7747), the first ever peer-reviewed research journal in the field of arts entrepreneurship, will be published twice yearly beginning July 2012 in an online format.

The mission of Artivate is to disseminate new thinking and perspectives on arts entrepreneurship theory, practice, and pedagogy.  The editors, Linda Essig, director of Arizona State University’s p.a.v.e program in arts entrepreneurship, and Gary Beckman of North Carolina State University’s program in entrepreneurial studies in the arts, are committed to publishing research-based articles and case studies of interest to scholars, artists, and students in the areas of entrepreneurship theory as applied to the arts; arts entrepreneurship education; arts management; arts and creative industries; public policy and the arts; the arts in community and economic development; nonprofit leadership; social entrepreneurship in or using the arts; evaluation and assessment; and public practice in the arts.  Artivate’s diverse international editorial board includes Andrew Taylor (UW-Madison), Margaret Wyszomirski (OSU), Bill Gartner (Clemson), Lynn Book (Wake Forest), Christina Hong (Queensland University of Technology) , Ian David Moss (Fractured Atlas), Diane Ragsdale (Erasmus University), Paul van Zuilenberg (University of the Free State), Gordon Shockley (ASU) and others.

I paste below the call for submissions, due February 15.  You may also visit the journal site at http://www.artivate.org  Please forward this announcement to your professional networks, as appropriate.

Best wishes,

Professor Linda Essig
director, p.a.v.e program in arts entrepreneurship
Co-editor, Artivate.org
ASU School of Theatre and Film
PO Box 872002
Tempe AZ 85287
http://theatrefilm.asu.edu/initiatives/pave/

Call for Submissions

Artivate: A Journal of Entrepreneurship in the Arts is accepting submissions of articles for publication in its inaugural issue to be published July 2012.  The first journal to focus on the emergent field of arts entrepreneurship, Artivate seeks works of original scholarship in the following areas: entrepreneurship theory as applied to the arts; arts entrepreneurship education; arts management; arts and creative industries; public policy and the arts; the arts in community and economic development; nonprofit leadership; social entrepreneurship in or using the arts; evaluation and assessment in and of the field; public practice in the arts. The editors are particularly interested in articles that actively link theory with practice in ways that will be of interest and impact to the broad cross-section of Artivate’s readership. Self-reflective studies from arts entrepreneurs and empirical research from scholars are equally welcome.

Artivate is a peer-reviewed online publication for an academic and practitioner audience.  Editorial board members are affiliated with universities, foundations, and arts services organizations on three continents.  The co-editors are Linda Essig, director of the p.a.v.e. program in arts entrepreneurship at Arizona State University, and Gary Beckman, director of entrepreneurial studies in the arts at North Carolina State University.
The editors are interested in supporting the growth of our nascent discipline and are committed to publishing at least one debut article from an emerging scholar in each issue.  First-time authors are welcome to seek advice from the editors in advance of submission.

Submissions should be between 4,000 and 10,000 words in length.  Articles must be submitted in a word format (doc or docx) with any figures or illustrations submitted either within the word document or as separate jpg files.  Articles will be evaluated in a blind process so the articles themselves should include no identifying headers, footers, watermarks, or specific content (e.g. “at Jurassic University where I teach arts entrepreneurship”).

Submissions for consideration must be received via email no later than February 15, 2012.  Email submissions simultaneously to linda.essig@asu.edu and gdbeckma@ncsu.edu

A friend of mine recently reminded me that there is no need for creative entrepreneurial types like us to apologize for being “egocentric” in saying that creativity and innovation is scarce, while status quo “inside of the box”  thinking is the great majority. It is a simple fact.

Unfortunately, “explaining” this to the “majority” is usually not possible or helpful because it requires experiential learning to truly develop ones creative abilities enough for anyone to really understand.  What rules the heart can rule the mind but it does not work the other way around. A fundamental shift in the mix of who we highly value learning from, and how we learn, needs to take place for this to occur. It is no wonder societies and humans evolve so slowly despite all the knowledge and tools available to us.

And yet, I believe man was put on this earth to help God make progress on earth. Which, to honor him, requires us to be ethical bound, to morally act and requires tremendous creativity to do. And this single belief has profoundly motivated me through out my life to deepen my intellect, my empathy and my creativity so that I can use my skills to be of service, to the best of my ability, to everyone I know.

As I have grown up, I have increasingly come to recognize that this belief is often isolating and a cause for great misunderstanding.  Developing my empathy, intellect and creativity has taught me how to see deeply and profoundly into others- which is not an easy thing, in this broken world, for others to accept as the gift you have to offer. And yet, as an artist, I have come to learn this is our profound gift to share with the world. It is not egocentric at all for me to say it is what artists have to offer and why God graced us all with the gift of life.

And yet, I find myself often in a space where I feel worried that my time on this earth will run out before I have realized this deep vision for the world I have- to occupy the hearts and minds of the majority with more creativity- to reach the tipping point of true change.  It is an honest to goodness daily fear of mine. And it has often pushed me to feel the need to try and prove my worth with anyone I encounter in the majority in the hope that they will give me the opportunity to open up a whole new world of meaning to them- one that transcends the empty hunger for power and greed and utilize it for real progress on earth and societal good. And by doing so, for true sustainable prosperity to flow. It is hard not to want this for the world when these principals have profoundly served the development of my own life and my businesses and created so much prosperity and good.

While I have never apologized for my work, in some ways by trying to “prove” to others what deep value as an artist I hold, I  think I have.  While the majority entertains my beliefs about the ethical values one develops from the flow of heartfelt creativity, like a muse in the moment, it is short lived and not invested into to deepen its impact and to create true sustainable values. Is this really the only role my work can have?

Two years ago I was offered the opportunity of being mentored by a quickly rising entrepreneurial star in Chicago. He had built an amazing company from nothing, was featured on INC’s fastest growing list of companies for several years and glowed in power and money. He also “appeared” to be “a creative”, like me, too.

As my relationship with this individual developed, what I found underneath the veil was far from what the exterior portrayed. He was in an “open marriage”; his life was spiraling out of control. He was also hiring broken-down-trodden individuals to do the heavy lifting inside his business because he could pay them less and work them to death. And in all he did in life, he placed appearances far higher on his list than true happiness and meaning despite all of his soul searching trips to meet spiritual gurus.

While he thought he was mentoring me, it was I who was mentoring him.

Through my mentorship, this individual came to to emotionally understand that true love and intimacy was more important to him than sex with multiple women. He also came to experience that a creative career and business was far more valuable to him than a past-its-sell-date sweat shop that gushed cash. However,  I was never given any credit for my work. The profound changes that I witnessed in him, during our professional relationship, were not rewarded with generosity for his newly found flow of heart centered creativity; which my mentorship reinvigorated the hunger within him to have.  It certainly also did not make him donate funds to The IAE, or even thank me. Instead he took it freely from me as if it had no intrinsic value or significant economic worth.

And if I had told him upfront the price tag to help him was a donation of $100,000 to my school, he would have laughed and walked away. Why would he pay when all of us artists continue to give our gifts away for free to those who don’t have the skills, but have the resources to pay for what we have to deliver?

Today this individual is happily, for the first time, married to one woman. And he sold his company too and is now working on something truly meaningful to him and which is helping him to build his creative capacity.

Artists can truly help restore the inner lives of the majority not to mention by doing so stop the Penn State’s, Bernie Madoff’s and Enron’s from ever happening. But it is going to require finding the minority of the majority- those financially able and brave enough to invest and act- to step up and give those of us with these gifts a chance to fully integrate our pure heart centered creativity into their world.

Please Lord hear my prayer. I am sure this is the work you put all of us artists on this earth to do. And, finally, I believe our time has come to do your work on your beloved earth. The world is awakening to the real need for promised words and actions to match. Intellectual understanding is not from where we are compelled to act. This is why I dutifully created The IAE- to help artists help others make progress on earth for you.

Please send me the minority who is willing to invest and act. Lord hear my prayer.

On behalf of everyone at The Institute For Arts Entrepreneurship – our faculty, our students, our supporters and our families
- we would like to wish each of you and your family
 a very Merry Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year!

As many of you may already know, 2011 has proven to be an exceedingly eventful and rewarding year for the IAE.  After several years of dutiful planning and extremely hard work, we launched our pilot program this past September.

About IAE’s Progress

Our recently concluded Module I coursework focused on student development of emotional intelligence, leadership aptitude and communicative skills.  And within only a very few months, we have witnessed a blossoming of growth and excitement from 15 artists – from fashion, music, theater, visual arts, food, skin care and design- in our inaugural class ranging in age from 24 to 63!  For those of us on the IAE staff, bearing witness to our student’s desire to learn, develop and flourish has served as a profoundly breathtaking experience.

And many new faces are sprouting up to support our work. This past fall over 12 individuals donated their time to mentor our students. We also have received immeasurable help with our curriculum design and development from Joyce Thomas, Deana McDonagh and Director Nan Goggin- all from The School of Art + Design at the University of Illinois.

And the interest has not stopped there. In January the IAE was selected to deliver our first paper about our innovative learning model at the U.S. Small Business and Entrepreneurship Conference in New Orleans. Founder Lisa Canning was also invited to attend The U.S. Dept of State and The Aspen Institute’s 2nd Entrepreneurship conference in Marrakech Morocco in January. Additionally, 2 schools in Amman Jordan and someone who serves on the Fulbright commission in Sweden have all reached out to us to inquire how we can bring the IAE to their communities.

The IAE Needs Your Help to Bloom

During the past twelve months, we have been working hard to ramp up our fund raising efforts designed to firmly establish the IAE as a long-term, going concern with the ability to make a real difference – not only in assisting artists to develop meaningful careers applying their artistic talents – but to utilize their creative abilities in new ways that also can benefit our communities and local businesses.  And while these efforts have not thus far been quite as successful as those in the classroom – our commitment to advancing the IAE’s mission remains as strong as ever.

Year End Giving

As we prepare for the New Year, we will continue to do our best to fund our pilot program. Unfortunately, without more support, we may not be able to realize our full vision to help artists change their lives and the world with their creativity. I wish you would come to our classroom to see just how big the impact is we have already made with our students. We have quickly become an invaluable resource; something our students do not wish to lose.

With this being a time to reflect on our values and beliefs, we would like to ask that you consider an offer of support for The Institute for Arts Entrepreneurship. Whatever you can give will show us you value our work and care about the future of our students.

A tax-deductible contribution to the IAE may be made through our secure giving site or by mailing a check to The Institute For Arts Entrepreneurship, 2257 N Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60614.

To insure your tax benefits for 2011, online donations must be completed by 11:59 PM on December 31, 2011. Checks must be dated and postmarked by December 31, 2011. Please be sure to consult your tax adviser to confirm how charitable deduction rules may apply to your individual situation.

To each of you who generously support us, both today and over the past several years, please know we could never achieve our goals without you. Your kindness and generosity is so appreciated.

With blessings to you all for peace, love and prosperity in the New Year,

Lisa and Chuck Canning

The IAE has a new Facebook page. Click below and like us.

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While it is easy to look at this cartoon strip created by Norwegian artist, Ida Eva Margrethe Neverdahl, and see it for its “face” value, I would encourage you to look deeper. Ida shares a great visual story, in my opinion, about how we discover our “emotional” elephant and learn to ride it. ( For more explicate training instructions read How to train your elephant to increase whole brain thinking.)

You see, we all have an elephant inside of us. And none of us has an easy time, at first, getting on its back- as this cartoon strip illustrates.  But when you learn how to, your life will magically begin to flow. And you too will be able to “ride your artwave and show off its fun“ quite easily, successfully and profitably.

This animate was adapted from a talk given by  education and creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson.  If you are not familiar with Sir Ken, you must become familiar. His ideology is spot on.  For more information on Sir Ken’s work visit: http://www.sirkenrobinson.com

I am looking forward to attending the U.S.-Maghreb Entrepreneurship Conference, PNB-NAPEO’s annual regional partnership conference in Marrakech, Morocco January 16-18, 2012.  The IAE is hoping to find an educational partner in Morocco beginning with our academic year 2013-2014. We have already 2 partners in Amman Jordan. Both Queen Rania’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Princess Taghrid’s Institute for Arts and Culture. Students from both organizations will be on the IAE educational network starting in the fall of 2012. In 2013 we hope to expand into Sweden and Morocco. At that time, we will have 2 classrooms and 2 educational networks stranded through video conferencing.

At the IAE our goal is to help artists become creative flexible whole brain leaders. Our model is designed to create an educational space for artists around the world to develop a common universal shared language to stimulate, as a group, our own economic development as well as help others do the same. At the IAE we teach artists how tap into their creativity to fuel community economic development, financial growth and spur innovation. ~ Lisa Canning

Written by Lorraine Hariton and appeared on DipNote: U.S. Deptartment of State Official Blog

Lorraine Hariton serves as the Special Representative for the Commercial and Business Affairs Office, Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs.

As the Special Representative for Commercial and Business Affairs in the State Department’s Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs, one of my responsibilities is the promotion of entrepreneurship overseas — something that is critical to the State Department’s overall mission of “creating a more secure, democratic and prosperous world for the benefit of the American people and the international community.” I am proud that our efforts to promote entrepreneurship have expanded to a new corner of the globe — the Maghreb — as part of the U.S.-North Africa Partnership for Economic Opportunity (NAPEO), a regional initiative under the global alliance Partners for a New Beginning (PNB).

I was privileged to lead a State Department Entrepreneurship Delegation to Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria October 26-November 2. The delegation, which consisted of 20 distinguished U.S. entrepreneurs, angel investors, members of academia, and NGO representatives, was co-sponsored by the Global Entrepreneurship Program (GEP) in my office. One goal of the U.S.-NAPEO is to enhance economic cooperation between the United States and the Maghreb region, and to share best practices between experienced and emerging entrepreneurs with the goal of providing tools and strategies that can help to overcome some of the common challenges that entrepreneurs usually face. Our entrepreneurship delegation supported this goal. We believe that entrepreneurship is a powerful mechanism for job creation that will benefit not just the economies of the countries that hosted the delegation, but the U.S. economy as well. The delegation was enormously successful in generating excitement around entrepreneurship — after listening to pitch-sessions by aspiring entrepreneurs, we selected a total of three promising start-ups in each country for a four-month business incubation prize at the Tech Town Detroit Incubator and a full-tuition scholarship for one semester of instruction at Wayne State University. Entrepreneurship delegate Ahmed Chabbani generously represented TechTown, Wayne State University, and the American Arab Chamber of Commerce to award the prize in person. These efforts represent the type of unique public-private partnerships that the U.S.-North Africa Partnership for Economic Opportunity is building to deepen ties between the United States and the Maghreb.

We also mentored aspiring entrepreneurs in one-on-one sessions, coaching them on how to improve their business plans and pitches. Mentoring is crucial to entrepreneurial success, because it gives aspiring entrepreneurs an opportunity to learn from others’ mistakes and successes. Interestingly, the mentoring sessions were two-way exchanges — not only did our delegates provide valuable operational knowledge, but they also learned about the unique challenges of doing business in each host country. In Morocco, start-ups reported difficulty in identifying seed capital to begin their businesses. In Algeria, aspiring entrepreneurs reported difficulty in managing and distributing their funds. In Tunisia, start-ups said they needed marketing skills to expand their businesses regionally and maybe ultimately globally. As one of our delegates, Driss Temsamani, said, “We were working for a higher purpose; the satisfaction of sharing success with others…We gave them one common message, ‘You can do it!’”

In addition to helping create opportunity for aspiring entrepreneurs in countries with high unemployment and other challenges, our expanded economic cooperation in the Maghreb may lead to the next “big” innovation that can help restart not only the economy of the Maghreb region but also the U.S. economy as well. Our engagement has the potential to be a “win-win.” And I think I speak for the entire delegation when I say that we were all impressed by the energy, drive, and innovation of the aspiring entrepreneurs we met in the Maghreb. Our goal for our future programming in the region is to sustain the momentum we have generated around entrepreneurship. PNB-NAPEO is now planning its annual regional partnership conference, the U.S.-Maghreb Entrepreneurship Conference, for January 16-18, 2012, in Marrakech, Morocco, where we will showcase many new partnerships that came out of the delegation. One example, our delegates are planning to create a regional angel network — with money from their own pockets — to support aspiring entrepreneurs.

I want to especially thank our U.S. embassies in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia and the local partners on the PNB-NAPEO advisory boards in each country for such an outstanding work and support in these efforts. Some of our success is immeasurable, such as the personal impact that our events had on the lives of aspiring entrepreneurs. To quote one of our winners in Morocco, Yassine El Kachchani, “This opportunity was life-changing in a very positive way. I was amazed by the level of openness and the willingness to help that the delegation and the U.S. Embassy showed during this event. […] I’m more than ready to exceed your expectations — this is my new challenge.”

Towards a New Social Contract in the Arab World

On Sept 22, 2011, regional leaders and members of civil society groups participated in a webcast discussion and online chat on social accountability, governance and managing economic transitions the Middle East and North Africa. Watch the webcast or read the chat transcript below.

http://live.worldbank.org/towards-new-social-contract-arab-world

Written by Art Licensing Coach J’net Smith

Rule #3 Know your skills.

Art talent isn’t enough to make it in the Art Licensing industry. Even more interesting is the fact that you may do very well in Art Licensing for any number of other reasons. For example, your art skills may be good; they may even be awesome!  But you could be incredibly successful in Art Licensing because you can market yourself better than other artists. Perhaps you have the innate ability to capture the attention of various media outlets, or you have a large following of active and demanding fans (which would be is very appealing to manufacturers).

I’ve seen artists make lots of money because they appeal to a certain niche audience (not a small niche, but one that’s large enough to warrant mass market attention) that is peaking and has a current need for art. Maybe an artist loves creating holiday themed art, for which there is always a need. Art Licensing is a commercial industry, so artists who have a distinctive style, enjoy creating a certain theme, and who also appeal to huge audiences have more potential for income than others.

Other skills that affect your Art Licensing business potential are:

Technical Skills

You definitely need computer and technical skills, or access to them. If you don’t have them, you need to get them or find a partner that does, because people will no longer put up with artists not having internet access, high resolution scans, layered files, etc.

Product Design Capabilities

If you can envision your art on products, then show your art to manufacturers on product mock-ups to help them. This is a really important skill set today and is going to help put you in the league of serious art licensors.

Trend Watching

Not everybody is going to be a trendsetter, because that takes a lot of forward thinking.You may have that, or you may just love to watch trends, and can keep up with them. Either way, don’t avoid learning about trends and seeing how your art can interpret them.

Entrepreneurial Abilities

Artists need entrepreneurial skills more than ever!  And we’ll talk more about this later…

About J’net Smith

Jeanette Smith is the consummate art licensing coach—she is passionate about helping you achieve a level of success beyond imagining and definitely knows how to do it! In just six short years, J’net turned Dilbert™ from a relatively unknown syndication-based comic strip into a 200 million dollar a year global brand. Then in 2000, J’net translated and expanded on her extensive experience to train, advise and license all types of creators. She has helped hundreds of artists, graphic designers, painters, photographers, authors, illustrators, design firms, fine artists, creative companies, non-profits and agents to maximize the power of their brands and talents.

J’net is best described by her combination of specialties—she is one of those very rare people who possess a balanced combination of creative sensibility and extraordinary business acumen. It is this combination that has served J’net over the span of a very impressive career,and has garnered her equally impressive press and testimonials!

From her early days in New York building new divisions for such corporate giants as Official Airline Guides, MacMillan Publishing, Paramount Communications, and VIACOM International, to her six years of work at United Media spearheading the astronomical growth of Dilbert, Jeanette has compiled a long list of satisfied clients and has gained an enormous amount of respect and experience in marketing, licensing, advertising, PR, agenting, negotiating, and much more.

The last class of The IAE’s first module just finished yesterday. For the entire past three months we have been exploring who we are, how we communicate, how our lives are constructed and what matters most to us.  In our classroom we have been learning how to develop a culture of curiosity, shared language, increase our recognition of patterns, and explore what triggers our own motivation- all essential ingredients to begin to develop an entrepreneurial mindset.

A great deal of our learning has been done through experiences of the learning. Artists learn best this way.  And while I had never, until I conceived the IAE, attempted to construct as much of the curriculum as possible in this way, it is highly impact filled and TOTALLY worth all of the effort to create. Consistently we have taken our main learning objectives and constructed group projects or situations to experience that are designed to expose our students thinking and intuitive processes so they can discover their own lessons and learning. Our students are learning how to teach themselves. Another trait of a great entrepreneurial mindset. And the results speak for themselves- they always produce far more insights  then the few lessons we had in mind when we construct our experiential curriculum for our students.

At the end of each weekend of class we synthesize our learning. Together we create a list of what we have learned and reduce it down to only the essential nuggets we really need to be reminded of to continue our evolution and growth.

Here is our final learning wall for the end of our 1st module of class.

Written by Art Licensing Coach J’net Smith

Rule #1 Learn all you can about art licensing before committing your time and efforts.

Licensing is big business. According to the 2011 annual Licensing Industry Survey released in June by the International Licensing Industry Merchandisers’ Association (LIMA), global licensed product royalty revenues reached $5.065 billion in 2010. Character licensing, from all types of entertainment venues, represents the lion’s share at 47%, while art licensing equals about 2.5%. Art licensing is by itself a $128 million dollar industry.

Licensing is the simple concept of taking your copyrighted art, and contractually arranging and agreeing to lease the rights to one or more images to manufacturers who develop product with the artwork and then sell product to retailers to market to consumers.

So, licensing is really both a business and distribution model. It’s simply one way of getting your art onto product, and out to the consumers. The licensing model is especially appealing to artists, since it doesn’t require you to invest your money up front in production, or to learn the complex in’s and out’s of manufacturing and retail distribution.

The basic players in an art licensing agreement are these:  the artist is Licensor—the owner of the copyright. The licensor may market their art through self-representationor utilize the services of an agent. The Licensee is the entity (company or individual) who licenses the rights from you.  Most often it is a manufacturer, but it could also be a retailer, or an advertising sponsor. The contract—the legal agreement between the two of you—is the Licensing Agreement.

Like any business venture you might be considering, I recommend you study the industry to see if it is right for you and learn all you can about what it will take to succeed in art licensing.  So Rule #1 is that you must learn all you can about art licensing before you commit significant time and efforts. I can’t guarantee it will be easy, but if it’s right for you and you are willing to put in the effort, it can be rewarding and lucrative. Reading this blog series is a great place to start and here are some additional resources that also may be helpful.

About J’net Smith

Jeanette Smith is the consummate art licensing coach—she is passionate about helping you achieve a level of success beyond imagining and definitely knows how to do it! In just six short years, J’net turned Dilbert™ from a relatively unknown syndication-based comic strip into a 200 million dollar a year global brand. Then in 2000, J’net translated and expanded on her extensive experience to train, advise and license all types of creators. She has helped hundreds of artists, graphic designers, painters, photographers, authors, illustrators, design firms, fine artists, creative companies, non-profits and agents to maximize the power of their brands and talents.

J’net is best described by her combination of specialties—she is one of those very rare people who possess a balanced combination of creative sensibility and extraordinary business acumen. It is this combination that has served J’net over the span of a very impressive career,and has garnered her equally impressive press and testimonials!

From her early days in New York building new divisions for such corporate giants as Official Airline Guides, MacMillan Publishing, Paramount Communications, and VIACOM International, to her six years of work at United Media spearheading the astronomical growth of Dilbert, Jeanette has compiled a long list of satisfied clients and has gained an enormous amount of respect and experience in marketing, licensing, advertising, PR, agenting, negotiating, and much more.

In 2012 The United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE) will be held from January 12-15th in New Orleans, LA. My colleague from University of Illinois, Joyce Thomas and myself will be attending to present material from a paper we wrote, with another Univ of IL colleague, Deana McDonough, about The IAE and our learning cloud model. I am excited to be presenting my first paper about The IAE at this conference. This will be the 3rd time I have attended USASBE. I think it’s a valuable resource and a great networking opportunity. I hope  you will consider attending. You can register here.

About USASBE

USASBE is the largest independent, professional, academic organization in the world dedicated to advancing the discipline of entrepreneurship.  With over 1000 members from universities and colleges, for-profit businesses, nonprofit organizations, and the public sector, USASBE is a diverse mix of professionals that share a common commitment to fostering entrepreneurial attitudes and behaviors.

USASBE is built around four pillars that guide the ongoing development of our organization. The pillars include:

• entrepreneurship education
• entrepreneurship research
• entrepreneurship outreach and
• public policy

By fostering advances in each of these areas, we support the development of entrepreneurship educators who in turn will create next generation of entrepreneurs.

The roots of USASBE go back over fifty years to the founding of the International Council for Small Business (ICSB) in 1957. The ICSB was founded in the United States as a comprehensive organization of outstanding researchers, scholars, teachers, administrators, and public policy makers interested in entrepreneurship and small business. As the organization grew, members decided to form national affiliates, and the U. S. Affiliate of the ICSB was established in 1981. In 1985, the name was changed to the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE). Today, USASBE is an independent academic organization with its own unique mission, while also retaining its affiliation with ICSB.

USASBE is a community of scholars, entrepreneurship program and center directors, government officials, directors of entrepreneurship support organizations and others. It is a community that works to enhance our understanding of the phenomenon of entrepreneurship and to identify best practices in how to teach entrepreneurial principles and facilitate the creation and growth of new for-profit and social ventures.  Ours is a culture of exploring, experimenting, innovating, sharing, challenging and giving.

As leaders in the emerging discipline of entrepreneurship, our members are making an impact on how we think about, conduct research on, design public policy around, and interact with entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial ventures.  They are extending the field of knowledge and shaping the discipline to reflect the opportunities and demands of the 21st Century.

How can imagination become creative productivity? How can artists fuse the work of creative theorists to their gifts to help others to innovate? So far both Basadur’s Creative Problem Solving Profile and deBono’s Six Thinking Hat Theory have provided a structure that is relatively easy to understand, adapt and implement. But with our next creative theorist, Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi, quickly that clarity disappears into the murky world of “flow”.

Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi (pronounced “chick-sent-me-high-ee”) is a Hungarian psychology professor, who emigrated to the United States at the age of 22. Now at Claremont Graduate University,  Dr. Csíkszentmihályi is a distinguished professor of psychology and management in the school of organizational and behavioral sciences. He is also the Founding Co-Director of the Quality of Life Research Center. The QLRC is a non-profit research institute that studies “positive psychology”; that is, human strengths such as optimism, creativity, intrinsic motivation, and responsibility.” Prior to his work at Claremont, Mihaly, was the head of the department of psychology at the University of Chicago and of the department of sociology and anthropology at Lake Forest College.

Flow

Mihaly is known for his work in the study of happiness and creativity, and in particular for his years of research and writing on the ideas around life’s “flow.”  He is the author of a number of books on the topic including:

Csikszentmihalyi saw optimal activities in the "flow" channel moving outward as skills are gained. In short, flow can be described as a state where attention, motivation, and the situation meet, resulting in a kind of productive harmony or feedback.

To achieve a flow state, a balance must be struck between the challenge of the task and the skill of the performer. If the task is too easy or too difficult, flow cannot occur. Both skill level and challenge level must be matched and high; if skill and challenge are low and matched, then apathy results. The flow state also implies a kind of focused attention, and indeed, it has been noted that mindfulness, meditation, yoga, the Alexander Technique, and martial arts seem to improve a person’s capacity for flow.

Why is flow essential to creative productivity?

“Creativity is often defined as a parallel construct to intelligence, but it differs from intelligence in that it is not restricted to cognitive or intellectual functioning or behavior. Instead, it is concerned with a complex mix of motivational conditions, personality factors, environmental conditions, chance factors, and even products.” (Feldhusen and Goh, 1995)  The concepts of Flow, fit nicely into this construct.

In his book Flow Csíkszentmihályi lists a number of facts (not all of which have to be present) to create an experience of flow.

1. Clear goals (expectations and rules are discernible and goals are attainable and align appropriately with one’s skill set and abilities).

2. Concentrating and focusing, a high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention (a person engaged in the activity will have the opportunity to focus and to delve deeply into it).

3. A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness, the merging of action and awareness.

4. Distorted sense of time, one’s subjective experience of time is altered.

5. Direct and immediate feedback (successes and failures in the course of the activity are apparent, so that behavior can be adjusted as needed).

6. Balance between ability level and challenge (the activity is neither too easy nor too difficult).

7. A sense of personal control over the situation or activity.

8. The activity is intrinsically rewarding, so there is an effortlessness of action.

9. People become absorbed in their activity, and focus of awareness is narrowed down to the activity itself, action awareness merging.

What personality traits do those posses who frequently achieve creative “flow”?

According to Csíkszentmihályi, creative personalities are different from others, because of their complexity. Creative individuals show tendencies of thought and action that in most people are segregated. They contain contradictory extremes; instead of being an “individual,” each of them is a “multitude.”

Here are 10 paradoxical traits Csíkszentmihályi believes are often present in creative people.

1. Creative people have a great deal of physical energy, but they’re also often quiet and at rest.

They work long hours, with great concentration, while projecting an aura of freshness and enthusiasm. Yet it is surprising how often individuals who in their seventies and eighties exude energy and health remember childhoods plagued by illness. It seems that their energy is internally generated, due more to their focused minds than superior genetics. This does not mean that creative people are hyperactive, always “on.” In fact, they rest often and sleep a lot. The important thing is that they control their energy; it’s not ruled by the calendar, the clock, an external schedule. When necessary, they can focus it like a laser beam; when not, creative types immediately recharge their batteries. They consider the rhythm of activity followed by idleness or reflection very important for the success of their work. This is not a bio-rhythm inherited with their genes; it was learned by trial and error as a strategy for achieving their goals.

2. Creative people tend to be smart yet naive at the same time.

How smart they actually are is open to question. It is probably true that what psychologists call the “g factor,” meaning a core of general intelligence, is high among people who make important creative contributions.The earliest longitudinal study of superior mental abilities, initiated at Stanford University by the psychologist Lewis Terman in 1921, shows rather conclusively that children with very high IQs do well in life, but after a certain point IQ does not seem to be correlated any longer with superior performance in real life. Later studies suggest that the cutoff point is around 120; it might be difficult to do creative work with a lower IQ, but an IQ beyond 120 does not necessarily imply higher creativity.Furthermore, people who bring about an acceptable novelty in a domain seem able to use well two opposite ways of thinking: the convergent and the divergent. Convergent thinking is measured by IQ tests, and it involves solving well-defined, rational problems that have one correct answer. Divergent thinking leads to no agreed-upon solution. It involves fluency, or the ability to generate a great quantity of ideas; flexibility, or the ability to switch from one perspective to another; and originality in picking unusual associations of ideas. These are the dimensions of thinking that most creativity tests measure and that most workshops try to enhance.

Another way of expressing this dialectic is the contrasting poles of wisdom and childishness. As Howard Gardner remarked in his study of the major creative geniuses of this century, a certain immaturity, both emotional and mental, can go hand in hand with deepest insights. Mozart comes immediately to mind.

3. Creative people combine playfulness and discipline, or responsibility and irresponsibility.

Creative people combine playfulness and discipline, or responsibility and irresponsibility. There is no question that a playfully light attitude is typical of creative individuals. But this playfulness doesn’t go very far without its antithesis, a quality of doggedness, endurance, perseverance. Nina Holton, whose playfully claims wild germs of ideas are the genesis of her sculpture, is very firm about the importance of hard work: “Tell anybody you’re a sculptor and they’ll say, ‘Oh, how exciting, how wonderful.’ And I tend to say, ‘What’s so wonderful?’ It’s like being a mason, or a carpenter, half the time. But they don’t wish to hear that because they really only imagine the first part, the exciting part.

4. Creative people alternate between imagination and fantasy, and a rooted sense of reality.

Creative people alternate between imagination and fantasy, and a rooted sense of reality. Great art and great science involve a leap of imagination into a world that is different from the present. The rest of society often views these new ideas as fantasies without relevance to current reality. And they are right. But the whole point of art and science is to go beyond what we now consider real and create a new reality. At the same time, this “escape” is not into a never-never land. What makes a novel idea creative is that once we see it, sooner or later we recognize that, strange as it is, it is true. Most of us assume that artists—musicians, writers, poets, painters—are strong on the fantasy side, whereas scientists, politicians, and businesspeople are realists. This may be true in terms of day-to-day routine activities. But when a person begins to work creatively, all bets are off.

5. Creative people trend to be both extroverted and introverted.

Creative people tend to be both extroverted and introverted. We’re usually one or the other, either preferring to be in the thick of crowds or sitting on the sidelines and observing the passing show. In fact, in psychological research, extroversion and introversion are considered the most stable personality traits that differentiate people from each other and that can be reliably measured. Creative individuals, on the other hand, seem to exhibit both traits simultaneously.

6. Creative people are humble and proud at the same time.

Creative people are humble and proud at the same time. It is remarkable to meet a famous person who you expect to be arrogant or supercilious, only to encounter self-deprecation and shyness instead. Yet there are good reasons why this should be so. These individuals are well aware that they stand, in Newton’s words, “on the shoulders of giants.” Their respect for the area in which they work makes them aware of the long line of previous contributions to it, putting their own in perspective. They’re also aware of the role that luck played in their own achievements. And they’re usually so focused on future projects and current challenges that past accomplishments, no matter how outstanding, are no longer very interesting to them. At the same time, they know that in comparison with others, they have accomplished a great deal. And this knowledge provides a sense of security, even pride.

7. Creative people, to an extent, escape rigid gender role stereotyping.

Creative people, to an extent, escape rigid gender role stereotyping. When tests of masculinity/femininity are given to young people, over and over one finds that creative and talented girls are more dominant and tough than other girls, and creative boys are more sensitive and less aggressive than their male peers.This tendency toward androgyny is sometimes understood in purely sexual terms, and therefore it gets confused with homosexuality. But psychological androgyny is a much wider concept referring to a person’s ability to be at the same time aggressive and nurturing, sensitive and rigid, dominant and submissive, regardless of gender.  Creative individuals are more likely to have not only the strengths of their own gender but those of the other one, too.

8. Creative people are both rebellious and conservative.

Creative people are both rebellious and conservative. It is impossible to be creative without having first internalized an area of culture. So it’s difficult to see how a person can be creative without being both traditional and conservative and at the same time rebellious and iconoclastic. Being only traditional leaves an area unchanged; constantly taking chances without regard to what has been valued in the past rarely leads to novelty that is accepted as an improvement. The artist Eva Zeisel, who says that the folk tradition in which she works is “her home,” nevertheless produces ceramics that were recognized by the Museum of Modern Art as masterpieces of contemporary design. This is what she says about innovation for its own sake:”This idea to create something is not my aim. To be different is a negative motive, and no creative thought or created thing grows out of a negative impulse. A negative impulse is always frustrating. And to be different means ‘not like this’ and ‘not like that.’ And the ‘not like’—that’s why postmodernism, with the prefix of ‘post,’ couldn’t work. No negative impulse can work, can produce any happy creation. Only a positive one.”

But the willingness to take risks, to break with the safety of tradition, is also necessary. The economist George Stigler is very emphatic in this regard: “I’d say one of the most common failures of able people is a lack of nerve. They’ll play safe games. In innovation, you have to play a less safe game, if it’s going to be interesting. It’s not predictable that it’ll go well.”

9. Most creative people are very passionate about their work, yet they can be extremely objective about it as well.

Most creative people are very passionate about their work, yet they can be extremely objective about it as well. Without the passion, we soon lose interest in a difficult task. Yet without being objective about it, our work is not very good and lacks credibility.

10. Creative people’s openness and sensitivity often exposes them to suffering and pain, yet also to a great deal of enjoyment.

Creative people’s openness and sensitivity often exposes them to suffering and pain, yet also to a great deal of enjoyment. Most would agree with Rabinow’s words: “Inventors have a low threshold of pain. Things bother them.” A badly designed machine causes pain to an inventive engineer, just as the creative writer is hurt when reading bad prose.Being alone at the forefront of a discipline also leaves you exposed and vulnerable. Eminence invites criticism and often vicious attacks. When an artist has invested years in making a sculpture, or a scientist in developing a theory, it is devastating if nobody cares.Deep interest and involvement in obscure subjects often goes unrewarded, or even brings on ridicule. Divergent thinking is often perceived as deviant by the majority, and so the creative person may feel isolated and misunderstood. Perhaps the most difficult thing for creative individuals to bear is the sense of loss and emptiness they experience when, for some reason, they cannot work. This is especially painful when a person feels his or her creativity drying out.Yet when a person is working in the area of his of her expertise, worries and cares fall away, replaced by a sense of bliss. Perhaps the most important quality, the one that is most consistently present in all creative individuals, is the ability to enjoy the process of creation for its own sake. Without this trait, poets would give up striving for perfection and would write commercial jingles, economists would work for banks where they would earn at least twice as much as they do at universities, and physicists would stop doing basic research and join industrial laboratories where the conditions are better and the expectations more predictable.

Csíkszentmihályi’s theory of Flow, and how it is created, certainly builds a clear case for artists to use his or her artistry- in its pure form- to illustrate and teach others Csíkszentmihályi concepts of flow. Csíkszentmihályi’s theoretical constructs provides the necessary framework to communicate how the arts can facilitate creating an environment for creative productivity and innovation to emerge.

Written by Randy Woods, October 25th. Appeared in Entrepreneur Magazine online.

Andy Fife's mission is to provide a solid financial foundation for entrepreneurial artists.

In the drizzly Pacific Northwest, Andy Fife is a rainmaker for the region’s thriving arts community. Through Shunpike, a Seattle-based arts organization, he has helped nurture more than 2,500 creative enterprises across Washington, providing a solid financial foundation for the region’s most prominent entrepreneurial artists.

So what’s his big secret? “We mostly focus on writing a business plan, creating a marketing plan, securing funding, establishing lines of credit,” Fife says. “That, itself, could be considered innovative in the art world, where most people aren’t trained in the business fundamentals.”

“Artists always do badly with money,” admits Jennie Shortridge, a Shunpike client and co-founder of Seattle7Writers, a collective of published Pacific Northwest authors. “We just aren’t very good with spreadsheets and bank accounts and, frankly, we don’t always want to be.”

That’s where Shunpike comes in, offering two tiers of service for its financially challenged members. “Basically, we’re a service hub for all the back-office functions,” Fife explains. “Our mission is to handle all of that for them and let them spend their time doing what they do best, which is producing art.”

Shunpike’s first-tier program offers grant-writing services, tax-exempt 503(c)(3) status and consultation about fundraising, finance and advisory board development for a $100 annual fee and a 7 percent cut of revenue. The second tier, called the Partner Artist program, offers all of the above, plus assistance in bookkeeping, taxes, licensing, permitting, human resources, payroll and insurance. The same $100 annual fee applies, plus 10 percent of revenue.

Even in the shadow of the Great Recession, Shunpike appears to have no shortage of potential clients. A 2010 report by Americans for the Arts said Seattle is home to 4,370 businesses in the “creative industries”–museums, symphonies, architecture, advertising–employing more than 21,000 people.

When Fife joined as executive director in 2007, Shunpike’s annual budget was $400,000; today, it’s $1.4 million. About 55 percent of these funds come through donations by government agencies, corporations, foundations and individuals, he says. The rest comes from consulting fees and percentages of Partner Artists’ revenues. Shunpike, now in its 10th year, has about 115 Partner Artists on its roster.

Providing aid to nonprofits is Shunpike’s specialty, but the group also doles out advice to for-profit ventures. Katrina Toft, co-founder and owner of Two Ravens Studio in Tacoma, Wash., sought marketing and financial advice from Shunpike in 2010 when she and her business partners wanted to grow their metalworking business.

“Andy created a diagram for us, explaining how to get bank loans, address environmental concerns and go through the permitting process,” Toft says. “We also learned to be open to not just the standard methods of marketing. He gave us great advice on utilizing social media and venturing into Facebook.”

“It’s so important to learn business skills,” says Teresa Thuman, producing artistic director of the nonprofit Sound Theatre Company, a Shunpike Partner Artist since 2006. “We had no real structure when we started, so Shunpike essentially became our business office. They helped out tremendously with grant-writing, licensing and fundraising.”

Fife recommended that Sound Theatre eliminate overhead by renting out local theaters. He is also a champion of pooling artists into collectives and raising funds via online crowdsourcing, much the way Kickstarter works, with incremental PayPal donations.

“You might find other organizations that will help support your business, but no one else will support both your business and your artwork,” Thuman says. “There’s really no other organization like Shunpike.”

Soon that may no longer be true. Fife says he may try to export the Shunpike model. “The strength is that it’s a very local approach,” he says, “but there’s no reason it can’t be repeated in other cities.”

NTEN, Common Knowledge, and Blackbaud just recently released their third annual 2011 Nonprofit Social Networking Benchmark Report. Their report provides insights for nonprofits, foundations, media and nonprofit- focused businesses about the most important behavior and trends surrounding social networking as part of nonprofits’ marketing, communications, fundraising, program and IT services.

Who Participated
Respondents included 11,196 nonprofit professionals representing small, medium, and large organizations and all nonprofit segments including: Arts & Culture, Education (Higher and K-12), Environment & Animal Welfare, Health & Healthcare, Human Services, Internal, Professional Associations, Public Benefit, and others. Between January 24, 2011 and February 10, 2011, these nonprofit professionals responded to a survey about their organizations’ use of online social networks.

Two groups of questions were posed to survey participants:
1. Tells us about your use of commercial social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others.
2. Tell us about your work building and using social networks on your own websites, called house social networks.

Top 10 Survey Results

From the commercial social networking world (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube)

1. Facebook is King and Extending Its Lead – Slowly
Facebook, the consumer-focused social networking platform, is the most popular commercial social network for nonprofits and continues to grow, albeit slowly. Nine out of 10 nonprofits (89%) report having a presence on Facebook in 2011. In the last three years Facebook usage has grown from 74% to 89%, with the largest chunk of this adoption occurring between 2009 and 2010 – a 16% jump from 2009 to 2010, and just 3% from 2010 to 2011.By comparison, Twitter, the professional micro-blogging community, looks to have leveled off among nonprofits with usage levels reported at 57% in 2011, down slightly from 2010 (60%).LinkedIn, the online professional social networking community is used by 1 in 3 nonprofits (30%) in 2011, representing a steady-state – no real change from the 33% usage levels reported in both 2010 and 2009.MySpace, variably claimed as the future of social music distribution and consumer-based social networking more generally, is dying on the vine with an all-time low in 2011 of just 7% of nonprofits indicating they maintain a presence here, a -50% drop from 2010 (14% of nonprofits were on MySpace) and a veritable plunge from 2009 when 6% reported a presence on MySpace.

2. Commercial Social Networks Keep Getting Bigger
Apparently nonprofit efforts to attract more supporters on social networks are working. The Facebook average member community size is up 161% in 2011 to 6,376 members compared to 2,440 and 5,391 respectively in 2010 and 2009. The average Twitter follower base is up just 2% in 2011 to 1,822 followers (from 2010’s 1,792 followers) and up a massive 535% from 2009 levels (287 followers). LinkedIn, while not as large overall compared to Facebook managed to quietly creep up to near Twitter levels with an average of 1,196 members in 2011 compared to past years – just 450 in 2010 and 291 members in 2009.

3. Low-Level Fundraising on Facebook Increased
Fundraising on Facebook is growing but it’s still a minority effort. The number of groups successfully generating a small fundraising revenue stream ($1 to $10K annually) has risen each year from 38% in 2009 to 46% in 2011. The number of organizations raising $100,000 or more per year on social networks doubled this year from 0.2% to 0.4%, but obviously this still represents a critically thin slice of the sector.

4. Nonprofits Still Agree – CSNs are Valuable
Nonprofit industry sentiment toward social networks remains very positive with 4 out of 5 (82%) nonprofits indicating that they find their commercial social networking (CSN) efforts valuable (i.e. the combination of respondents who answered with “very valuable” or “somewhat valuable” when asked about the value of their CSNs). The same question in 2009 and 2010 saw 79% and 81% of nonprofits respectively found their CSNs valuable. It looks like nonprofits got hooked early and are still enamored with the idea of doing business on commercial social networks.

5. A Few Newcomers Hit the Scene
The newbie, place-based social networking platform FourSquare appeared in our survey results in a substantive way for the first time in 2011 with 4% of nonprofits saying they have a presence here.Newcomer Jumo (founded in February 2010 by Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook) claims a thin slice of less than 1% of charities, along with other narrowly adopted (and not so new) outlets such as Vimeo (video sharing), Yelp (local search and review), Picassa (photo sharing), Ning ( build your own community) and Delicious (social bookmarking) all of which individually accounted for less than 1% of responses each.First-time mentions this year also include the donor-empowered peer-to-peer giving sites CrowdRise, FirstGiving, Razoo and Causes. All were reported as being used by nonprofits but by less 1% of respondents each.Facebook made efforts to supplant all of these companies with the release of new product features in 2010 and 2011. It will be interesting to see if these smaller players are able to carve out a firm hold in the market despite Facebook’s best efforts.

6. Surprise Result: Master Social Fundraisers Come in all Sizes
It turns out that nonprofits of all sizes are able to scale their fundraising efforts on commercial social networks. We identified a subset (27 organizations) of “Master Social Fundraisers” from amongst the survey respondents. Master Social Fundraisers are nonprofits that raised more than $100,000 on Facebook over the last year. Fascinatingly, the first characteristic that jumped out reversed many of our conclusions regarding organization size: 30% of the Master Fundraisers were Small organizations ($1 to $5MM annual budget) and 8% were Medium-sized ($6MM to $50MM).

Table 1.1:  Master Fundraisers – the size of organizations raising more than $100K on Facebook

The average Facebook following of a Master Social Fundraiser is nearly 100,000 (99,911) members—more than fifteen times the general average. This number demonstrates that a prerequisite for raising big dollars via social networks is a big community. Viral or word-of-mouth-marketing within online social networks may reduce the cost of building a community, but nonprofits still need a large base of supporters to bring in substantial fundraising revenue. Staffing is important as well – 30% of Master Fundraisers dedicate 2+ staff to managing and fundraising on their social networking presence, compared to just 2% for the industry. The conclusion is that resourcing matters a lot to get the job done if you want to fundraise successfully on social networks like Facebook, and it doesn’t matter how large or small your nonprofit. If you manage to dedicate the budget and staff to the task even a small charity can raise $100,000 or more on Facebook.

7. Environmental/Animal Welfare and International Services Groups Outperform the Sector
We sliced the survey results along nonprofit verticals and identified the top performers. Environmental/Animal Welfare groups recorded the highest average community size on Facebook with 8,490 members compared to the overall industry average of 6,376 members. International Service organizations reported the highest use of Facebook with 97% of these groups reporting a presence here, and nearly double the number of Twitter base with 7,360 followers compared to second place Environmental/Animal Welfare group average of 4,182 followers and an industry average of 1,822 followers. Public and Societal Benefit charities report the highest average LinkedIn base with 5,544 members, more than three times greater than the nearest peer sector – Higher Education with 1,591 LinkedIn members.

Moving on to the house social networking world, we round out our Top Ten results from the 2011 nonprofit social networking survey.

8. Average Community Size is Up (Again) for HSN’s
Just like commercial social networks, the community size of nonprofit house social networks (HSNs) is on the rise with an average of 5,967 members in 2011 compared to 3,520 in 2010, a 70% increase year-over-year. Organization size looks to have a direct bearing on community size for house networks with Small ($0 to $5MM annual budget) organizations claiming an average base of 4,473 members, while Large ($51MM to $250MM) and Very Large ($250MM+) report average community sizes of 15,717 and 18,528 members respectively.

9. Program & Service Delivery Creeps into #1 Spot
Over half (55%) of nonprofits who have a house social network report that the role of their community is for Program and Service delivery, eclipsing Marketing (49%) for the first time as the primary purpose for charity house networks. This mirrors our anecdotal experience over the last year as we talked with increasing numbers of nonprofits looking to use their house networks for delivery of health (e.g. stop smoking), education (e.g. electronic delivery of business education curricula), advocacy (e.g. stop climate change) or best practice innovation (e.g. animal welfare shelter improvements). Layering on or weaving mission into socially-enabled online communities helps to differentiate them from Facebook; finally answering the question, “Why would my supporters register and use my house network if they are already on Facebook?

10. Business-focused Departments Still Running the Social Networking Show
Unlike many of the recent technology waves (e.g. web sites, email, mobile) social networking projects (and communities) are typically managed by the business-oriented departments instead of IT. Even the more technologically intensive house social networks are owned by Communications (17%), Marketing (13%), Fundraising (13%), Programs (12%), Executive Management (10%) and cross-departmental (owned by multiple departments equally) (11%). IT owns house social networking projects for 9% of organizations. It seems that the department that most directly benefits from the social networking program owns the effort, and IT mostly assists.

Click the link to download the entire 2011 NPO Social Networking Benchmark Report

About NTEN, Common Knowledge and Blackbaud
NTEN is the membership organization of nonprofit professionals who put technology to use for their causes.

Common Knowledge, an Internet consulting agency, founded in 2002, provides online fundraising and marketing services to nonprofits and higher education.

Blackbaud is the leading global provider of software and services designed specifically for nonprofit organizations, enabling them to improve operational efficiency, build strong relationships, and raise more money to support their missions.

Written by Lance Hall, actor, director, creator of Launch Pad Casting Workshop and a participant in The IAE‘s inaugural class.

Since sessions at The Institute for Arts Entrepreneurship started, we’ve been working with a lot of introspective discovery and self-reflection. In the past few weeks, we’ve begun to tie it all together. The layers and layers of light bulbs keep switching on. Here are a few things that stand out in my memory:

A part of the brainstorming activity.

If you’re like me, you’ve been a part of plenty of brainstorming sessions. This past month, though, we did a brainstorming exercise in which we actually made use of our personal characteristics. I’ve never done anything like this. Things like my Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, personal preferences, shortcomings and strengths all made it into the mix. It was really amazing to see how my personal identity could sharpen different ideas, create new fronts for personal growth, and reveal where my difficulties are going to lie.

We talked about money. It might seem painfully obvious in a school for entrepreneurship, but we didn’t talk about bookkeeping, budgeting, or anything like it. We worked with our own personal history with money. There were definitely some tears among us. I think all of us were surprised how deeply our financial heritage has affected who we are and how we act.

When we started at The IAE, we were told one of the biggest goals is to cultivate whole-brain thinking. The reason for this really hit me when we started talking about money in emotional terms. An entrepreneur has to balance analytical (left brain) activities with creative (right brain) processes. A big part of that is learning to navigate the numerical (left brain) aspects of capital, and master our emotional (right brain) connection to money.

Meet the artists of the IAE.

If you’re interested in careers in the arts, finding out more about the IAE, or just discovering one of the most innovative and essential ways we can get our economy back on track (come on, one of these has to concern you), come meet the IAE:

How can we turn our imaginations into productive creativity?  How can we use the arts to activate others imaginations and help facilitate the transform of them into creative productivity?

In my post Imagination, Creativity and Productivity I mentioned a long list of creative theorists who each have developed their own methodology for helping individuals and teams transform their imaginations into productive creativity. How can their ideas be applied, or further illuminate through an art form? In my post on October 10th I explored Min Basadur’s Creative Problem Solving Profile. In today’s post I will explore Edward deBono’s Six Thinking Hats.

About Edward deBono

Edward deBono, founder of The deBono Group,  is a leading authority in the field of creative thinking, innovation and the direct teaching of thinking as a skill.  Dr. de Bono holds an MA in psychology and physiology from Oxford, as well as a D. Phil (a research degree) in Medicine as well as a Ph.D. from Cambridge. He has held faculty appointments at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, London and Harvard.  His instruction in thinking has been utilized by IBM, Prudential, Microsoft, Chick-Fil-A, BP,  Nokia, Siemens, Bosch, Quaker, Ericsson,  and many others.

Dr. deBono is also the founder of the World Academy of New Thinking™ (WANT).  ‘New Thinking’ means new perceptions, fresh alternatives, a change of emphasis and the generation and design of new concepts and ideas. The role of this Academy is specifically concerned with new thinking in conflict resolution, problem solving, economic development, education, health and most areas effecting daily life.

Dr. deBono has written over 70 book. Here is a partial list of books he has written:  New Think, Mechanism of Mind, Six Thinking Hats, Lateral Thinking, Serious Creativity, I Am Right-You Are Wrong, Parallel Thinking, Conflicts-A Better Way to Resolve Them, Water Logic, Simplicity, Teaching Thinking, New Thinking for the New Millennium, PO: A Device for Successful Thinking, and Future Positive.

Six Thinking Hats & The Parallel Thinking Process

In 1999 Edward deBono developed a creativity technique designed to facilitate the shifting of focused thought for creative thinking and innovation to emerge. A process, which he calls  Six Thinking Hats®,  is a parallel thinking process. Parallel Thinking®, also developed by deBono, is where each thinker puts forward his or her thoughts in parallel with the thoughts of others; without attacking the thoughts of others.

After all, when A and B come together, each with an idea, its normal for each to want to judge, or debate, the merits of the other persons idea.  Its human nature for it to be difficult for A and B to stand side by side and allow their ideas to remain parallel to each other, without comparison, synthesis or judgment, so each can be fully explored. The reason for this is because argument is the basis of what most consider normal thinking. The purest form of this type of thinking comes from our courts of law where the prosecution takes one side of the argument and the defense the other side. Each strives to prove the other side wrong. The “truth” is to be reached by argument.

While there is a place for argument, and while argument is a useful tool of thinking, argument is inadequate as the main and only tool of thinking. Argument lacks constructive energies, design energies, and creative energies. Pointing out faults may lead to some improvement but does not construct something new. Equally synthesizing both points of view does not produce a stream of new alternatives. As such, traditional argument is totally useless to construct an innovative design process. To begin to do this, according to de Bono, we must separate out all of the different aspects of our thinking about an idea.

So how do we do this?

Think of full-color printing. When the basic color separations are made, each basic color is printed separately onto the same sheet to give us full-color printing. In the same way, when we separate the modes of our thinking and then apply each mode to the same subject, we end up with full-color thinking on the subject.

With deBono’s Six Thinking Hat Method the thinker can separate their thinking into six clear functions and roles.  For example, if the thinker metaphorically puts on the yellow hat, he or she may turn up new ideas which may cause the thinker to change his or her mind about the value of the idea. Likewise, when asked to think about the idea wearing a black hat a thinker who began as a euphoric supporter for it may discover difficulties that reduce their euphoria. Each thinking role is identified with a colored symbolic “thinking hat.” below.

	The White Hat calls for information known or needed. “The facts, just the facts.” The white hat represents neutral and objective thinking, and is concerned with facts and information.
	The Yellow Hat symbolizes brightness and optimism. Under this hat you explore the positives and probe for value and benefit.The yellow hat represents sunny and positive thinking, and is concerned with what has worked in the past.
	The Black Hat is judgment or why something may not work. Spot the difficulties and dangers; where things might go wrong. Probably the most powerful and useful of the Hats but a problem if overused.The black hat represents careful and cautious thinking, and is sometimes referred to as the “devil’s advocate” hat.
	The Red Hat signifies feelings, hunches and intuition. When using this hat you can express emotions and feelings and share fears, likes, dislikes, loves, and hates.The red hat represents the emotional view, which never has to be justified.
	The Green Hat focuses on creativity; the possibilities, alternatives, and new ideas. It’s an opportunity to express new concepts and new perceptions.The green hat is associated with creativity and new ideas.
	The Blue Hat is used to manage the thinking process. It’s the control mechanism that ensures the Six Thinking Hats® guidelines are observed.The blue hat represents the orchestration of the multi-hat thinking process.

Today in business, as elsewhere, there is a huge need to be constructive and creative. There is a need to solve problems and to open up opportunities. There is a need to design new possibilities, not just to argue between two existing possibilities. deBono’s Six Hats method allows for all sides of an issue to be fully explored. Adversarial confrontation is replaced by a cooperative exploration of the subject allowing for ideas to become creative productivity.