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.  
 
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It’s a common-sense rule of thumb that we seem to accept without much thought. Creativity and madness go hand in hand. But is this true? How do we know? And is it right to make such broad statements about people we have never met? A lot of work has gone into finding these answers, and although we may never completely understand how the brain works in relation to personality, we can study behaviour and mental processes with different types of scientific inquiry. This means refusing to accept the assumptions in favour of hard evidence. In something as intangible as the personality, finding the root of anything may be like draining the ocean with a sieve.  
 
We can make a lot of individual observations and then build a larger picture from the jigsaw of information we find. Obviously, we cannot fully understand a thing until we have the whole picture, and this may never be reached, so scientific inquiry must reach into logical hypothesis to complete the process. New information may disrupt these logical assumptions over time so it’s always vital to make the facts and the hypothesis separate, so people know what to look at and what to use. Science is defined by its repeatable nature and with all mental health cases everyone is a unique individual. This poses another problem. Like with quantum mechanics, the mind can be seen as something that expresses potentials rather than known quantities. Perhaps this is because of the quantum effects of brain function or maybe it’s a convergent evolution of principles, independent of quantum mechanics.  
 
As human beings we have tastes and passions. When it comes to creative art such as painting or literature, the desire is usually to find something to our taste and to invigorate our passions. We also tend to prefer art that has a deep emotional connection that we can become a part of in the experience. We like to be moved in some way so shown something so interesting and fascinating that it really makes us think. Suffering is something that is particularly interesting in all our media. In problem solving we need to know how the suffering is affecting people, in drama we don’t get a story without dilemma and personal risk, in art we want to see through the eyes of someone else and know their intimate thoughts. We also have a morbid fascination for suffering, we enjoy learning about horrible things that have happened in the past and in the modern day.  
 
For someone who experiences a lot of mental suffering, and has the ability to create from this resource, their work has a potential to be sought after. They can direct it in any setting, and provided they can find a use for their scope of imagination and experience, they can find a purpose and a meaning in life by expressing their mind. Turning a debilitating condition into something of value is highly important for a lot of people. Put it in the right packaging and suffering can be highly lucrative. This doesn’t mean that we should make suffering for people for entertainment, it means that those with the right experience sometimes get the right job.  
 
Mania on the other hand is not necessarily about suffering, and yet is completely debilitating for the sufferer. It consists of the person having incontrollable energy levels, racing thoughts, lots of adrenaline, and an out-of-control inner dialogue. In schizophrenia and psychosis, the inner dialogue can become highly intrusive, devoid of reason, and paranoid. This can not only cause huge distress to the sufferer but can be difficult for others to manage. In some cases, when the mania is linked to narcissism or sociopathy, the sufferer can become dangerous. This is because they simply do not have the necessary brain function to stop them from carrying out their unhinged motivations.  
 
In people who suffer with mania, the creativity is often associated with the up phrase of their condition. When the mind is alive and the energy levels are high, the connection between the subconscious and the conscious is at its strongest. The individual is able to navigate these chaotic mental inferences and use them to create imaginative and intelligent ideas. Mania is often linked to symptoms such as reckless abandon and persistent impulses. This combined with the strong connection to the subconscious can result in a huge body of work that receives little attention once it’s been put down. A stream of consciousness style of creation can work well for some, provided they are able to provide enough clarity. For most of us, we have to go through things and make them sound verbally rational. The spontaneous works and ideas that manic people produce are often incredibly vivid and are filled with expressions of urgency. They tend to be striking at first but can lack emotional depth, again, the limited amount of thinking through can be an issue.  
 
In the way that creativity and mental illness are casually linked, the same can be said for creativity and intelligence. We know that it is the people with verbal and literal intelligence who are the most likely to develop some kind of mood disorder. Technically minded people seem to have a greater capacity to manage their thoughts and emotions in ways that prevent serious illness. This points to the fact that those who do suffer with mental health problems to varying degrees are more likely to have higher verbal intelligence overall. This gives them the ability to translate their raw emotion and sensation into some kind of reasonable description that others can relate to. This may be through metaphor of can be a more direct approach. Finding the words is the key. Something else we know about people with both depressive and manic disorders is that they have a propensity to daydream. The distraction offered by unwanted thoughts and feelings can be enough to take the attention away from the present moment and into an inner environment.  
 
It has been shown that mental health problems do run in families and the causes are at least partially genetic. This means that the brain itself holds many answers as to the issue and not the choices and personality of the individual. At the same time, people with neurological disorders can often be found to have creative members of the family. The act of being creative is often a release and a cure for any unwanted mental states and it could be that the two are linked but expressing themselves differently.  
 
When all of this is said, it is vital to appreciate that having a mental health condition is never somehow a blessing. It may be that it is linked to creativity, but there are plenty of creative people who are not mentally unwell. In fact, most are not. And the same can be said for mentally unwell people, they’re not all creative. Again, most are not. What can be said is a higher proportion than normal can be found in both groups, to the extent that it deserves further study. Artists and writers are also statistically more likely to die by suicide or through the actions of mania. They are more likely to struggle with addiction and have trouble holding down work and family units. It’s not a beautiful path to be romanticised, however creativity might be a great way to make the most of one’s issues in a way that hurts no-one and has the potential to help or at least inspire someone else.  

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YouTube is one of those fantastic inventions that means anyone can get the information they need in video form. Sure, the majority of it is hype, irrelevant, sometimes plain wrong, and often naive, welcome to a democratic society. You have to do a bit of work to uncover the golden material, like a paleoarchaeologist, we brush away the crud and the muck to find the beautiful specimens waiting for us to admire. Deciphering where they belong on the grand scale of usefulness often means spending time with the content, watching, waiting for them to slip up somewhere. If they pass this brutal test of authenticity and reliability, we can feel assured in sharing the video with our people and perpetuating the good stuff against the favour of the bad.  
 
As a person born in England, to hear the term British Literature puts me in an outsider’s position. It’s called usually English Literature, even if the author was not English. If it was written in the language, it counts. British Literature, then, is a different subject. It considers works written by the British, and not necessarily in Modern English. A history of the subject must start at the beginning, and in this case, that was a time when the Latin speaking Romans left the administration opening the gates for Saxons and Angles from the German lands and the Norse from Scandinavia. The merging of these three major cultures along with the traditional homegrown Jutes, Picts, Iceni, Gaels, and Britons among others who were already here, the British and English language evolved from this pot of diverse people. Latin remained as part of the Roman Catholic Church, which established itself only a few generations after the emperors packed up. 
 
It didn’t end there, once this set-up had been left to run its course for a few hundred years, we had another inclusion of European language. The Norman invasion of 1066 saw King William defeat Harold Godwinson after his predecessor broke his promise to join the Norman and British Kingdoms. Taking the land by force, William of Normandy became the King of England and insisted that French words were used by the nobility. Because of this new influx of literary tools, the dictionary of the common people grew to incorporate this new vernacular.  
 
The way people communicate words, their meanings, and ideas that can be built from them is through literature. It therefore seems important to study the history of British literature so we can understand the evolution of the culture from a linguistic point of view. As the British personality is constructed of all the influences that surround it, the literature often gives us the best clues as to how this works from a third-person perspective. Understanding the layering of culture that decided what was right and wrong through the application of story and instruction over the two thousand years since the birth of modern British culture can help us define the future for all English-speaking people in ways that are relevant, meaningful, and effective.  
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Not all of us are creative people, and some of us are a lot more creative than others. It’s also known that you can’t teach creativity to people who are not inclined to be creative. It’s akin to asking a goldfish to climb a tree. It’s just not going to be able to do it, no matter how many times you explain it. Understanding the theory is one thing but putting it into practice requires a particular type of mind that enables this ability. So, what is going on in the brain that means one person can think creatively and another person cannot? And why are some people so creative that asking them to do things that require none is like a prison for them? What do we know? 
 
Unfortunately, most of the research done on the brain is instigated because of illness. This is because curing people is a lot more important than finding out how healthy people do what they do. With a subject like neurobiology, the expertise and funding are limited. It’s understandable that priorities mean the sick get the first attention. However, we also know that creative people often have mental health problems. This means it has coincided that creative people have been studied in detail because of their illness. Not all creative people get ill, so we can’t say that we know the entire story, but both creativity and mental illness come from the same system, so we know they are linked in some way. How close the link is will be the basis of further study.  
 
Why do creative people have a higher predetermination for mental illness? It’s more likely for them, so there must be something in the brain that makes the path to problematic thinking more viable. Why do non-creative people tend to not struggle so much with mental health? What is protecting them from the turmoil of an out-of-control mental state? The clear difference between sane and non-sane thought can put a barrier between individuals and when a person is unable to empathise with the unexplainable thoughts, it can be hard to help someone in this state. With compassion and tolerance, we can work together and find the right way to move forward. Accepting what they say as true for them and what they experience as a valid one can mean making tough choices about what a person is capable of or not. Only with acceptance and compassion can we find solutions that help people to be their best self in a setting prepared to handle their illness.  
 
But what about people who are not mentally unwell but are creative? What do they do that is analogous to madness and mood disorders? The key is in the ability to perceive things in new ways. The term ‘thinking outside the box’ is put into its best use when talking about creativity. By seeing pathways to ideas and strategies from the available resources that have not yet been identified, we are applying our creative mind. In a mood disorder or a madness, the novel ideas are wrong. In a creative person, they are right. Being able to distinguish between the two is the fundamental difference between creativity and madness. Creative people might have crazy ideas, usually called blue sky thinking, but they know when it needs work. They also have the usual mental blocks that prevent harmful and hurtful thought. It is when these subconscious safeguarding systems go wrong that the mind slips from creativity to insanity. That’s where the acceptance becomes important, denying it will only put a spanner in the works. 
 
It’s not only art where creativity is integral to the work involved. Art is often an expression of pure creativity with only a formal veneer of technique and method to make it viable for one style or another. Academic subjects also require creativity. Every invention, new idea, technique, personal plan, and more requires a set of mental processes that are completely unique. When a mathematician solves a complex formula or writes down a new one, they are using their creative brain to find the result. You need to apply the sense of process and trial and error with associated ideas based on intuition. That’s how creative ideas are nurtured.  
 
What motivates creative people? Why are they prepared to go into new realms of thought when there is so much out there already? Surely, it’s a lot of effort and with people thinking you might be mad, is it worth it? It does seem that creative people have a sense of social magnanimity. A selfless desire to make things better one way or another is what separates a creative person from say a poser or a mad person. When you care about society and other people as individuals and are motivated to assist with creative ideas, even if they don’t work, you carry an altruistic sense of service that some of us simply don’t have. By nurturing this sense of service by self-managing your ventures and enterprises, you can find sustainable and viable ways to apply your creative mind.  
 
Another motivation for creativity is as a cure for a sad mood. Sometimes if we are unhappy or emotional in uncomfortable ways then we choose creative methods to help. Painting, writing, making sculpture, or planning a brilliant idea might be just the ticket to getting out of one frame of mind and into another. Because creative people are more likely to have problems with low mood, it’s often the case that the desire to create is both motivated by a self-actualisation and a selfless sense of purpose. This duality can be hard to manage when a lot of what creative people do is rejected and mocked by the undiscerning public. It’s only when something becomes successful and well-known that most people begin to pay attention. Reaching the people that matter means taking risks and trusting your instincts of association.  
 
People who choose creativity as a lifestyle either in a job or as a serious hobby are often more tolerant to risk factors. To do something novel and unvalidated by trusted authority is a brave demonstration of individual merit. Putting your faith in the opinion of untrained and unprepared minds means putting your faith in your own idea. If it fails it can be a real blow, especially if it’s your livelihood on the line. To people who are highly creative, this doesn’t matter as much. Some of us would rather sit quietly and follow instructions to get everything as it ought to be. The idea of failure or major mistakes on their record is too much. To be able to bypass this sense of anticipated dread creative people can disassociate with the temporary opinions and bubbles of emotion that follow them. Look at politicians, they have practically half their home nation undermining their every move. Do they let it stop them? They just get on with the job. Having a blind spot for the antisocial effects of poor opinion is a skill that requires confidence in your own ability to make good judgements. 
 
The downside to the creative mindset is that because of the poor opinions of others and the judgements of their ideas being associated with their character, many people find it difficult to tolerate and accept them. As soon as a person is known for doing something that is not yet validated by social consensus, a lot of people are not prepared to accept or identify with those who create them. This leads to isolation and social exclusion, which can be a cruel and lonely place to find yourself in. When you make it as a creative person, and you have proven yourself with a viable and sustainable idea, some people still find it difficult to accept because of wariness. Because they can’t understand the journey to where they are, they imagine boundaries and fiery swords that make a difference. They don’t exist.  
 
What do we know about the difference between creative people and non-creative people when carrying out mental tasks? The brain has been studied in various ways with different tasks being conducted with scanners. This gives a physical representation of the biomechanical process that represents the individual’s thoughts. When people think creatively, the mind either has ordered thinking or chaotic thinking. Those of us who can apply ordered thought when applying novel and juxtapositioned ideas are more likely to find the solution from the given information. Those of us who think chaotically when assessing the information are less likely to find creative solutions. This is something that can’t often be helped, as the subconscious mind is the governor of this method. Because we are not conscious of this process, we have no direct control over it.  
 
In fact, creative mental processing has been shown to be genetic in origin. In the same way that mood disorders and sanity disorders can run in families, the traits that lead to creative thinking can also be traced in this way. The subconscious mind is the source of all our ideas, and it is in our conscious processing that we sift through the information and find the correct thought or response. Usually, the subconscious offers something we understand and know from experience.  Creative people can take abstract associations and imaginative uses for things that they have already learned. This is the boundary that gets broken for something to be new. The application of something known to something else known but so far unconnected is how inventions begin. For our subconscious mind to offer these strange connections, it must be able to communicate from the non-linear side of its process and have a conscious non-linear process that can meet it.  
 
To be able to directly link the conscious with the subconscious mind, the conscious mind needs to be relatively quiet. In the rest state, the subconscious mind is given the energy it needs to begin administrating the information it has received and linking it to everything it already knows. This happens all at once with no sense of hierarchy. That means the non-linear amalgam of processing can be confusing to the stable and linear process. This is why some people find it chaotic and hard to work with. To be able to remain stable in conscious processing and accept the subconscious prompts at a metered rate, the creative mind can access this chaotic and inspirational resource.  
 
This means the creative process can’t just take place automatically. The mind must be fully stocked with the resources it needs to build something new. Like playing Minecraft, you can’t craft until you have mined. This means that we must learn about the things we want to create for.  Even a painter must learn about their technique and style, finger painting included. To make something of value that appeals to the people it is designed for, we must learn a lot of skills and gain a lot of experience in the field before we can begin. It is in the creative combination of every skill we have learned and every association we have gathered that we can plot unique and fitting lines between them that leave people feeling rewarded and not confused.  
 
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Everyone is slightly different, however there are often basic similarities that we can rely on when getting to know each other. Sometimes these basics are a bit muddled up, which can be confusing for us when dealing with others. Perfectly natural and very human differences can be amplified when the world is mostly designed by people with one or another thinking style. Unlike education, the brain function is different on a more fundamental level, meaning that it doesn’t matter what we have been taught, the way we use the information and what it means for us as people can be different. If the brain is a chef, and the world has ingredients, some chefs are bakers and other chefs are grillers. You give the same ingredients to different chefs, and you will get different foods to enjoy at the end.  
 
Neurodiversity can be used to describe many official diagnoses. What they have in common are a manner of mental processing on the biological level that can be described as unusual. If only 10% of the world are left-handed, it can be described as an unusual hand. The same goes for neurodiversity. If 10% of us think differently for reasons we cannot control, we will each benefit from making the world available to them all. The umbrella terms for neurodiversity include Autism, Dyslexia, ADD, ADHD, Aspergers, Gender Dysphoria, Bi-Polarism, and many others. None of these neurodiverse conditions are the same as bad or criminal or sick and cannot be used as an excuse for behaviour that goes against the grain. Like all of us, most neurodiverse people just want to get on with their lives and be taken seriously. Accepting these conditions as part of the human equation can mean helping us out with art and exploration.  
 
With an art installation to help bring awareness and acceptance to neurodiversity, Queens Road in Watford, Hertfordshire, is hosting dozens of multicoloured umbrellas. Suspended in the air, the multiple tones offer respite from the elements and a backdrop to the thoughts with their various hues. Shelter from the sun and the rain, the umbrellas may represent our higher thought functions that keep us safe and on the straight and narrow path. Some colours are similar, and some are vibrant opposites. They all do the same thing, and we can share each all of them. Open until the 27th of September, the Neurodiversity Umbrella Project aims to inspire and educate by showing how diversity in thought is an opportunity and not a challenge.   

​Via BBC

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Possibly best known for his work with Frank Zappa, the MTV hard-rock and funk productions used clay animation for effect and artistic relevance. The music was a hit, and Zappa still has a huge army of fans around the world. Born in 1947, the late artist and film maker began to make animations after serving in the 20 years Viet Nam war. What began as a little movie about model cars, the clay figures that were peripheral to the setting captured his inventive imagination. He began to make short films with clay models, exploring the facets of movement and effect as various techniques were used. 
 
After a decade or so of working on his own projects, he was asked to work with Frank Zappa. This broke him into reputation with the scene which gave him the springboard he needed for long-term tenure. After making 4 amazing videos for the artist, it was time to work on something different and out of the box. This is where we meet Prometheus’ Garden. Based on the Greek Myth, the Titan Prometheus is a god of fire. Using his fire, he teaches creative arts and social sciences to the rabble which angered the other gods.  
 
In this fantastical garden, the film takes the creative element of Prometheus to the extreme. We watch as the forces of nature create living beings before our very eyes and animate them into dramas and cycles of life. The mystical and otherworldly experiment draws us into an incredible dream of frightening and mystifying morphs of shape and predetermination. The passions and desire to survive emerge, and as we watch, the individuals begin to show their animalistic side on the road to balance.  
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We definitely need vampire babies. 

Enjoy browsing this selection of cutely gruesome vampire babies on awesome looking shoulder bags. Perfect for the night out, the goth scene, the Halloween do, and the wall.

As with most Zazzle creations, customers can swap the product so the image can be on a badge, a shirt, a cushion, or something else entirely. Don't forget to check the back of the bags, they're unique double sided.

Wealth generation is not just about getting rich. Wealth means an abundance of a valuable thing. This could be financial, and yet it could equally be emotional, social, or educational. Tying these things together to filter into a financial reward is the only way of keeping it sustainable, and sustainable wealth is the only kind that really matters long-term. By working together, creating, funding, paying for, promoting, and supporting, we can elevate sustainable wealth in all parts of our community, across the world. The cycle of profit and innovation will turn as always and if we can get on board, we can play a part in what it will look like in days, months, and years to come. Getting involved is how to boost the wealth of the community in your own way, and finding ways to make it work for you is how you boost wealth for your own family. The balance is struck in the models you apply to your efforts and communication.  
 
Sustainability means that for as long as there is demand, you can supply. Not only that, but it also means that the rewards you receive account for the cost of delivering the service and a wage for everyone involved, including yourself. This can be reached when the customer begins to rely on your product or service and are prepared to do what it takes to have it on supply. Finding something to offer that is important enough, either practically or emotionally, and offering it in such a way that benefits everyone, is how to best position your skills and talents. When this has happened, and it happens all the time with brands and businesses across the table, sustainable wealth is created.  
 
Of course, breaking into the world of innovation and business is not as simple as having a few good ideas. It is a long process and one that requires us to take many risks. We must be confident in our abilities and skills but not arrogant or narcissistic. We need to know we are good enough but appreciate that plenty of other people are also good enough. Once this emotional hurdle is behind you, you can set about beginning an honest and well-made business. To get on the radar, you need to tick some mental boxes. People only pay attention to something they are interested in. People only buy things they want or need. If no one is interested in your service or the work that you do, then you’ll not find anyone to sell it to.  
 
What matters a lot in the marketplace are things that change the marketplace. Things that have not been done or offered before are what interest people the most. Things that have a clear benefit to the customer and society that you can justify your profit margin with are defensible business models. A solution to a problem that a customer has that is more efficient and more suitable is disruptive and new. These things are what people look for when choosing to spend money or even stop blocking ads for a particular site like this one. (Google wants to pay me for offering a service to them and in return readers like you get free and easy to read education like this). 
 
A lot of businesses tick these boxes and only get so far, they don’t make it past the small turnover or semi-professional status. Reaching out to the wider world involves appreciating that the wider world is a complex and unfamiliar place. As an authority in the terms of your creative business, people will have their own emotional baggage that makes it hard for them to connect with you. Everything that people “know” about business leaders and salespeople stands in your way like a black knight who just won’t listen. To expand your work and reach further than your own arm span, it’s necessary to plug into other businesses and services. When you plug in to a business or service as a business or service, you must be able to reverse the connection at the same time, resulting in a mutual benefit for a mutual sharing of work. It is in the power of networks that we can grow even further. This means the insecurities that lead to feelings of competitiveness need to be addressed before you can move on. 
 
For the plug to connect in both directions, and for your use of business to equal use for your business, your product and service needs to become a platform for other innovators to use to their benefit. This leads to a natural expansion that brings more potential customers and further reach. Creating a natural cycle of work that results in wealth creation and service improvements for all is how to build a business model that is truly sustainable and defensible. Finding the right needs and the correct level of priority is how to become profitable and necessary for other businesses to utilise. The process of building dependencies involves becoming reliable and trusted as well as efficient and necessary. 
 
Identifying a need for a solution requires an understanding of certain processes and workflow systems that others go through. Having the opportunity to identify pain points in a particular aspect of life and work requires an experience or an instruction on something that you’re interested in. By playing a part in your area of life you will have the option to look for certain pressure points and pain points that you can find solutions to and get rewarded for applying. A business model that finds a repeating problem and offers an efficient and reliable solution for a price that outweighs the alternative in attractiveness will find many footholds in its chosen industry and beyond.  
 
Needs come in a variety of shapes and sizes. The priority level of a need depends on how the lack of its fulfilment affects the future and the present moment. If a person needs something right now, it is a high priority, rather than if they need something at some point, when it is a relatively low priority. Positioning yourself in the right now bracket is how to make your service or product immediately attractive. We assign needs according to how urgent they are, critical needs are the ones that make a significant difference to us if they are not met. Nice needs are needs that we’d like to be fulfilled but are prepared to put off for another day. A lot of things are nice to some but critical to others. Hunger, for example, defines how critical a food purchase would be. We all have moods and external circumstances that change what we consider a priority at any given time. Positioning yourself in a way that finds people when you are their priority is about understanding who you are selling to and why.   
 
Needs can be urgent, latent, or aspirational. As mentioned, urgency is often relative however some products are always considered urgent. Municipal services and healthcare services are needed all the time, a lot of people have complete dependencies on other services that they’d be vulnerable and isolated without. A latent need is one that could be considered urgent but only if it suits you. The new perfume that you must have, for example, may seem urgent to you and it might well be, however it’s more about desire than anything else. If given the choice between the perfume and life-saving care, you’d choose the care.  Aspirational needs identify a person’s desire for the future and help them feel more able to fulfil it. These can be financial, educational, or some other personal investment. All these needs are opportunities to create wealth by adding genuine value. By taking responsibility for solving the problem identified, you are in your right to take payment for that service.  
 
Having a foothold in the market is a great first step however the market doesn’t stay the same for long. New technologies emerge, and they present new opportunities for business. With new applications of new technology there comes new problems and efficiencies that can be utilised. To save time and resources by providing efficiency the customer finds the resources to offer an effective return. This balance is met when the product or service outweighs the need to hold onto the return. Finding the needs that markets have and determining what your solutions are worth to them can be difficult, however when you talk to potential clients these things can be pinned down over time.  
 
To be able to command a price that looks attractive to yourself and those who are invested in your progress, your product or service must meet a need with a degree of urgency that presents as an opportunity rather than a chore. In this way you’re providing a genuinely valuable resource to those who want to become customers. Because we all have unique skills and abilities, our needs vary across departments and social circles. One department is usually specialised into one or two aspects and so other aspects need an outsourced flow to satisfy the need. By connecting yourself as a departmental expert in a situation that has a strong demand you can become an essential tool for business. Honing this into a service that can be defined and sold is all about delivery and positioning.  
 
When you deliver your creative idea in a setting there are a lot of things you must be aware of. To get any interest in your hard work you need to connect with people who don’t know you and have no real social contract with you. Your offering is supposed speak to them on a level that cuts through the automatic busybody routine most of us are in these days. Positioning requires an understanding who your ideal customer is. By focusing on the ideal customer, we can reach the most potential with what we have to offer. Like the bullseye of a target, the whole circle of potential radiates from this central spot.  So, you need to decide who this ideal customer is.  
 
Is your creative idea meant for other businesses, like internet services, so they can do their job better? Is your solution meant for the public, like jam, so anyone can make use of your offering? Or is your solution meant for society, like a free further education initiative, so the benefits reach beyond that of the user? If you can identify one or two main customers and define them as people, in a non-intrusive yet definitive way, you can design your delivery to meet their needs. If the problems can be defined and the solutions can be offered in a way that identifies with the one who experiences them, the service will seem attractive. Then, by operating in a way that provides a solution, efficiency, and reliability, your service will be able to provide value and create wealth for the whole community, including you.  
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​Essential reading: Entrusted: Stewardship For Responsible Wealth Creation
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Is it a dying art? Taking individual frames of still images and applying tiny movements to give the illusion of animation. It is a cross-over between film and photography. With CGI having reached a level of decency that means producers can recreate pretty much anything they like to near-to-life detail, the time and effort needed to make stop motion pictures is simply commercially unviable. It requires more than profit for motivation when making art outside of the sales funnel.  
 
Set in a science-fiction fantasy city high above the ground, the residents of Chronopolis have reached immortality. Their lives become repetitive and boring, so they start doing strange experiments with time and space. By utilising ever more bizarre and inventive methods, the immortals extend their knowledge further than before. Are they searching for something at the end of the journey?  
 
His first full-length film, director Piotr Kamler received a grant of under $400,000 to make the animation in 1977. Upon completion in 1982, the first cut was over an hour long. It received many accolades, including Best Children’s Film at the Fantafestival1982 plus received a showing at Cannes 82, possibly the biggest film festival in the world. With music scored by the highly sought-after Luc Ferrari, and original narration by Michael Lonsdale, the film had everything the audience wanted for a far-out and thoughtful adventure.  
 
Covered in metaphors and from the perspective of a Soviet Union Poland, the themes of labour, repetition, non-individuality, and uniformity run through the film. The experiments and inventiveness come in the form of new shapes and unusual designs that do not conform to the aesthetic of the background. Perhaps a sign of the mindset within this political and social landscape, willing the people to look beyond the normal to make the world a little more interesting.   
 
Upon re-release in 1988, the film had received an edit from the production company. The new version had the narration removed, highlighting the music and providing a silent dramatic experience. Possibly this made the film more universal and approachable to those of all ages and from all nations. A few extended scenes were also cut, leaving viewers in no doubt as to the flow of the story. YouTube has this version plus a short video of deleted scenes for you to enjoy. Perhaps a version from the Cannes Festival 1982 will resurface one day so we can enjoy the original director’s cut too.  

How about: Stop-Motion Animation: How to Make and Share Creative Videos 

Everything changes, the world never stands still. Human society, as an extension of the world, is also in perpetual flux. The way we do things and the things we do change all the time, over the decades new technologies and new motivations produce new behaviours. With all of this undiscovered mental landscape, there is an infinite space to grow, explore, expand, and dissect. We can be pioneers on the edge of development, assisting humanity on its journey towards tomorrow. Creative leadership takes the power of this continual change and finds ways of making all of our lives better through novel applications. The arts and the sciences work together to bring about fresh experience and utility that strengthen our communities and improve our personal lives.  
 
What does exploring the landscape of human innovation and social evolution look like? It’s not the same as setting off on a journey to unknown mountains. It’s only when we use this example as an analogy or a metaphor that is begins to make sense. We can draw new maps and mark them with descriptions of what we can expect, here be dragons, only we do it through experimentation and application. Making little changes to one thing at a time is how it begins but this looks much like walking out of the door and to the garden gate. A real explorer goes much further than this, and they will risk getting completely lost for a while. Knowing how to get back to where you started is a necessary tool for any adventure, but you also need to lose sight of the shore.  
 
It begins with a little experiment; we ask ourselves what would happen if I did this. We notice the effect that we cause, and we try to understand the dynamic observed. This can be with making art, with the effects being aesthetic and communicatory, or with technology and the effects of new devices in new situations. Once we have discovered a little change in a little place that we think is beneficial in some way, we can begin putting it into practice. Honing the technique and preserving the philosophy that motivated the idea, we can create a set of instructions that produce the desired change without any need for experiment. Fool-proofing these instructions and making plans for every contingency takes a formulative effort in the initial exploratory and adventurous stage.     
 
It is only once we have explored the options and mastered the process required that that act of expansion and implementation can fruitfully take place. The formula is not a secret recipe we can write down, but a certain mindset and routine that ensures the results are as the process requires. When the experiment is over and the outcome is lucid, it’s simply a matter of making it happen. Now the adaptation to the process, the idea, the application, is ready to meet the world. Putting something into positive action is the next stage of applying your creative problem solving to the given situation. A creative leader isn’t content with one application in one setting for their idea, they see value in providing solutions to a raft of individuals who have a similar problem or desire that they want to be fulfilled. It’s good for them, for other people, and it’s good for the economy.  
 
The world at large is made up of human networks. These networks are governed not only by legal and social rules but by the emotions of everyone involved. To collaborate with others, it is important to always be mindful of all these things. A blockage in legal terms, social terms, or emotional terms can be fatal to your project and the positive benefits it could have provided. To build on our idea, solution, brand, creative piece, we must be able to communicate effectively with the networks necessary for this to happen. Positioning and presentation work together with personality to create an over-all public facade that symbolises the true big picture behind the image. If there are incoherencies or crossed wires, then the social and emotional rhetoric will not be effective. If you forget the legal side and do not make room for this then others will be wary of you as they don’t want to be involved with things that break the law. Finding creative ways to implement the necessary requirements and presenting yourself and idea in a true to life branding is another instance of trial, error, technique building, and application.  
 
The aspects of creative leadership often branch off into three distinguishable areas. Resourcefulness, reactivity, and inventiveness. Resourcefulness is not just making the most out of what’s available, it’s about expanding what’s available in creative ways. Finding new solutions to new problems in the cheapest and most effective way on the way to implementing a larger solution is how creative resourcefulness becomes important. Using tools in ways that work safely regardless of their original intention is how we apply things in creative ways and increase our level of resource. Reactive creativity is all about how we solve immediate problems with immediate answers. Often, we can partially or even completely solve an issue with a snap decision that uses what is immediately available. If we can do this in creative and useful ways that becomes a resource for others, then we become very useful to have around. Inventiveness, of course, is all about seeing new ways to do things with what we have around us. It is about seeing the uncommon but never-the-less correct answer in the equation of many answers. To do this we need a level of confidence in our own ability to perceive, understand, and digest relevant information and disregard the irrelevant information that may be tied into the original yet now obsolete purpose.  
 
Making use of these aspects of creativity is how we can relate well with all the different types of people that will stand on our path to development. To become an effective leader with a positive toolset to bring to the table, we need to be influential, useful, and safe. In the grand scheme it is not enough to be a unit, we need to be a conductor of the surrounding environment, making positive waves and bringing about clarity within the settings given to us. Because we are all individuals, we all have different personalities that need to be worked with and not against. Getting along with people is an artform on its own, considering the way others feel, think, behave, and want. To implement creativity to the social scene, we need to be able to relate to others in such a way that leaves them feeling good about themselves. If we make people feel negative, then they will associate us and our ideas with that negative feeling. We don’t want that.  
 
Because people are all unique and complex systems, the art of human interaction is never to be taken lightly or for granted. Art is about the blend of creativity and technique in each situation that presents the most appropriate outcome. Pure creativity pays no attention to rules and systems, and pure technique pays no attention to novelty and little changes. We need to be able to find a balance between these two extremes to relate with others on a level they feel safe and confident with.  It is only when others feel safe and confident with us that they will seriously investigate anything we have to offer. Every person is different and we will have to adjust our balance of creativity and technique to effectively govern our relationships. Formalities and playfulness all play their part in our social relationships and to make the most out of those in our networks, we need to be able to find the correct approach for the people around us and the market we intend to build into. A sense of empathy and an ear for genuine listening are your most important tools, rather than second guessing and over-ruling, we must be able to address individuals on face value, like that of a genuine coin, if we are to ascribe genuine value to our relationships.