Out of The Box - Week Ending 8/1

This morning, while doing some research on results-oriented work environments, I was inspired by Rosetta Thurman's 'The Friday Four' on her Perspectives From The Pipeline blog to throw a bit of weekly 'blurb' blogging onto my own site.

Every week I sift through dozens of miscellaneous articles and blogs which inspire thoughts and ideas on KM (and about a dozen more that serve no other purpose than to entertain me with a hearty helping of junk media).

So, while my lunch is heating up in the break-room (clearly not taking Rosetta's add-on advice to the BBC News Magazine article on how to make time to think; does it count if I blog while I eat lunch at my desk?) here's a list of the things that had me thinking out of the box this week (and tickled my funny bone)!

• Get Creative! Author and marketing and innovation consultant, Cynthia Barton Rabe, introduces the concept of 'zero-gravity thinkers' as a means of promoting creativity and rejuvenating the way organizations think. Rabe defines zero-gravity thinkers "as people
  who have psychological distance from the company or team, people who have Renaissance tendencies...'who think broadly and out of the box on a regular basis'".

• Cool Tool: Evernote (with thanks to C.C. Chapman)

• 11 Habits of the Worst Boss I Ever Had: A Manifesto of Poor Leadership from entrepreneur David Silverman.

• Celebrity Quote of The Week: "If you notice, since Britney started wearing clothes and behaving, Paris is out of town not bothering anybody anymore - thank God - and evidently Lindsay Lohan has gone gay, we don't seem to have much of an issue." – Los Angeles police chief William Bratton, linking a decline in problems with paparazzi to the good behavior of several high-profile celebrities, to KNBC-TV

• Tapping the Creativity of Downtime: Excerpted..."In its early days, Chris Wallace's company didn't always have enough work to keep its staff fully occupied designing interactive Web sites for clients. But it didn't want to lose any talent. So he and his co-founders decided to tell employees they could pursue their own interests in their downtime, doing just about whatever they wanted, on the clock."