The world is a lot different today than it was in the past. Perhaps it was the invention of the microchip or perhaps it was the advent of mass media communication, people in general are expected to behave and think in ways that are repeatable and predictable. Our systems are created to a regime that suits the goal of its leadership and the people within it are expected to behave in the way provided. Deviation from the routine is often seen as detrimental to the process and with today’s methods and perspectives, it’s often true. Because of this homogenisation of the social construct across the planet, the subtle differences between us are not only more apparent, they are also more problematic. In a system designed for narrow and controlled and therefore most productive action, of course the people who don’t thrive in this kind of order don’t thrive at all.  

​Essential wisdom for today's world: Beyond Diversity: A Comprehensive Guide to DEI in the Modern World
 
We are all different and the ways we do things are increasingly more the same. Compatibility across society is better than ever because everything is connected and leads on to its counterparts in the big picture. This has created a specific and guided routine that citizens must follow to get the most out of their lives. In this scenario it becomes ever more obvious than some of us are not best designed or set up to be of benefit to this kind of system. The system is not designed or set up to be of benefit to them, either. This is a problem that has become significant in several social, financial, and political levels of decision- making. Our system was designed for an industrial world, our systems of attainment are based on the same steps taken by the Victorian middle classes when it was the factory and the mill that made you wealthy and prosperous.  
 
This is the 21st Century; the factory and the mill are nearly completely automated. The homogenisation of industry was possibly the first aspect of society to be made uniform since the religious upheavals of the middle-ages. Suddenly everyone involved was expected to repeat themselves all day with very little room for intuition and initiative. It was just a matter of making the machine work. Now even this is automated and it’s usually a matter of computer input somewhere in another room. Is it any wonder that our innate character differences are amplified and problematic when we’re all expected to think in the same way? This global automation of craft and manufacture has somewhat shut out the sunlight on the diverse and divergent aspects of the population.  

Something to think about seriously: Social Protection for a Post-Industrial World (International Series on Social Security)
 
In a way, the problems we face today are a real-life example of why human beings are not always a font of wisdom. Our seemingly good ideas are not always as good as they may appear. It takes a diverse and divergent set of minds to truly test out whether something that feels and looks good on the front is the same all the way to the back. We’ve done our best, and although there is the occasional evil genius who doesn’t care, most of humanity has valiantly strived to make a better, fairer, and easier world. The capitalisation of the ideas that make the most in regards to investment return has been the main cause of the narrowing problem. People who don’t naturally grow in the narrow path are not the problem; the path is too narrow. One the main quests for innovative culture in today’s modern world is to expand the path to allow more of us to make the most of who we really are. It will result in much less depression as we can be truer to ourselves and much less stress as we’re not forced to behave in strange and sometimes unnatural ways.  
 
Having the ability to identify the harm or the pain-point in any situation is a valuable skill. Executing the process of litigating the response is another. It’s not easy to fix problems with the tools that created it and it’s often that we have to think of novel and inventive ways to manage the real-life problem situation that’s so-far caused by necessary action. In the scope of necessary action, is it the outcome we are looking for. The process of getting there is less important. Being aware of this provides fuel to the methodology of creativity and provides reasons to look beyond the conventional in order to bridge the gap.  Innovation is always a team effort, we can have a good eye for problems and an inventive character, but getting something into the world as a valuable instrument of change and empowerment takes more than one person. It takes a community.  
 
Our post-industrial setting has shown us that our humanity is valuable for our differences and imagination. The heavy lifting, the repetitive actions, the intricate handiwork, it’s all taken care of. We don’t have value for our ability to do those things like we used to. It’s our thinking power and our decision making that gives us the edge. The modern world makes use of information networks and knowledge silos in order to make the most effective decisions. We, as people, can be sources of information and carriers of information to varying degrees and in doing so, add value to the systems. Identifying the value and placing it in the correct market is also a valuable skill. We can hold, communicate, arrange, and create information in ways that are unique and valuable to open-minded and interested systems.  
 
Using the available information with the resources given can be a difficult task. It’s clear that the value must be extracted and purified in a way that benefits the whole system so that the pain-points are always avoided. It’s not a simple matter of adding a few ingredients, everything has to be done according to the way preferred by all parties. Creating new stories and presentations for the information can help others to find new ways of using it and to identify new problems and anomalies that can be addressed, studied, and solved as necessary. The more diverse thinking and new perspectives offered to work with the available information, the more scope and thinking power the rest of us have to progress the whole picture in our own way.  
 
Learn further: An Introduction to Sustainability: Environmental, Social and Personal Perspectives

Invention and innovation spur from the process of critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity. It’s a repeating cycle that is maintained by the constant shifts in the wider world and the changing habits and needs of the people involved, both in the production, service, and use of the procedure or product. Collaboration can be self-guided in which we research what others have had to say and what others have already tried, or it can be group guided in which we draw in real people to work in real time with the feedback and idea forming process. A collection of both styles of collaboration is likely to be the most effective, provided you can rely on the genuine basis of what you’re told.  
 
Where people differ in views and versions of what is best for themselves and others, the creative aspect of problem-solving can be applied. Making a path that leads in both directions without leaving the field is an important part of managing diversity and difference. Rather than magnifying situations by forcing adaptation and aesthetic, it’s clear we need to make room for all types and all emotional states before we can successfully benefit them and create cohesion for the future. Critical thinking, communication, cultural understanding, and creative thinking, are all necessary skills for the modern-day as many more jobs are automated each year. Playing a vital role in this network of machinery and technology is about becoming a kind of spider, connected to it all with one mind in the centre giving it purpose. Our webs and networks connect with those of others and that’s where we have to learn to put things together. How do spiders do it? They often build their webs on something stable, like a wall, and it gives the appearance of a blanket. That stable element is our human motivation and desire for positive change.  
 
A passionate person is a motivated person, they think about their subject, they study it, they create new ways of looking at the world through the eyes of their subject, and they can go on to invent new ways of putting it into action. In the past, we were often on the edge of hunger and exposure. In these extreme situations, our minds become more attuned to possibility and inventive ideas. Having the ability to nurture this same psychology in today’s comfortable world is a genuine challenge. Being in the position where you don’t need to think of a new thing because life’s pretty good, then you’re not always the one to do the work. If you are truly passionate about the problems of other people then it might tip the balance. If finding the answer to your own problems is just as important as finding the solution to the problems of others then the motivation might be a lot higher.  
 
For those of us who thrive in problem solving environments where our ability to discover and think up new ways to get things as they should be, it can be difficult to co-exist with a society which wants to give everything to us and have someone there to pick up the loose ends. Some of us are not mentally suited to being domesticated to this degree and need something else to stimulate their mind and to give them a sense of purpose and meaning. Rather than turning to drugs, which can provide the illusion of these things, becoming a creative person with a desire to make a living from it when you’re not in a position to sustain it indefinitely is possibly the most empowered place to work from.  
 
Calm and persistent growth in the directions governed by ethic and feedback can be extremely useful in giving a person a sense of being and purpose as well as creating social cohesion, solving problems, and building communities. Innovation that enables others to become better at their chosen activities and give them easier ways to complete the necessary ones is how we create great social cohesion and more value for the community. Enabling others to produce, contribute, think, experience and report on all kinds of available activities and thought process to enrich and qualitatively build on the available foundation. The more sense we can make from the world, the more we can understand other people and their perspectives, the better place we will be in to prevent social and political catastrophe.  
 
Communication and effective story-telling are therefore vital in the process of transmitting information from one set of people to another. The way that different cultures and sets of professionals view various parts of society can differ greatly and before using these as cues to think and feel a certain way, we need to know what they are associated with to them. We can imagine ourselves in their shoes and test to see if something is unfriendly or unkind and we can learn about their background and their group psychology to appreciate the red areas we should avoid or be tactful with. The ability to do this well and to an acceptable level of value is based on our ability to imagine, feel, and empathise. These are human powers and are based on the nervous system. This bodily organ, when working properly, is sensitive to all kinds of problem in the manner of a fear or stress response. What working properly means for the nervous system is when it’s not causing a problem unnecessarily. Obviously, having a nervous system that is not working properly is a traumatic, and sometimes humiliating experience.  
 
Critical thinking is not just about finding problems out there in the world that we think we can solve. It’s about looking within and critically assessing our own thoughts and even emotions. Now, we can't control our emotions but we can control how we respond to them. I’m sure most of you have felt angry before but how many of you went out and did something about it? Doing something about the cause of the anger is something else and involves examination of the emotion and process of being triggered to explore the root cause. This can then be calmly addressed, creatively if necessary. It’s often just a matter of identifying an immature or unhelpful thought buried within the grown-up and solid thinking we rely on and usually have. We can apply criticism to all manner of things, both inward and outward. Once we have identified the problem, we must be able to at least try to see a solution as well. If there is no solution, perhaps the problem is just a chore. Will you quit and stop experimenting? Are you too comfortable?  
 
Problem solving requires an in-depth and consistent effort to learn about the whole situation. This means we need to account for perspectives and concepts that might sound alien or counter-intuitive to ourselves. Having an open mind and an imaginative area we can play out this information within is imperative to holistic appreciation. Learning about the technical and social side of the situation gives us the best perspective to solve the problem and act upon it with progressive ideas. Collaboration is vital as these systems count for people who require stability and psychological safety. By taking charge of old wisdom and new ideas, we can combine the two and form a working solution to the modern issues and boundaries that prevent us from thriving in our own way.  
 
Further reading: Empire of Normality- Neurodiversity and Capitalism 

Finding the solutions to the problems we have and those that others share with us often requires a creative approach. It’s not often that we have an instinctive and no-brainer answer to a genuine problem, mostly because by the time we get to this point we’ve likely solved it or made it a lot worse. We take the tools of the moment, the ideas surrounding the moment, and make something useful out of it. If you remember MacGyver, he’d often construct something out of little bits and bobs in a technical engineering way. The A-Team would do something similar, building various machines and traps that usually made use of their indestructible van and a cunning disguise.  
 
Creativity is the process of taking what we have and using it to make something new, for a purpose, or simply for the pure enjoyment of it. We can apply this principle to nearly every aspect of life, with an infinite number of dimensions that can be aligned to the process of finding something new. The various disciplines of life make use of time-served techniques and methods that become the solid foundations for new ideas, novel practices, and particular answers to very specific one-off problems. The more dynamic and shifting an industry is, the more creativity is required to stay in the centre ground. To be at the top of the league, creativity and technique must work together to the point of excellence. The more honed and experienced a technique has become, the more polished the individual components of it will be for creative uses.  
 
Although creative processes can take place in every walk of life, there are some people who are more suited to creative activity than others. As we all come with different personalities, each one with its virtues and weaknesses, creative individuals are more likely to seek out new paths and better ways. Rather than shying from problems, they like to solve them. The creative process can be summed up simply as listening to ideas and problems, applying what we know to them, and then acting on the problem with our application. Often, it is our own problems that we listen to or those in our family. Professional creativity involves listening to the recurring problems of the wider world. Sometimes we are asked to provide bespoke answers and sometimes we’re asked to solve problems with an answer already given but not working.  
 
Human creativity is about the governance of the line between reality and fantasy. An idea that doesn’t have substance can be turned into a material object or process of value in a cultural context with the applied creativity of one or more people. It might sound simple; however, this is an incredibly powerful part of our toolkit that has enabled us to progress from the canopy. Finding purpose in our creativity means listening to the issues that matter and the desires that are relevant. When we have linked our process to the tangible reality the real work can begin.   
 
To create things that have intrinsic value, the result needs to have a clear purpose. Not only this but the purpose has to resonate with human needs. These stem from mind, body, and spirit. We need to keep all three of these things happy, mental, physical, and emotional nourishment are important for all of us. Creative processes tap into these fundamental requirements to offer new and interesting ways to sustain and improve the wellbeing of these aspects. From practical things like a new way of banking to spiritual things like a book about God, the human being is sustained and nourished with a continual diet of beneficial creativity.  
 
Many people are psychologically motivated to be the best they can be, to make the most of their given attributes, and become successful by doing the things they enjoy and are particularly good at doing. We like getting good at being good. It is rewarding for us and gives us a sense of self-esteem that may have been lacking before we applied ourselves. Even if we don’t rank in the top of the group, winning little battles against our previous selves makes the art of progress beneficial. Some of us are better at pure creativity and can apply it to whatever is put in front of us. Innovators, entrepreneurs, inventors, (the decent) supply teachers, they all have highly creative jobs. Creativity by its nature changes the social and economic landscape. Depending on your own level of reach, the level of reach of your creativity will follow. If your idea is valuable, then it’s likely to travel beyond as more people adopt it or at least come up with something based on it.  
 
It isn’t a simple thing to be creative. The whole process requires not only a strict process but a strict mental regime. Things that put a stop to creativity are the things that put a block between our subconscious and our conscious mind. Stress, anxiety, fear, and monologue all stand between you and your brain’s inner computer. The idea is for the two to talk to each other in ways that make the subconscious conscious. Naturally, the inner landscape of our subconscious mind is not fit for purpose when it comes to conscious expression, however the motivation is on our side, and it can offer insights and missing pieces that we feel make sense out of the situation. Once we consciously process the various concepts and ideas that come to mind, we can put them into physical use. Our evolution is as ancient as life itself so when it has a good idea, if it really is a good idea, then you should listen to it. You know you can’t maul your problems in a dark cave, so you can be the judge of your own ideas and once they’re out in the world, it’s up to the rest of us.  

​​Discover everything you will need to get your great creative ideas into real world situations with these free and affordable tutored courses​.
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Innovation has raised human society from caves into castles and condominiums. 
 
Some inventions change the world for a handful of people who make the best use of them, for example tools that help blind people access what they need. Other innovations change the world for all of us, like the mobile networks that allow us to communicate without wires. If being non-telepathic was a disability, this Wi-Fi and cell-phone stuff would be irrelevant to most of us. In the previous posts I talked about human creativity and in particular, its link to mental health. In the same way that creativity is linked to mental health, it is also linked to innovation. The common thread in both relationships, of course, is the imagination. Unwanted thoughts and feelings come from the imagination. Hypersensitivity to external situations involves a strong emotional response which again is partly based on the imagination as well as from learned experience. Creativity is when the imagination is made real, it’s the process of actualising new thoughts and ideas into some form of action, object, or communication. Mind to matter, the end results can be as varied as the contents of our most vivid imagination.  
 
Innovation is when we use our creative abilities to make something that has value. 
 
Successful innovation occurs when a good idea is met with a good response, then the process of growth and take-up happens in a manner that benefits all. Getting all this right involves a process of critical thinking, communication, and creativity combined. We all have good and bad ideas, and not just when it comes to our end product. The how, why, and when are also important as well as all things in between them. Knowing how to refine the good from the bad in every instance is a matter of having a good critical thinking ability. We have to be able to cross reference results against assumptions, facts, and unknowns. Communication is then vital in making the innovation available to others. People have to know about the project and how to use the project for their own benefit. All three of these things have to be aligned if an innovation is to stand out. Knowing what to innovate requires critical thinking and communication. We need to know what the problems are in a given area and understand the necessary information that we can use to solve them. Then when we create a solution, a first draft perhaps, we need to be able to critically dismiss anything that is unhelpful, superfluous, or wasteful. Having the right vision comes from seeing the scope of the entire environment then knowing where work can be done and why. 
 
Innovation taps into social responsibility. Good innovations build roads to peace and prosperity for everyone.  
 
Because we must understand our environment before we can successfully innovate and apply ourselves, creativity begins when we are young. Young minds are good at learning to begin with, and when we become young adults around 15-25, our minds are ready to absorb much more complex ideas. Not only this, but we also crave alternatives and bigger picture ideas. We like to know how things operate beyond the facade and the front desk then get stuck in with our observations and ideas. It is during this time that the human brain is particularly sensitive to all manner of new ideas, good and bad. This means that we as innovators must act responsibly when feeding fertile fields with our crop. Teaching discernment for good and bad ideas is equally as important as having ideas at all and this is a problem that requires innovative solutions today. Hopefully this journal is working to provide an answer with fully researched and easy to read infomedia like this. 
 
Innovations have lifted billions of people out of poverty over the last 150 years. Since the Industrial Revolution and its microchip replacement, life has become gradually easier for us all as innovations create wealth and opportunity for those with access to them. The amount of information available to us to learn from and use is growing at an equally as fast rate. In the past it was chemical pollution that made our lives miserable, and these days we find a real problem with mental pollution. Bad ideas get just as much headroom as good ones with the modern communication sphere. If we are not given the correct tools so we can discern between the two, we can’t tell if we’re learning something of value or something costly.  
 
The first step to innovation is to identify a problem at its source. 
 
Finding a problem doesn’t always require creativity. You can be following the instructions to the letter and still find an issue that requires a creative solution. Maybe something went wrong in the previous process or perhaps the process itself is at fault. If you want to ensure the problem doesn’t persist, knowing the root cause is the key issue. This requires an in depth understanding of what it is you’re trying to achieve. Imagine trying to fix a submarine without ever setting foot in one or being told about the problem. Trying to innovate without an innate knowledge of your subject is setting yourself up to fail.   
 
We can’t be an expert in everything, and we can’t keep on top of every new addition to the information on any subject. Not only do we draw on the media given to us from experts and those with experience, but we also hand ourselves over to peers in our field who share in the desire to solve genuine problems. Collaboration results in a pooling of creativity and a sharing of intellectual resources in order to maximise the efficiency of everyone’s innovation. To isolate yourself and be creative in a bubble is to ensure your project will be devoid of many valuable insights and boosts. It’s also unlikely to help anyone apart from yourself when true innovation is able to achieve a lot more for the world.  There is nothing wrong with making art for the sake of enjoying yourself, but if you want to innovate, make a difference, and maybe make some money as well, you’ll be better off with a network around you.  
 
A non-fixed mindset is essential for collaborative innovation. 
 
When dealing with both new ideas and new people and their ideas, we need to keep an open mind. By always drawing on the certainties and the habitual answers, we will always find ourselves with the same set of issues. If we want to make value from the issues instead of cost, we have to be able to adjust our attitude towards what we think in favour of what could be. Answering the question can mean forgetting the answer and finding it out again. This is especially true for complex systems in which any tiny discrepancy can lead to wild swings in the final result.  
 
Chaos theory is a great example of how tiny changes can create huge differentials in the field of available answers. In life there are many constant unknowns, things we can never know and things that change regularly. People can express all kinds of behaviours and opinions depending on who they are, what mood they are in, what happened to them that day, and so on. Nature works in the same way, every little event in the wide world is a seemingly random occurrence based on the application of countless other random actions. Accepting that the world works like this on every level makes it seem clear that we must be able to let go of what we think is going to happen and look for certainties through test and repetition.  
 
Innovation is the process of improvising with the current situation and the available options until you find something of value. Then the idea is to replicate the process so that you can achieve consistent results for yourself and everyone else. You can then create a guide and an intellectual study of your processes so that others can work with it for themselves, building on your ideas in the application of new tools and ideas as they emerge. We can use what we know already from the innovations and observations of those who worked before us and then map the heavens according to our interpretations of this information. In astronomy, scientists assume the distances to stars and galaxies by manner of measuring certain quantities that are known to be static across the universe. By using a formula, the apparent brightness of an object of known brightness can tell us how far away it really is. We can do this because we understand how brightness is affected by distance. In the same way, we can find a way to discover new concepts and problems to solve by using what we have observed and drawing lines of best fit to what the possibilities can be.  
 
Passion, purpose, and profit all drive innovation. 
 
In life the majority of us are motivated by financial rewards. Unless we are particularly lucky, we require a healthy income to survive. Poverty is a brutal motivator, it’s nature’s barbarian. Sometimes we can get stick from people for working for money on something that benefits others, it’s neurotic and you have to brush it off as bitterness. In a privileged lifestyle we can afford to volunteer our time and give things away for free. Please don’t hold it against the rest of us for asking for something in return. Innovation is a particularly difficult thing to make a living from. To have the ability to carry it through to its conclusion, it's often that we need a passion for what we’re doing and a sense of purpose that transcends the financial reward. A real sense of care about our project has to be present to keep us going when nothing seems to be working out at the time. If the vision is clear and the method is well-researched, sometimes things have to get ugly before they get beautiful.  
 
Alongside motivation, the other essential ingredient is to innovation is education. Our imagination draws on things we have already seen or experienced. It can alter and recreate, change perspective and apply metaphor, yet even the most abstract imaginary scene contains known colours, known shapes, known ways of movement, known physics. Perhaps many little things allow it to be dynamic and surreal, like a Salvador Dali, yet the basic rules remain. Up is up, joy is joy, red is red, light is light. In order to make something valuable from our complex and abstract imagination, we have to be able to wind thread from the raw wool of our dreams. Our spinning wheel is our ability to think and apply knowledge from every area that touches our idea. Innovation requires a broad knowledge of science, mathematics, and technology because it is the process of engineering processes with the tools available to measurable degrees that brings hardware to the software of our ideas. Innovation also requires the humanities because we have to understand the people we are serving and finding solutions for, to the extent that we are a joy to do business with and engage in collaboration. We know more about our market when we study history, literature, music, politics, and language. Sociology is the science of applying the humanities to real-world processes and innovations. It is essential to know what you’re doing before you do it, so getting a grip on these subjects is as essential as the sciences.  
 
Innovation means change and people resist change by nature.     
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Although innovation brings opportunity and prosperity to many, it can also bring hardship and stress for others. The way we feel about the life we live can dramatically affect our perception on the changes we are given. If we want change, then it’s not so difficult to apply it. If we are content as things are or are confident that we can bring things to a head without any extra help, then additional concepts and tools can become tiresome and a pain. Often, we naturally shun things we don’t immediately understand in fear of being duped. Perhaps we’re not so confident in our ability to discern a fake and a real opportunity. Maybe the shame of falling for some kind of scheme is a fear that prevents us from trying any scheme at all. The real work of innovation is in the provision of a motivation and incentive that works. Too much stick and you meet resistance, too much carrot and you meet entitlement. In life we have many sticks that so far can’t be avoided, finding the people willing to adopt your innovation is about finding the ones who are getting the stick the most. Even then, some people are so attached to their suffering that given the option to change, they still prefer the same old stick. The people who are most likely to adopt new ideas, find the value in new tools and processes, and see the real-world progress in the use of new services, are the ones who are wired to learn and find these alternative ideas. It’s the young. This is why, as creators and innovators, we must be especially careful when we inspire, motivate, and educate people in this malleable stage of life.  
 

Artificial intelligence is rightfully turning many heads all over the world. With the benefits of super-intelligence akin to Commander Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation and the pitfalls akin to Terminator’s Skynet, the human desire to navigate in the right direction has possibly never been stronger. Do we hand over our weapons codes to a thinking machine, incapable of rage and malevolence, or do we give everyone an extension to their mind that’s a finger push away? These are big questions.
 
When it comes to the world of art and design, AI can take concepts from thousands of examples and use them to build something seemingly brand new. For a human, a creative process is often blindfolded, with our subconscious images and ideas silently entering our memories as we go about our busy lives. When the computer is visibly doing what we subconsciously do naturally, on purpose and without inhibition, the moral implications suddenly become an issue. Plagiarism is a real crime and robs professional creatives of rightful returns for their work.
 
Rather than just sitting there, wide-eyed, and nervous, it’s important to get stuck in and steer the ship. If we let the technology sail itself, then we will always have what-if questions we could have answered. The Saudi Ministry of Culture have been working hard to make the nation as attractive as possible to the rest of the world. Perhaps by inviting civilisation in, the leadership hopes a bit of modernity will rub off on the millions of citizens. A deeply conservative nation, the desire for change is perhaps best brought in from the outside. One of the projects being put together is the cultural centre at Diriyah.
 
Alongside a brand-new opera house, the UNESCO World Heritage Site will be home to Diriyah Art Futures Institute. Applications are open for generative AI artists from anywhere in the world, so this truly is a global force to harness and direct the use of artificial intelligence. The Saudi Ministry Of Culture wants to include as many future forms of AI enhanced art generation as possible. This means they are inviting AI art in many forms including cinema, interactive installations, sound sculpture, animation, and 3D printing. If AI art can help with it, they want to know about it and are prepared to help the future along with encouragement and guidance – provided by the artists themselves.
 
With top of the range equipment, a year-long work programme, and a community of like-minded individuals who want to support and motivate each other to produce their best results, the opportunities and possibilities seems endless. This is undoubtedly the first of many such AI forums, and I expect it won’t be just the Saudis who want to get their hands dirty and plant the seeds of tomorrow. Something I did last year was release a poetry book with AI generated art that used the verses as prompts. The images were not always great, so I ended up making dozens of images and choosing the one that stuck to my mind in an intuitive knowing. When it just feels right. This means that although the AI system was utilised, it was a minimal input and only filled in the gaps of my personal scope. That’s what I think it will be best used for, to show us what we don’t necessarily see on our own.