igeekforcreativity

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As always, thanks for reading my stuff.

The employment pendulum seems to be swinging back to the employee side. How does this impact your team? Now's a good time to look again at what employees - and business leaders - want and need. Continue reading →

Creating a new category. The Holy Grail of Innovation. The Holy Grail of entrepreneurs. It’s when you can create a new category that you command the skies. Think of the iPad. Is it a new category? Continue reading →

This is a marvelous, lucid, well-written blog post by Tom Asacker on ten of the fundamental mindset changes that you and your company will need to honor if you expect to thrive during these radically changing times.

HINT: Your marketing efforts need to be less about branding and more about bonding.

Who, on your team, do you need to meet with to explore Tom's key points? And when will you do it?

Idea Champions

I tend to not like offering up checklists as blog posts, you know those one hundred and one ideas for this or that, although I have to admit I like collecting them as a kick-starting resource. Today I decided to change my mind, Why? The Innovation Champion has many jobs-to-be-done and I felt this would be a useful 'sparking point' to recognize the innovation jobs involved. Continue reading →

If you stand up and be counted, from time to time you may get yourself knocked down. But remember this: A man flattened by an opponent can get up again. A man flattened by conformity stays down for good. — Thomas J. Watson, Jr

What initially separates the leaders, changemakers, and heroes from everyone else is that they were presented a challenging situation and they stood up.

When everyone else followed the rules, stayed under cover, or took whatever crap they were dealt, they stood up and opted-out.

When everyone else got scared about how they might get pushed back down, they stood up and looked stagnation, injustice, and the status quo in the eye.

We are challenged day in and day out in ways big and small – when we don’t stand up in the small ways, we can’t stand up in the big ways. We get in the habit of sitting and too much sitting makes for weak cores and backbones.

We’re not made for sitting. We’re made for standing, walking, running, jumping, playing, and moving.

You don’t have to come out the gates with a minifesto, movement, charge against the system, or some epic journey. You don’t have to know everything or where it’s all headed. You don’t have to lie to yourself about the fear, uncertainty, and risk you’re facing.

You just have to stand up when it’s your time. Get up and take care of your people.

p.s. Yes, you. Yes, now. You’ll never be comfortably ready until it’s too late and you find yourself still sitting.

If you liked this post, you might like these, too:

1. How to Flourish: 17 Quotes On Living, Being, and Doing
2. Choosing Engaged and Meaningful over Comfort
3. This You

If you stand up and be counted, from time to time you may get yourself knocked down. But remember this: A man flattened by an opponent can get up again. A man flattened by conformity stays down for good. — Thomas J. Watson, Jr

What initially separates the leaders, changemakers, and heroes from everyone else is that they were presented a challenging situation and they stood up.

When everyone else followed the rules, stayed under cover, or took whatever crap they were dealt, they stood up and opted-out.

When everyone else got scared about how they might get pushed back down, they stood up and looked stagnation, injustice, and the status quo in the eye.

We are challenged day in and day out in ways big and small – when we don’t stand up in the small ways, we can’t stand up in the big ways. We get in the habit of sitting and too much sitting makes for weak cores and backbones.

We’re not made for sitting. We’re made for standing, walking, running, jumping, playing, and moving.

You don’t have to come out the gates with a minifesto, movement, charge against the system, or some epic journey. You don’t have to know everything or where it’s all headed. You don’t have to lie to yourself about the fear, uncertainty, and risk you’re facing.

You just have to stand up when it’s your time. Get up and take care of your people.

p.s. Yes, you. Yes, now. You’ll never be comfortably ready until it’s too late and you find yourself still sitting.

If you liked this post, you might like these, too:

1. How to Flourish: 17 Quotes On Living, Being, and Doing
2. Choosing Engaged and Meaningful over Comfort
3. This You

Why should you be creative? Why should anyone, for that matter, concern themselves with creative thinking?

In the free ebook, Why Creativity?, several of today’s brilliant creatives provide insights into these questions. World renown illustrator and writer Frank Chimero offers a brief explanation, while the remarkable author Julien Smith describes the answer vividly and in a way that is sure to motivate you to create today.

The book also offers ideas from authors Matthew E May, David Meerman Scott, and Gregg Fraley, as well as answers from creative geniuses Mike Brown and Patrick Algrim.

Of course, because the ebook is free, you have nothing to lose by downloading it today, but so many ideas to gain.

So, if you haven’t downloaded “Why Creativity?” yet, be sure to grab it here.

It’s the time of year for dreaming and planning big for the next twelve months.

So if you’re setting yourself a big challenge and would like some help making it happen, you may like to consider my New Year’s Resolutionizer coaching program – back for a second year running.

It’s a combined coaching and e-learning program to help you keep your New Year’s Resolution – or achieve any of your big goals for 2012 – by harnessing the four most powerful types of motivation.

The Resolutionizer is based on my own approach to motivation and goal-setting – which landed me a feature in the Wall Street Journal, when they found out I’d manage to keep a challenging New Year’s Resolution without relying on willpower.

As well as e-learning materials to teach the principles of powerful motivation, the Resolutionizer includes one-on-one coaching time with me, to help you apply the lessons to your own unique situation.

For all the details, click here. (The signup page has some detailed testimonials from clients who took the program last year.)

The New Year’s Resolutionizer is only available for a few days each year – registration will close on 31st January (unless my schedule fills up before then).

If you have any questions before deciding whether you’d like to take the program, feel free to contact me and I’ll get back to you as a priority.

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A KIN Innovation Communities Case Study

The Knowledge Center for Innovation (KCI) is housed at the Technion’s Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management in Israel.  Founded in 2008, KCI aims to accelerate innovation by disseminating information and knowledge, fostering collaboration, and establishing a network of researchers, business people and policy makers.

The KCI is part of a broader Israeli Government program supporting the creation of “Infrastructural Knowledge Centers” in a variety of fields, primarily in high tech and medicine.  Knowledge centers serve as a hub for research papers and resources, as well as coordinating activities among participants in different fields.  Unlike other knowledge centers, which tend to focus on high technology industries, KCI focuses on the interface between high-tech and low-tech companies (food, textiles, banking, etc.) that do not invest a lot in R&D.

KCI programs today include:

• Industry-Academia R&D consortia
• Student projects focused on innovation challenges in industry
• Educational programs for innovation management
• Consulting engagements
• The Managing for Innovation forum where both high-tech and low-tech companies build their skills through expert input and sharing best practices.

The “Managing Innovation Forum” (MIF) is a new KCI activity, started in 2010, that is most germane to the focus of the KIN Innovation Communities project in that it is aimed squarely at business leaders learning from each other about improving innovation management.  40-45 companies are involved in MIF, representing both high tech and low tech firms, and both large and small companies.  Some companies are competitors, but, unlike many such networks, MIF does not shy away from that.  KCI leadership wishes to promote the idea that competitors can also be collaborators and strive to create an environment in which that can happen.   As the KCI has evolved, there has been increasing attention to making sure that participants from particular companies or industries do not only talk to each other but also interact with and support colleagues from unfamiliar industries.

There are 8-10 MIF meetings per year.  In general, the same people come from the companies, so there is a continuity of interactions.  A typical meeting begins with a lecture by a CEO or industry or academic expert.  Then there is a break for dinner, and afterwards smaller groups engage in a “live case study” of a real company or industry issue, sitting around a table.   One goal of this less formal interaction is to begin building relationships between high-tech and low-tech companies, fostering cross-fertilization of best practices in innovation.

One topic for future work may be improving management in general in Israel.  The Israeli ecosystem is well suited for building new businesses—as highlighted in the popular book Start-Up Nation—but not as well for managing large enterprises.  However, this may be changing as international companies locate in Israel and bring in management talent that mix with Israeli managers.

Editor’s Note: This is the second in a series of case studies on Innovation Communities being created by the Kellogg Innovation Network here at Innovation Excellence. They would sincerely appreciate it if you would contact them if you know about INets that they should consider including in their database. If you’re a leader of an INet, they will invite you to join a gathering of INet leaders that they hope to arrange next year, to review the findings of the study and take this research to the next level: What are lessons to be learned in creating INets and making them successful? It’s kind of the meta-meta level. Innovation results are the base. INets are the first meta level, which is learning about how to manage innovation to produce results. And if we can form a network of INets, that will be about learning about how to produce powerful new learning environments.

To participate in KIN’s research, please fill out their data form and they will contact you!

image credits: Kellog Innovation Network Don’t miss an article (3,850+) – Subscribe to our RSS feed and join our Innovation Excellence group!

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Mike Lippitz is a Research Fellow with the Center for Research in Technology and Innovation at the Kellogg School of Management in Evanston, Illinois, a Senior Policy Analyst with the Institute for Defense Analyses in Washington, DC., and a Principal at Clareo Partners LLC.  Prior positions include Special Assistant for Strategic Technology Planning in the Office of Director for Defense Research and Engineering, US Department of Defense and product line manager at Hewlett-Packard Company.

The tiny details of the unknown future often seem to influence what we do and how we act right here, today.

Worrying that you won’t be able to, or won’t know how to, set up some aspect of your work and creative life in a week, a month, or a year from now, can sabotage what you attempt and feel confident embracing and creating right now.

For example, you might be holding back from even beginning a new novel, because you worry that you don’t know to even begin publishing it when it’s finished, or even whether you want to.

Or you don’t begin a new series of paintings that have been simmering away inside you for months, because you’re not sure which frames will work best with them when they’re ready.

These future fears don’t have any bearing on the talent and the ideas you have within you today.

The talent and ideas that can be given space and attention and energy to manifest themselves at a moment’s notice.

Imagine an architect who for years had been planning his dream home for his family, then once he was ready to begin building, held back because he couldn’t decide whether the front door would be pillar box red or forest green.

Or because he hadn’t decided whether to have roses or clematis growing up the walls in the front garden.

These are little details that will be worked out when the time comes. Don’t let them sabotage an entire project before it’s even begun.

In many ways it’s a waste of time to plan these kind of things anyway because by the time you reach that point, the art you originally envisaged will have altered and evolved.

It will have deviated from its original vision, as our work always does.

Plus, when it comes to areas you don’t yet know about, like for example curating your first photography exhibition, or setting up an online store to sell your hand made journals, there are always people ready and willing to help, who do know all about these areas. These people and these resources are more readily available than ever before.

Your main focus right now is not about the lighting of the exhibition space and the design of the invitations, or the colour scheme of your online store and how to accept payments.

Your main focus right now is to get out there and capture those fabulous photographs, to sit down and to bind those beautiful journals.

How often do you find yourself hung up on some future concern that’s five or ten or twenty steps down the line, and use it to avoid getting down to doing the work – to making your unique art – today?

Do you want to live the life of an artist, do you want to bring to life all those glorious creations waiting as tiny idea seeds within you?

Or do you just want to spend the rest of your days wishing and dreaming of creating your best work, but drowning in future fear?

All that’s needed is a shift in focus.

Take your eyes off that distant horizon you can’t possibly know until you get there anyway, and focus them on your hands right there in front of you.

They’re the hands of an artist. So what are they going to make, today?

Let go of those future fears, worries and concerns, just start creating.

 

Do you have fears about how you can find an audience and share your artwork, that prevent you from even starting to create anything in the first place?  Join the conversation to let us know.

 

Thank you for reading. Please share these words. Subscribe for free updates.

This is the sixth in a series of articles that describe the unique traits of a corporate intrapreneur.

The previous habit (3-box time management) described the first step required to deliver upon an idea in a large corporation.

The next habit is an unusual and counter-intuitive technique that enables an intrapreneur to continue the delivery of their idea. Visibility management (often referred to as visibility avoidance) is depicted below as the next step in the cycle.

Visibility avoidance – not actively publicizing one’s talents – seems to be incongruent with climbing the corporate ladder. Doesn’t everybody want to be recognized for their great ideas and promoted to higher levels of responsibility?

Intrapreneurs, quite simply, need not. Their intrinsic passion for the generation and delivery of ideas is their main reason for coming to work every day. They fill their time with trips to the lab to debug alongside their teammates. They close themselves inside remote conferences rooms and collaborate on whiteboards. They spend hours on their laptops, searching high and low for new sources of learning on the latest technologies. They visit local customers to check on their configurations.

They are not motivated by rewards and recognition from others. They are rewarded by the process that they have created for themselves.

This sort of self-motivation does not leave a lot of time for the bureaucratic meetings that are so common at large corporations. Intrapreneurs who find themselves lassoed in these types of meetings recognize they are jeopardizing the core value that is the hallmark of any intrapreneur: productivity. They understand that certain forms of recognition by executive management are accompanied by the unwelcome trappings of inefficient assignments and endless, countless meetings.

While they eschew recognition by executives, they strive for visibility with the builders in the trenches.

As a result of maintaining the delicate balance between maximizing trench visibility and minimizing corporate visibility, many intrapreneurs have adopted a “plus 2” approach to recognition within the corporation. They create extremely strong bonds of trust with their direct manager, reinforced by their consistently exceeding performance expectations, and strive for an equally strong bond with their manager’s manager.

Any regular interaction with managers and executives higher than two levels above their current position is generally avoided. Building trust with the first two higher links in the management chain can accomplish two things:

1. It allows the management chain to run interference for the intrapreneur, which keeps the intrapreneur out of inefficient meetings.
2. It allows the management chain to advocate on behalf of the intrapreneur, which can advance those causes that require resource allocation outside of the business unit.

Why would the links on the plus-2 management chain go to these lengths to advance the cause of an intrapreneur? It comes down, once again, to the core trait of an intrapreneur: productivity. Corporate intrapreneurs have a track record of success. Their previous inventions became products that continue to generate revenue. People like to work with them, and they raise morale. Their management chain wants to keep them happy, and will typically do their best to eliminate corporate obstacles (or raise them to protect the intrapreneur’s time).

By adding plus-2 management to the practice of 3-Box time management, the intrapreneur can make great progress on the delivery of their idea. Eventually they will reach the stage where they are ready to request formal recognition and funding for their idea. This phase is referred to as “Bridge Building”, and will be described in a subsequent post.

image credit: overdriveonline.com

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Steve Todd is Director at EMC Innovation Network, and a high-tech inventor and book author “Innovate With Global Influence“. An EMC Intrapreneur with over 180 patent applications and billions in product revenue, he writes about innovation on his personal blog, the Information Playground. Twitter: @SteveTodd

Accomplishing Your Goals: Insights from Thomas Edison

The State of the Union address often serves as my first mile marker for reviewing the goals I set for the coming year. It’s right about now that the shiny New Year’s resolutions we made on January 1st don’t look so compelling. At best, many of us have lost a big dose of the motivation we felt for our goals in the first place. At worst, our resolutions have evaporated into thin air.

One reason we lag in our ability to successfully realize our goals is that we often express them in ruggedly numeric terms, like: “Eat only 1200 calories per day,” or “Run three times a week.” By doing this we lop off a big part of the internal mechanism the brain uses to keep us on track: our emotions.

Thomas Edison understood this. Best known as a brilliant inventor and innovator who developed technologies that changed the world, he was also a guy who stuck to his goals – despite long odds. Growing up in a lower middle class family didn’t deter Edison from setting goals to become a successful inventor. He wanted to build and run his own laboratory – a place where corporate politics wouldn’t intervene with his futuristic visions. Taunts from the Royal Academy of Science didn’t dissuade Edison from pursuing one of the most technically challenging scientific pursuits of his era: achieving incandescence. After failing in his quest to develop technology for mining and grinding iron ore, Edison instead succeeded in devising the first storage battery made from metals.

What Edison realized was that staying positive – and linking your goals to positive emotions – held the key to successful goal achievement.

Edison’s Goals Harnessed the Natural Wiring of the Brain

In my research on Edison, I identified a unique solution-oriented quality which Edison possessed in spades: aligning goals and passions. By integrating his work with his life purpose, Edison focused on solving juicy problems which held his interest for long periods of time. He was able to tackle problems that others would have abandoned (and did) long before Edison would even consider throwing in the towel.

Some of the factors which led to Edison’s successful goal-creation approach can be explained by neuroscience.

Contemporary psychological research validates Edison’s approach, and supports the notion that we can all learn how to develop this essential element of success. Dr. John Dacey, professor emeritus of developmental psychology at Boston College, and Dr. Kathleen Lennon of Framingham State College studied and then condensed decades of research into what makes scientists, writers, business leaders, musicians, and other powerfully creative individuals successful. Among the most important traits they uncovered are: 1) passionate goal directedness, and 2) perseverance through self-control.

Dacey and Lennon emphasize that both of those qualities can be developed by adults even if they do not possess those traits in younger years, as Edison clearly did. Citing numerous studies by psychologists including Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Paul Torrance, David Perkins, Robert Weber, and others, Dacey and Lennon conclude that passionate goal directedness helps successful individuals generate “great amounts of energy to invest intensely in their work.” These goals are typically long term in nature and associated with a big vision; so the second skill, perseverance rough self-control, is critical in allowing fulfillment of the first. Dacey and Lennon define self-control as an individual’s willingness to “persevere in the face of frustration.’

In other words, success is a function of perseverance, and perseverance is driven by aligning passions with big, long-term goals. Edison’s success was the result of his passionate goal directedness.” His “pulsating desire” allowed him to “transcend everything” so that frustrations, obstacles, and difficulties seemed to provide him even more energy. As a colleague remarked, “Edison seemed pleased when he to run up against serious difficulty. It would seem to stiffen his backbone make him more prolific of new ideas. For a time, I thought it was foolish to imagine such a thing, but I could never get away from the impression that he really appeared happy when he ran up against a serious snag.”

Dr. Richard Restak, a clinical professor of neuroscience at the George Washington University Hospital School of Medical and Health Sciences, offers further validation of Edison’s approach. Restak argues that many goals go unfulfilled or are prematurely abandoned because they are not designed robustly enough to mobilize the brain. He points out that for the brain to remember to organize behavior in alignment with a goal, it must connect the emotional component with its rational component. This alignment links the prefrontal cortex with the limbic system, thereby dramatically enhancing the likelihood that the goal will be remembered and translated into behavior.

Understanding how to set goals so that they will be remembered and translated into behavior is a simple, critical key to successful innovation and, of course, to personal happiness and fulfillment. Yet despite the wealth of information available on the topic, most organizational innovation efforts fail because they don’t define their goals clearly, and they neglect to align goals with emotions. Innovation literacy begins with a practical understanding of how to define and align your personal goals.

The EDISON Goal Creation Formula

Here is a simple formula you can apply to your own successful goal creation. Mapped to the acronym EDISON, it will guide you to those places where your brain holds positive emotions. The EDISON goal creation formula will aid you in harnessing passions to override the strictly objective and quantitative. As well, it will amp up your goals to new levels, ensuring they become bigger and more purpose-oriented than mere tick marks on a spreadsheet. Rework your goal statements to align with these key elements:

E – Emotional: Express your goal in words that energize and excite you. Feel the passion associated with the fulfillment of your goal. Don’t hold back.

D – Decisive: Make a committed decision to give the full force of your own intention to realizing your goal, even if you don’t yet see the path to its realization.

I – Integrated: Link your goal to a higher purpose, such as lifelong health, vibrant creativity, peace in your relationships. This connects the achievement of your goal to the benefit of others besides yourself.

S – Sensory: Use all your senses to vividly imagine the manifestation of your goal. Draw it, speak it, dance it, taste it!

O – Optimistic: Engage the most positive image you can conjure around your goal. Map this positive image into your thoughts so that, like the force of gravity, it just ‘shows up’ all the time easily and without effort.

N – Now: Envision and express your goal in present-time terms. Begin your actions now!

Go back and have a look at your 2012 goals. Reframe them into the EDISON format. Don’t lash yourself if you haven’t made any progress so far this year – give the EDISON method a try! Allow it to jump-start you to action. What worked for Edison can work for you!

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Sarah Miller Caldicott is a great grandniece of Thomas Edison, and author of Innovate Like Edison as well as Inventing the Future. Sarah can be reached at info@powerpatterns.com.

DREAM CATCHING

Many great breakthroughs have come in dreams.

Rene Descartes got the concept for the Scientific Method in a dream. Elias Howe came up with the final design for the lock stitch sewing machine in a dream. August Kekule arrived at the formulation of the Benzene molecule in a dream.

In the dream state, our subconscious mind arrives at solutions that our conscious mind is unlikely to discover no matter much it obsesses.

That's why Thomas Edison and Salvadore Dali used to take naps during the day.

Click the link for a simple technique you can use to help remember your dreams...

The Technique: 1. Before you go to sleep tonight, bring to mind a question, challenge or opportunity you've been struggling with

2. As you fall asleep, stay focused on it

3. When you awake, write down your dream even if the dream makes no sense to you

4. Reflect on each element of the dream and see if you can make any connections to the project you are noodling on.

Illustration Excerpted from Awake at the Wheel Awake at the Wheel website Idea Champions

There are a handful of big companies that really understand customer relationships in a deep way.  A couple of them sell this expertise in the form of customer relationship management (CRM) software and related consulting. Wikipedia says:

“CRM is a widely implemented strategy for managing a company’s interactions with customers, clients and sales prospects. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes—principally sales activities, but also those for marketing, customer service, and technical support. The overall goals are to find, attract, and win new clients, nurture and retain those the company already has, entice former clients back into the fold, and reduce the costs of marketing and client service.”

Education is a relationship enterprise but we’re lacking basic relationship management systems.  Student information systems (SIS) track basic student records.  Sometimes they are connected to a gradebook, but that only includes a handful of marks per semester.  Some learning management systems (LMS) and data systems like SchoolNet turn a little assessment data into dashboards that help monitor achievement.  These companies help schools make the best of limited information.  Almost everyone in education has a data poverty mindset.

“In contrast,” notes startup Junyo, “Popular web sites such as Google, Facebook, and Zynga collect millions of data points for each user throughout the day which are used to improve search results, recommend friends, and make games more fun.The shift to personal digital learning will bring a flood of data.  Most digital content will include embedded assessment and will provide continuous feedback to the learner.  Every assignment will leave a trail of keystrokes that could yield valuable achievement data.  Digital learners will provide 2 million data points each year instead of 200 marks in a gradebook.

It’s time for sophisticated relationship management in education.  It’s time for comprehensive and portable learner profiles that track:

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Tom Vander Ark is CEO of Open Education Solutions and a partner in Learn Capital. He is a former public school superintendent and chairs the International Association for K-12 Online Learning. Author of Getting Smart: How Personal Digital Learning is Changing the World, Tom blogs daily at Getting Smart. Contact him at Tom@GettingSmart.com or follow @tvanderark on Twitter.

This is one in a series from "10 Things You Can Do To Help Your Audience Listen Better." It covers initial points on how to ask questions of the audience, lead exercises, and facilitate discussion and debate.

Hang in there, Kodak. Bankruptcy doesn’t have to mean the end.

Eastman Kodak (NYSE:EKDKQ) surprised few by declaring bankruptcy last week. It was clear to many business insiders back in September that Kodak was headed to zero after a panicked move to tap its credit line. As those who have watched the corporate history of Kodak know, years of big debts and a lack of innovation have been weighing on the iconic photography company for quite some time.

So is bankruptcy the end of Kodak? Will the brand disappear forever?

Probably not. Chapter 11 is sometimes just another chapter in the long history of a company. Here are several big-name companies that have declared bankruptcy — and emerged successfully on the other side.

Major Airline Carriers

It’s impossible to pick just one airline brand that has declared Chapter 11. Major carriers have gotten bankruptcy filings down to a science in this era of expensive regulations, expensive fuel costs and expensive union contracts. Here’s a short list of the players:

In November of last year, AMR Corp., the parent of American Airlines, was the last of the “legacy carriers” to suffer bankruptcy reorganization. It has yet to emerge, obviously.

Continental Airlines slid in to bankruptcy first, in both 1983 and 1990, before a merger with United to form United Continental Holdings (NYSE:UAL) in 2010. United itself went bankrupt in 2002 and emerged in 2006.

Delta Air Lines (NYSE:DAL) filed for bankruptcy in 2005 and emerged in 2007.

US Airways (NYSE:LCC) went bankrupt in 2002, briefly emerged, and went bust again in 2004. It was married with America West in 2005 to make it healthy enough to muddle through.

Obviously, the airline business has seen a mess of bankruptcies. But the planes keep flying, and the companies keep operating. They may never be growth stocks or big cash cows for investors, but they haven’t disappeared.

General Motors

General Motors (NYSE:GM) was facing troubles before the financial crisis, and in early 2009 relied on a government bailout — as did fellow ailing automaker Chrysler. The total price tag of the automaker bailouts was $82 billion (and according to a recent report, taxpayers will lose about $14 billion on the “investment”).

But GM made a speedy exit from Chapter 11, emerging in July of 2010 and holding a $20 billion GM public offering in November 2010 – the largest IPO in history at the time.

Bankruptcy led to lots of changes at GM, from restructured union contracts to the end of the Pontiac and Saturn brands to the death of Mr. Goodwrench. But now, GM is soundly profitable with around $150 billion in annual revenue. So much for General Motors being junked after bankruptcy.

Sbarro

A mainstay of mall and airport food courts, Sbarro has about 1,000 cafeteria-style pizza and pasta restaurants in the U.S. and overseas. The late Gennaro Sbarro started the business in 1956, and his family sold it to a private equity firm in 2007. The company went under in 2011, however, filing for Chapter 11.

Sbarro’s challenges were apparently shared in the pizza “sector” in 2011. The nation’s No. 10 pizza shop, West-coast based Round Table pizza with over 500 locations, and Uno Chicago Grill also went belly up in the same year.

In November 2011, Sbarro was granted court approval to emerge from bankruptcy after slashing its debt by around 70%, and providing the company to $35 million in cash to grow.

Friendly’s

In October of 2011, Friendly’s announced that it was declaring bankruptcy and closing over 60 stores nationwide. But quick as a wink, the company emerged just a few weeks ago — on Jan. 9 — after selling operations and restructuring. Friendly’s blamed the sluggish economy and slowing consumer spending, but apparently a quick reshaping of the balance sheet and some cost-cutting was enough to change the company’s fortunes.

Friendly’s has a 76-year history of offering tasty desserts and diner food. But it also has gotten a bad rap with many consumers for the quality of its service. Check any online review site like Yelp and look for yourself. New management says it will address these concerns, but only time will tell.

It’s also worth noting, however, that Friendly’s is reliant on the success of its ice cream business far above any gains at its namesake restaurants. At the time of the bankruptcy, old ownership Friendly’s Restaurants Franchise LLC listed estimated assets and liabilities in the range of $10-$50 million, whereas another unit Friendly Ice Cream Corp listed liabilities and assets of $100-$500 million.

It’s no surprise then that Friendly’s has made retail sales of its branded products a priority now that it’s out from under Chapter 11.

Eddie Bauer

In the 1990s, you’d be hard pressed to find a more American brand than Eddie Bauer. It provided stylish and rugged outdoorwear in the vein of LL Bean, and even got the Bauer brand on the most iconic SUV of the era — the Ford Explorer. But just several years later, Eddie Bauer was out of style, and consumers were trading in four-wheel-drive gas-guzzlers for hybrids. Its parent company, Spiegel Catalog, sought bankruptcy protection in 2003.

After emerging in 2005, however, Eddie Bauer filed for Chapter 11 again in 2009. It was acquired at auction by Golden Gate Capital later that year.

Though not quite the pinnacle of style and outdoorsy toughness it once was, Eddie Bauer remains a respected apparel brand and a regular tenant at shopping centers and outlet malls. It employs some 10,000 people worldwide — and in case you’re curious, it’s running one heck of a 60%-off sale right now.

imagecredit:newcissa

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Jeff Reeves is editor of InvestorPlace.com, where this article first appeared and a regular contributor to the Huffington Post. Write him at jreeves@investorplace.com. Follow Jeff Reeves on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JeffReevesIP

I was invited by Tanner Christensen, author of the blog Creative Something to contribute a short piece to a free e-book on creativity. The assignment was to write a short response to the question “Why Creativity?” This is the first piece in ages that I wrote long hand first; maybe I should try that technique [...]