New York SBDC Research Network

It is only too easy to find fall into a rut. Everywhere you look it is easy to see examples of situations where the joy has gone out of a thing, and no creativity is being used to solve problems. So, how to keep things fresh? How does that creative problem solving go away? The main thing seems to be to exercise your mind, by thinking. Like the cardinal rule of brainstorming, don’t censor. Spend time looking beyond your realm of expertise, to other disciplines and exercise your imagination by using it. Here are a couple of articles and sites that explore how we maintain our creativity. The Brain Behind Creativity USA Today: Science and Space Updated 8/27/2006 10:04 PM ET Creativity Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Creativity Techniques – an A to Z Creativity Innovation mycoted Science and Technology de Bono Consulting "The quality of our thinking will determine the quality of our future." -Edward de Bono Books by Edward de Bono: Teach Your Child How to Think by Edward de Bono

I enjoy the irony of celebrating Labor Day by not working. Even though there are 2 1/2 more weeks of the season, it's dubbed "the end of summer." Well, who am I to be contrary? Labor Day, as described by: The US Department of Labor Wikipedia Geocities PBS How stuff works something called Wilstar

I think it is fair to assume that most science editors are smart people. But who knew that they could put together such a nice list of internet reference links? The Council of Science Editors has indeed put together lovely pathfinder page, available at http://www.councilscienceeditors.org/links.cfm . Having stumbled upon this site when I interned for the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation, I’ve bookmarked it ever since. Some links are particularly science-y (like the link to FishBase, a database of over 28,400 species of fish), while others are just cool (check out the link to the dictionary of clichés or the internet anagram server). I probably should have just blogged about the neatest links individually, thus providing myself with blog fodder for some time. But I’m nicer than that, so here’s the whole kit and caboodle.

Reference Community Sourcebook of zip code demographics 2006 Community Sourcebook of county demographics 2006 Kids count data book NACS State of the industry 2005: Northeast Center for Small scale food entrepreneurship: Distilled Spirits Council of the U.S.: Distilled spirit sales The PMI Book of Project Management Forms Circulating Klees, Emerson. Entrepreneurs in history-- success vs. failure : entrepreneurial role models Klees, Emerson. Staying with it: role models of perseverance Moltz, Barry. You need to be a little crazy: the truth about starting and growing your business Godfrey, Joline. No more frogs to kiss: 99 ways to give economic power to girls Hornjak, Boris. The Project Surgeon: a troubleshooter's guide to business crisis management

It's likely you've read about the 2005 American Communities Survey , which was released last week. The new "data products include estimates of demographic, social, and economic characteristics of people, households and housing units (both occupied and vacant) for every state in the Nation, Puerto Rico, and most areas with a population of 65,000 or more." The 2004 ACS was limited to places with 250,000 or more. In the Capital District, it's already created controversy, with the Albany mayor indicating that there is an undercount, and Colonie officials elated with their town's growth. This article , which talks a bit about the survey process, may be helpful. Surveys are sent to households, and if there is new construction in a geography which the Census Bureau doesn't know about - usually because the geographic entity has failed to provide information to the Census Bureau - then this could lead to the appearance of an undercount. The ACS is still a fairly ne

Some of you may have already gotten wind of this, but a brief article appeared in last week's issue of the Central Valley (CA) Business Times titled " Survey: What it costs to start a small business ". The text was based on a press release from Wells Fargo, based on their latest Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index study .

As if the folks who contribute to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia don’t have enough fun in cyberspace, they recently convened for the second annual “Wikimania” convention. Here, founder Jimmy Wales discussed his intent to focus on quality over quantity. Although a recent article in Nature gave Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Brittanica close marks in accuracy for their scientific articles, Wales appreciates that the whole encyclopedia isn’t there yet. There’s work to be done, but Wiki devotees seem up to the task. Home page for the convention: http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page Article about Wales’ comments: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060804/ap_on_hi_te/wikimania Read more about the study from Nature: http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051212/full/438900a.html