You likely know that  links between what people crave and what you can offer, requires you to connect the dots between your current position and creative prosperity. But have you ever considered how vital connections also boost innovative brainpower?

5 Vital Connections to Innovative Brainpower

The opposite is also true. Cut out your connections and by default you diminish brainpower to invent.

Rather than pack your brain with links that go nowhere, why not jettison your life and leadership forward with 5 essential connections.

Jumpstart  brainpower found  in highly innovative minds only, when you:

1. Join what you already know to what you wish to know in order to invent something new. Human brains come equipped to latch onto new facts faster if they hook to what you already know and do. How could that open  new opportunities for you to start with your current talents and learn what it takes to fill an innovative  niche you see  – yes, even in an economic downturn.
2. Connect skills you are learning to insights others offer, by linking your facts to their interests. While delivering information works against the human brain, teaching others as we learn ourselves pays back 90% more in retention. Intelligent people also build prosperous alliances in this way.
3. Link solution possibilities to every problem encountered. Einstein constantly cultivated curiosity, for example,  by linking suggested solutions to problems.  While others passed over, complained about, and whined about what could be – he connected himself to the problem of relativity by imagining he rode the curve of the arc. When you look at problems with solutions in mind, the human brain builds neuron pathways to create  answers you seek.
4. Draw together diverse people and welcome opposing views. I’ve learned during a lifetime in renewal work that to connect opposing views is to spot nuances that others miss on both sides of issues. It requires being less opinionated about most everything, and pays wonderful dividends to those who stay open-minded. For instance tradition insists on the separation of hard and soft skills, and then places these in silly hierarchies. Here at MITA we combine the best of both into what we term smart skills with the brain in mind for 21^st Century leadership strategies that work for a new era.
5. Join science to art and use imagination as innovative glue to intergrate. You have two well equipped sides to the human brain, and both play a keen role in highly sustainable innovation. To kindle and design ideas such as these  top creative moments that hit new heights in the last decade, takes connecting  the art and science from your left and right brain.

Pair  these essentials together and you’ll increase neuron connections come with  brainpower for new innovative heights.  Make fewer connections, on the other hand, and you’ll  limit your mental ability to create.  Simply put, your daily connections determine your IQ growth, since increased neural connections equal higher intelligence.

Did you know that babies are born with 20 times more neural connections than adults? Why so? Experiences you have in a day  - either create or diminish neural connections for creativity.  Schools tend to teach by delivery and that kills connections that come from doing as people learn. Luckily it’s not all bad news.

Thanks to plasticity however, the human brain rewires new neural connections daily – based on what you do. Or you can lose connections by ruts, routines, and passivity. Does that challenge you to step outside of comfort zones, connect what has yet to fit together in your world, and spark the innovation ability in your brain and organization?

Find yourself working against growth in your career?  Standing still while others ride new waves of innovation?

Rewire your Brain for Growth

If you face financial problems, relationship struggles, or workplace inertia – you can blame it on your brain. The brain’s proclivity to default to harmful ruts can cause you to work against triumph.

Luckily, that same brain offers you tools to win mind-bending breaks, even in the toughest times.   How so?

Here are 25 ways to reboot  brainpower and zap innovative growth plans with a few jolts from brain sciences:

1. Invent and share a refreshing solution to a stubborn work problem – solve a  difficulty that leaves you bored or in a rut at work. Brain fact: Boredom is more a habit formed in brains, and shaped by daily choices,  then stored in brain as a reality.

2. Uplift your work area with natural lighting.  Brain fact: Environments influence brainpower, and a healthy workplace inspires people to transform problems into solutions.

3. Thank a fellow worker for a personal accomplishment.  Brain fact: Well being comes partially from and is fueled by serotonin chemical hormones that accompany acts of kindness.

4. Give somebody the gift of forgiveness, and let go of a grudge. Brain fact: Anger, fear, and frustration  are fueled by harmful cortisol chemical hormones that come with rancor.

5. Propose alternatives to an annoying habit or flawed practice.  Brain fact: Venting is bad for the brain and creates new neuron pathways to many  more  complaints.

6. Act like the person you want others to see in you, and that person you’ll become. Brain fact: Dendrite brain cells use the outside world to take their shapes, and grow new connections based on what you do each day.

7. Vary your background sounds so that you add music for more motivation. Brain fact: Music changes brain wave speeds in ways that impact moods and alter your productivity.

8. Stir curiosity and engage others around you.  Brain fact: Lectures and talks work against listener brains, and benefit speaker intelligence only, while failing  to benefit from listener insights.

9. Shift routines up daily with lived diversity. Brain fact: Hebbian workers rewire daily for ruts and routines that kill incentives, limit focus or even shrink their brains from stress.

10. Include differences as assets.  Brain fact: Common diversity training tends to fail participants  mentally,  by painting inclusion as a deficit model – rather than as assets added through differences.

11. Sleep well in order to perform well. Brain fact: Brain waves can bring either sleep or peak performance, based on how you activate and manage them.

12. Research and open mentally to new and different ideas daily.  Brain fact: Hook even difficult facts onto one thing you know and learning increases in less time.

13. Change on regular basis.  Brain fact: Your brain’s basal ganglia stores old facts and creates ruts, while working memory holds few new facts and leads change.

14. Survey and engage more strengths. Brain fact: Multiple intelligences are common to all, used by few, and can be cultivated daily with regular use as mental tools.

15. Create rather than criticize. Brain fact: Cynical or critical mindsets literally block creativity, limit talent in you or others, and stomp out innovation.

16. List key facts as guides and reminders.  Brain fact: Memory can be outsourced to help you remember more, and to free your mind to focus fully on tasks in the moment.

17. Inspire novel young ideas. Brain fact: Plasticity enables people of all ages and backgrounds to rewire their brains in ways that prosper from young and agile acumen.

19. Encourage yourself and others often.  Brain fact: Encouragement changes the chemistry of a brain through raised serotonin, and ratchets up tone for profitability.

19. Communicate with care, openness and honesty. Brain fact: Meta messages destroy relationships through implications that  differ from actual messages spoken.

20. Integrate projects from ideas and people across many fields.  Brain fact: It often takes an integration of  hard and soft skills to solve problems with the brain in mind.

21. Relax and practice letting worries go.  Brain fact:  Stress literally shrinks the brain, and anxious tones in communication act as silent brainpower killers.

22. Seek genuine and lasting relationships at work. Brain fact: Greet  colleagues through speaking people’s names, to offer spike in well being or awareness in person’s brain.

23. Risk innovative progress,  one step at a time.  Brain fact: Inspire creativity and invention through teaching others cutting edge approaches, at the same time you develop them.

24. Collaborate for stellar solutions. Brain fact: Create new neuron pathways through collective brainpower,  to facilitate democratic  solutions to workplace  problems.

25. Celebrate gender proclivities. Brain fact: Women’s and men’s brain differ biologically and intellectually, for instance,  in ways that few optimize.

How could these few applications from facts about your brain increase workplace brainpower and toss more innovation into your 2010?

This post appeared in SmartBrief on your Career on June 3, 2010. Thanks for your kind mention SmartBrief Editors!

Some argue that gatekeepers stick to routines and stomp out any hopes for change. Others claim innovation itself holds golden keys to change any status quo. Seth Godin says that people rarely gather as committed tribes around a status quo. What do you say?

In spite of broken systems that resist progress,  innovation, design and the human brain hold enormous power for profitability.

Your brain’s equipped to tackle toxins, even from cynics who cling to old, rather than risk running from ruts. Have you seen it?

In  30 years of  Change with brain based tools, I’ve learned:

1. Personal intelligence or intrapersonal intelligence equips you to respond to deep-seated changes or to find innovative networks to follow.

2. Passion for adventure ignites brainpower to avoid unnecessary confrontations by snipping your amygdala and moving forward in spite of setbacks.

3. Effort to spot opportunities fosters brainpower and willingness to risk riding transparency’s surf.

4. Desire to relate neuro discoveries as solutions to conflicts so that more reasonable parts of your brain win spark innovative initiatives.

5. Humility to extend mental  olive branches to people who disagree fosters collaboration for innovation that draws from diversity.

6. Willingness to show brainpower tools for peace rather than settle for war halts  gridlock battles before they begin.

7. Words to engage with simplicity adds intelligence and replaces mental clutter with innovative dividends for more.

8. Tone to build bridges can bypass traps of cynicism through transparent segues for all to speak and feel heard.

9. Brainstorms that lead innovative solutions with progressive peers, shrinks the influence of naysayers who toss toxins into the mental mix.

10. Communication that engages, encourages and opens communication tends to spark innovation across differences with mental keys rarely found in tragic traits of a cynic.

Step into any gridlock situation and you’ll spot opportunities to replace routines, ruts and rituals, with innovative designs at the peak. Have you seen it? Brainpower tools create  new neuron pathways to dynamic innovation.

How do you inspire others to invent and what types of  innovation do you suggest people stuck in ruts?

The human brain comes with unique equipment to build and sustain innovative cultures, where design leads to profitability. How so?

1.  Kindle and design an idea. Just as the iPod started with an innovative  idea,  Steve Jobs and others continue to design Apple products that revolutionize communication. Fast Company celebrated the last decade’s 14 biggest such design moments, all of which unveil the original ideas that rolled into products with possibilities. How does it happen? Your brain’s hippocampus releases a shot of dopamine in  response to novelty. Anthony Grace at the University of Pittsburgh describes a feedback loop that involves a chemical and electrical interactions between dopamine and novel or unexpected events. This lively process appears to lock in memory, as it also engages the amygdala where the brain processes emotional information that feeds innovation.

2. Mimic creative people. Believe it or not, you can literally adopt another person’s innovative talents by observing them. It’s also true that while innovation may be more vital than ever at your workplace, individuals  who think act and build differently often remain at a premium.  That’s where the brain can help out, so that more people learn innovative tactics that generate profitable designs.  How so? Mirror neurons show how innovative cultures come from imitation – and this video on mirror neurons illustrates how we watch and mirror the culture others live. Deep inside your brain cells are neurons that will fire in reaction to another’s beliefs as they roll into activity. See any new opportunities for innovation where you work,  as they play out in mimicking an innovator’s actions?

3. Link opposites together and build from both sides. Need a breakthrough to top up the creativity on a project? Then build an innovative culture of connecting opposites in ways that few non-innovators think to connect. If you’ve ever benefited from unique insights, you’ve likely also seen opposing viewpoints from high-performance minds,  that beg to differ. So why then, do disagreements about opposing views so often break up relations, terminate innovative projects, shut down brilliant people, promote racism, and even ignite wars? Tone is the brain’s best approach to tame an amygdala in ways that harness innovative energy. Rather than take potshots at people, consider disagreements as tools to build goodwill across differences, and diversity becomes the hottest neuron pathway to innovative solutions. Designs that come from engaging genius thinkers, are the same offerings that prosper a wider community.

4. Create a round table to brainstorm a process. The other day I facilitated a round table of leaders from many fields, and after many unexpected angles tossed into the mix, we came up with a renewal project that none of us could have masterminded alone. Have you experienced ideas piggybacked onto others from alternative positions?  Innovation, whether from arts or science, embodies mysteries to ponder. It’s that place that bubbles over in a circle where no brain is left behind. It’s where brilliant solutions tend to flow from pools just outside of prevailing thought, where people build beyond limitations. It’s where a culture of innovative thought hooks difficult facts onto ordinary experiences people live – so that learning increases in less time, with innovative designs as visible results.

5. Collaborate with a person who differs. Innovation rarely waits for situations to improve but shapes dendrite brain cells by outside worlds that spark mental growth based more on what you do than what’s done to you. The opposite of toxic workplaces is a climate of creative collaboration where innovative leaders engage opposing views to discover another design built from different angles. To work together is to listen to new ideas and to engage another’s talents. Innovative partnerships tend to work better when different players share in a common vision, and when the outcomes and expectations are clearly defined.

6. Reward talent. In too many workplaces problems go unsolved while some of the finest minds are left outside of the innovative process. In order to bridge the gap between the multiple intelligences people bring to work, and the problems that need solutions, organizations reward people for refreshing new ideas. As part of that process why not survey your unique intelligences to see which talents you have up and running innovatively. As people at work awaken new intelligences for innovative designs, offer a reward for teams who use most diverse perspectives on a refreshing and profitable innovation.

7. Pose two-footed questions. The best way to integrate innovation into your firm’s existing practices is to question ways that lead away from creative solutions. Start with stubborn problems, and toss in a two-footed question that probes the solution from angles of fact and interest. I am presenting an MBA course on innovation to several senior faculty at a university business school  in New York next week, and I plan to challenge leaders there with the question: What will  innovation look like in the 21st Century, and how can your business school promote creative intelligence through top facilitation of business brainpower? What two-footed question would launch your next innovative offering?

8. Capitalize on tone tools for tough times. Innovation gets lost in climates where toxins such as bullying or intimidation exist. It can happen faster than lightening strikes an iron rod in an electric storm. When stress or negativity shoot down the best ideas, and innovators wonder whether it’s a lot less stressful to hang up their cleats in favor of doing bare routines, tone tactics act like a vehicle to tug innovation back into play. It helps to invite an example of good tone from a gentle, and effective leader, and discuss how to offer olive branches back and forth at work. Or why not ask other innovators at work what tone they hear in your words and compare their responses to what your words meant to convey.

9. Start social network discussions. Recently I started a back-and-forth on Twitter to toss around insights and brain facts about multi-tasking as it affects innovation. Research shows that multi-tasking works against innovation because it bottle necks the brain’s ability to focus or innovate. Just as all brains wire differently though, I wanted to see how people view multi-tasking as it relates to their own innovation.  Social networks add new colors and textures to innovative brainpower because people hold up lived experiences to the rainbow for another look.

10. Run from cynics. Have you noticed how stocks rise when people speak hope? Or have you seen financial markets nosedive when naysayers spout doom? Luckily pools of innovative brainpower lie beyond the sea of cynicism. This trend hinges on the fact that hope adds serotonin to spark curiosity and fuel the brain. Cortisol, on the other hand, shuts down originality, and increases fear of failure. Make sense? When cynics spread fear, brainpower shuts down before innovation stands a chance.  When creators spark curiosity imagination kicks in genius.

Bravo! This article, Innovation, Design and the Human Brain,  was selected as a top leadership blog at Wally Bock’s Three Star Leadership Blog.

After being told to avoid fatty foods and simply wait for stomach problems to heal, a close friend of mine failed to pursue vital tests for cancer, and died prematurely as a result. Have you seen a person linger only to meet peril in return?

Brain waiting

Another friend waited  rather than phone back  when her cousin slammed down the receiver, after disagreeing about family problems. After  reflection, no action seemed a better option than possibly triggering further confrontation. The result? The following month, her cousin paid for a weekend family holiday where old wounds were exchanged for refurbished family friendships.

When to act and when to wait? Do you tend to hang back or do you act on the spot when troubles mount? Ever wonder about your brain’s role in each??

Why not share your stories of waiting or acting. Would love to hear them. I’ll respond with a few brain benefits from waiting and a few benefits from acting in each situation. Your turn ….