I'm in Buffalo, New York, which is oddly enough a hotbed of creativity (no, really!). Every summer the Creative Education Foundation holds its Creative Problem Solving Institute (CPSI) here, and I am here to continue the process of becoming certified as a CPS facilitator. I also have my daughters with me (15 and 17 years old), who are attending a "youth" version of CPSI.  And yes, we are all three staying in the same hotel room, a situation that in itself demands some amount of creative problem solving, especially innovative shower scheduling. But it's fun (no, really!).....for some reason having to do with the movie The Ice Storm they are this week referring to each other as Charles.

Posting will be chancy because I'm using a cranky laptop from my company's "pool" of road-use laptops and I'm on dial-up. But I'll keep at it as best I can.

I'm keeping my eye out for continuations of the creativity vs innovation conversation we've been having here. Innovation per se is rarely mentioned here -- CPSI is all about creativity, from becoming more creative yourself and making your company more creative, to practicing creativity as something of a religion. But to me, innovation (the subject) is lurking around every corner and subtexting every sentence.

Yesterday I went to a jaw-dropping session led by Jon Pearson (imagine Robin Williams as a teacher), and coming away from that I had the thought: Creativity has to do with seeing things differently. Innovation can be (though isn't always) the result, the changed behavior that occurs as a result of seeing things differently.