What qualities do the best innovators share? Researchers at Brigham Young conducting a six-year study surveying 3,000 creative executives identified five core skills that differentiate them: Associating, Questioning, Observing, Experimenting, and Networking. Professor Jeff Fryer defines these characteristics here in an interview with Harvard Business Review:

“The first skill is what we call ‘associating.’ It’s a cognitive skill that allows creative people to make connections across seemingly unrelated questions, problems, or ideas. The second skill is questioning — an ability to ask ‘what if,’ ‘why,’ and ‘why not’ questions that challenge the status quo and open up the bigger picture. The third is the ability to closely observe details, particularly the details of people’s behavior. Another skill is the ability to experiment — the people we studied are always trying on new experiences and exploring new worlds. And finally, they are really good at networking with smart people who have little in common with them, but from whom they can learn.”

When you boil it all down, as fellow Brigham Young professor Hal Gergensen does, it really comes down to inquisitiveness. The most innovative executives are also the most inquisitive. They continually ask questions, make connections, push deeper, and draw upon outside sources for inspiration.

So how do we all adopt this skill set and benefit from it in our own work? The trouble is, for many of us it seems that at some point during our education – whether formal or on-the-job – we lose the inquisitiveness inherent to us as young children. Either it’s not rewarded sufficiently or we simply unlearn it, so to speak.

At Braithwaite, we strive to overcome this through extra touches intended to spark curiosity, creativity, and innovation – both during internal brainstorms and sessions with clients. We shun traditional conference rooms in favor of communal couches. We fill the room with children’s toys – from Etch A Sketches to Slinkys to Koosh balls – to promote playful and out-of-the-box thinking. We’ll do role playing and sketch ideas out on paper. We’ll even set up a corporate campfire to share company stories.

We’ve found that if you create the right kind of environment, encourage the sharing of new ideas, and reward curiosity, you can set up the ‘Eureka!’ moment that triggers innovation.

Thank you, Emily Monforto, for putting a new face on Philadelphia phandom. For now, at least.

If you’re like me, then you know from experience that you never know what September baseball will bring. In recent Septembers – especially in Philadelphia – we’ve seen heroic feats from some amazing athletes ranging from walk-off grand slams to diving catches to shut-outs and no-hitters. But Tuesday night belonged to 3-year old Emily Monforto, who with one flip of the ball, showed the nation that our Philadelphia fans aren’t so bad after all.

It wasn’t a put-out from center field or a rifle from Ruiz or Lidge’s signature slider that made national headlines and the Today Show. It was an awkward toss from a toddler and a caring squeeze from a flabbergasted father that pushed aside a legacy of overzealous, raucous and downright embarrassing moments in Philly sports history, bringing touching image to the entire nation.

So, am I naïve enough to think people will forget about snowballs at Santa, heartless cheering of a terrible injury or the JD Drew battery incident? Not a chance. But at least one moment that shows the good-natured passion and love the majority of Philly fans have for their teams will be forever etched in our minds, hearts…and on YouTube.

Some quick hits on the morning of what might be a monumental decision in the history of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News…

By now, you know that Kanye West made a drunken scene at Sunday night’s VMA Awards. Even President Obama called West a “jackass” – albeit off the record.

West has spent the last 36 hours apologizing, and even seemed sincere last night on Jay Leno’s new show. Nice Kanye, but not enough. When you do something as universally condemned as what Kanye did, you need some serious PR. West needs to disappear for a while, and then figure out some way to truly make it right for Taylor Swift.

Maybe he can take some lessons from Beyonce, an innocent bystander who was dragged into the fiasco because West was “standing up for her.” When Beyonce won an award later in the night, she graciously called Swift back to the podium to speak, forfeiting her time in order to make things right. She should be applauded for giving up a little limelight to help Taylor Swift.

As we always say, every crisis presents both Danger and Opportunity. Beyonce found the opportunity in this crisis precisely because she wasn’t looking to spin the situation for PR purposes – she just acted like a human being.

As a Frank Sinatra-quoting friend likes to say, “that’s class.”

Lastly, this viral video from the Denmark Tourism folks is either brilliant or awful (maybe both, I can’t be sure). It certainly has created some buzz out there on the internets, but will it truly increase tourism? Or just offend people? The video is a fake plea from a significantly attractive woman looking for the father of her nine-month-old son. The message from Denmark is something like “we have nubile women who don’t hold grudges and who are available for easy sex, so come vacation in Denmark.”

That might or might not be good marketing, but it sure ain’t class.

“The Public Option” has been one of the most hotly contested parts of the health care debate over the past few weeks.  First it was on the table, then off, then back on. It was basically the ping pong ball of the 2009 health care reform conversation.

A historical review of policy proposals in recent history shows that once an issue is named or given a catch phrase, and opponents or the media can attach some connotations to it, it’s pretty much a ticking time bomb.

President Obama health care speech to Congress

President Obama’s speech last night to a joint session of Congress was his chance to regain control of this political hot potato and frame it exactly as he wanted, changing the conversation away from the “public option.”  He started out well, introducing an “insurance exchange:”

“We will do this by creating a new insurance exchange – a marketplace where individuals and small businesses will be able to shop for health insurance at competitive prices. Insurance companies will have an incentive to participate in this exchange because it lets them compete for millions of new customers. As one big group, these customers will have greater leverage to bargain with the insurance companies for better prices and quality coverage. This is how large companies and government employees get affordable insurance. It’s how everyone in this Congress gets affordable insurance. And it’s time to give every American the same opportunity that we’ve given ourselves.”

Unfortunately, he all too soon reverted to back to the “public option” tag for the concept:

“But an additional step we can take to keep insurance companies honest is by making a not-for-profit public option available in the insurance exchange.”

Back to the start. “Insurance Exchange” sounds capitalist (appealing to Republicans), like a new idea (appealing to Democrats), and trustworthy (appealing to all).  Most importantly, it is something that Obama could’ve owned – with the right supporting mechanisms and talking points in place that could be initiated immediately following the speech.

The fact of the matter is that in debates like this one, words matter the most.  And in a speech that had roughly 5,650 of them there weren’t two or three that really reframed the issue and gave the President the tool he needed to move closer to his goal.

We’ll see what the public has to say about that.

It seems like everywhere you turn these days someone is either talking about Twitter, writing an article about Twitter, or tweeting themselves.  But just when you think you’ve seen tweets in every form possible, Fox takes twitter to the small screen.

That’s right, tweets were added on-screen on the network’s reruns of its supernatural drama, “Fringe” this past Thursday night. The tweets were from executive producers Jeff Pinkner, (Twitter name– @JPFringe) and J.H. Wyman (Twitter name–@JWFringe), and cast members Peter Bishop (@peterbishop2) and John Noble (@labdad1), and ran throughout the show on the bottom third of the screen.  The tweets started less than ten minutes into the broadcast and to avoid any standards violations, the tweets were filtered by network censors before they reached the air.

During the Thursday Fringe Broadcast, actors and producers would respond to fan questions and the entire discussion could also be followed online on Twitter.   Sometimes they simply spoke amongst themselves, but more than anything, they attempted to give the kind of behind-the-scenes look typically only gleaned through DVD commentaries.

Here’s an example of one of Wyman’s Tweets: “The dead bodies and victims on Fringe are always fun to think of. The creepier the better. Always LOVE to freak people out.”

Joe Earley, Fox’s executive vice president of marketing and communications said that depending on how fans respond, the network might add tweets to future repeats but this would never be done for an original episode.

So what does this all mean?  The network tweets are clearly Fox’s grandiose attempt to get viewers to watch reruns of their shows, trying spinning something old, as, well, new.  That said, if the tactic works, this could usher in the next generation of watching television. Perhaps even more interesting, these tweets could give viewers the most interactive experience ever made possible while watching television.

Would tweets on reruns compel me to watch a show?  Maybe.  More than likely, it would probably convince me to watch a show I already like, rather than compel me to watch a new show I’ve never seen.  That said, this tweeting experiment seems to be giving us a preview if you will, into the new mediums social media is beginning to infiltrate.  While the future of all this is still unclear, I look forward to sitting back and watching the show.