Several months ago, I conducted a business innovation workshop in New York City that featured cognitive scientist Donald Norman as a guest speaker. Norman is a leading expert in “user-centered design” and author of The Design of Everyday Things. The workshop was attended by 40 mid- and top-level managers from numerous divisions of a Fortune 200 company.

The goal of this off-site innovation meeting was to provoke some of the company’s most promising professionals to look at things a little differently – in fact, we wanted them to look at everything differently.

Every day of our lives, we are bombarded by tens of thousands of visual and operational stimuli. The door handle we use to open the closet, the street sign we see to make the correct turn, the faucet we use to turn on the water in the restroom, the ink pen we use to sign a letter — and on and on.

Given the sheer volume of this stimuli, it’s no wonder that we give little thought to 99% of what we see, touch, and feel every day. But maybe your brain is paying more attention than you think.

Whether on an individual stimulus basis or in a cumulative way, your brain responds more positively to objects that are pleasing to the eye – even everyday objects. Whether it’s a company logo, a product, an online service, or a routine internal process or form, a user’s reaction to all of these things is real, no matter how subtle.

Your product division may want a customer or potential customer to enjoy the use and visual attributes of a given product. Your sales department may want a customer to have a positive user experience with an online tool or service. And your human resource department may want employees to respond favorably to this year’s new health benefit based on smart and attractive design elements.

Innovation is not only reserved for the once-a-year or once-in-a-lifetime breakthroughs. Innovation can and should occur every day across every part of your company – from the most obvious anchor product of the company to the most subtle and routine business process.

It’s the cumulative effect of these innovations and the associated attention to detail and design that will separate good companies from the best companies.

Companies should make it a point to encourage employees to seek out every opportunity to improve a product, service, or process – and should seek to arm them with the tools, training and incentives to do so.

In the end, making everyday things and how they are designed and used a priority within your company may very well lead to extraordinary things.

Throughout the 1990s, I looked forward to Saturday mornings for two reasons. First, I could sleep late. Second, I enjoyed watching CNN’s weekly fashion show, “Style with Elsa Klensch,” which aired at 10:30 a.m. on the East Coast.

I’m still able to sleep a little later on Saturdays, but not since 2001 have I been able to watch my favorite Saturday morning show when Klensch and “Style” took their last bow on the runway.

I can still hear Klensch’s distinctive voice ringing in my head: “This is ‘Style’ and I’m Elsa Klensch reporting on the design worlds of fashion, beauty, and decorating,” she would proclaim at the top of every show. Then she proceeded to give the week’s highlights of design and fashion as if it were a weekly sports program — only with a lot more panache.

“Style” was the first of its kind. Long before the Fashion Channel, Style.com, and “Project Runway,” there was Elsa Klensch. She brought the latest fashions and their designers from the streets of Paris, Milan, and New York to Main Street – and the industry and the profession are still prospering from it.

Klensch came about her fashion fame the old fashion way, she earned it. She was born in Australia, and then later lived overseas in London and Hong Kong, before arriving in the United States. According to Wikipedia.org, Klensch worked as an editor at Vogue, Women’s Wear Daily, W, and Harper’s Bazaar before joining CNN in New York City on its 1980 launch.

She also appeared as herself in a number of television shows and films, including Robert Altman’s Prêt-à-Porter (1994), which chronicled the Paris fashion show scene.

I’m not sure where Ms. Klensch is today, but I did recently see her name on Facebook. (And yes, I admit it, I sent her a “friend” request). Where ever she is, I salute her on behalf of the thousands of women and men whom she undoubtedly inspired to go into fashion, take up a creative profession, or simply better appreciate design.

Klensch had a style all her own, which was the root of her success. There is a lesson here for individuals and private enterprises alike. Create your own style. Follow your passion. And, inspire others along the way. If so, success should soon follow.

(By the way, Ms. Klensch, if you are reading this blog could you please “accept” my friendship?)

Beñat Iglesias, self-portrait

Harlem’s Alex Adam Gallery opens its “Artists and Monitors” art show on Thursday, October 15. The show uniquely features the works of “three of New York’s most extraordinary contemporary figurative artists, and the painters who are and have been privileged to be their assistants.”

One of the “Teacher’s Monitors” whose works will be featured is Beñat Iglesias, a very talented portrait artist who was born in Pamplona, Spain in 1979 on October 12 – thirty years ago today. And yes, Pamplona is home of the world-famous “Running of the Bulls,” the high-risk, high-adrenaline running of 1,200-pound bulls (i.e., with horns) through the cobbled streets of this picturesque city in northern Spain.

This hometown image is in sharp contrast to how Iglesias describes his approach to art: “My work is devoted to the mundane, to depict humble and ordinary people I aim to show in their natural state, to reveal their way of communicating to the world.”

I first saw Iglesias’s talent showcased five years ago, when I attended an art show at New York’s Art Student’s League. Iglesias’s education in fine arts has spanned more than a decade, including a fine arts degree from the Universidad Del Pais Vasco (UPV) in Bilboa, Spain; then further study at the Edinburgh College of Art in the UK, the University of Fine Arts in Barcelona, and New York’s National Academy School of Fine Arts, the Art Students League, and the Andrew Reiss Studio.

Iglesias has exhibited his work in numerous shows in New York and throughout Europe. In 2007, he was a semi-finalist in the 70th Annual American Artists Drawing competition.

I find myself immediately drawn into his work, and how he is able to capture remarkably true-to-life expressions of unremarkable people. I have bought several pieces from Iglesias’s collection over the last several years, and intend on buying more as he continues to grow and develop.

Iglesias’s bright future has been built on a foundation of years of hard work, high quality training, learning by doing, and a bull-headed dedication to his vocation. All are key ingredients for success in any field of work or business. Identify the talent, grow and nurture it, and put yourself in environments where creativity can thrive.

Happy 30th birthday to a promising artist, Beñat Iglesias, or better yet –
¡Feliz cumpleaños!

The show at Alex Adam Gallery in Harlem (78 West 120th Street) runs from October 15th-25th. The exact schedule can be found on the gallery’s website.

Randolph’s Greenhouses sits on a nondescript stretch of highway in West Tennessee on the outskirts of Jackson. There you’ll find Rita Randolph, one of the country’s top container garden artists at work, running from one greenhouse to another, making her next potted creation or selling a flat of annuals or perennials to a customer.

Fine Gardening magazine recently showcased Randolph’s work in a special edition on container gardens. But now during the hot southern days of late August, Randolph has closed her nursery as she does every year, and has turned her attention to a different type of artistic creation – making concrete garden art. For example, she’s making concrete leaves from impressions of the real thing. Leaves of hosta, elephant ears, banana plants, pipers, and other large-leaf plants cut from her greenhouses serve as real-life molds for her work.

She also conducts classes during August on Saturdays and Sundays for those who would like to learn this special craft. I took one of Randolph’s concrete leaf-making classes yesterday. Mixing the concrete by hand, shaping and working the wet sand to form to perfect foundation for the leaf, and painstakingly applying the concrete one small “patty” at a time over the leaf itself made for laborious and tedious work. It also required an artistic touch and eye to replicate the natural folds and undulations of the plant’s leaf.

I spent almost three hours working on the first phase of a two-foot by three-foot elephant ear leaf impression. I had to leave it there to cure for at least a week before I can pick it up, and then attempt to paint it. So the jury is still out on how my concrete leaf will actually turn out. But the time spent at Randolph’s gave me the opportunity to view her own beautiful concrete leaf creations, in every size and shape, hue and texture.

Her leaf work already rivals some of the best in the country, including those made by famed garden art designers George Little and David Lewis of Bainbridge Island, Washington, whose garden and artwork I saw two years ago on a trip to nearby Seattle.

Randolph estimates she’s already made (or assisted others in making) over 1,000 concrete leaves. That’s a lot of concrete, sand, mixing, and dirt under the fingernails. But dirt under the fingernails is nothing new for Randolph, who has been in and around plants all of her life. Twenty-six years ago, she bought the now 62-year old nursery business from her parents, the source of her passion for plants.

Randolph’s recipe for success as an innovative garden artist is instructive for those of us in other professions. First, distinguish yourself through creativity and an eye for design. Next, you’ll need to work hard – very hard — and get more than a little dirt under your fingernails. And finally, be passionate about what you do. If so, you might just find yourself leaving a good impression on your own clientele.

“Color, creativity and sophistication” are the three words used by contemporary artist Dan Bleier to describe his “core values as an artist.”

From his Chelsea studio in Manhattan, Bleier has produced colorful and innovative art, sculptures and furniture made from resins and glass tiles for over 30 years. His projects have been showcased by leading architects and global designers, including Chanel and Dior. His art has been exhibited in top galleries around the country. And a commissioned sculpture by Bleier serves as the centerpiece at the corporate headquarters at General Mills in Minneapolis, MN.

Bleier admits that he was generally not a good math student in his youth, but that he did excel in geometry. “I would often get lost in the colors and shapes of the room I was in or the architecture around me,” according to Bleier.

Bleier’s success as an artist and designer is derived from his constantly seeking to find shapes and colors that have a “quality and sense of purpose lacking in much contemporary art today.” Bleier explains, “In the process of drawing I find shapes and patterns that I have never seen or imagined before.”

I met recently with Bleier in his studio. I was indeed struck by the intense colors, the rich patina of his glass tiles, and his inventive use of resins. Bleier’s work clearly evokes a 60s modernism feel – with designs as fresh and edgy today as they would’ve been 45 years ago. And I very much liked the artist himself, who had a great smile and energy that serves to further enhance the impact of his work.

A successful artist or designer takes ingredients and materials that are available to everyone, but is able to combine and present them in a way that creates a unique experience and a lasting impression.

Take a fresh approach to a product or service offering within your own company. Foster and celebrate those employees who find ways to inject color and creativity into their work. Focus less on an employee’s weaknesses (e.g., in math), and more on his or her strengths (e.g., in geometry).

I’m certain you’ll like the results and the impact it will make on your customers and your bottom line.

Do you have a creative place? It’s the place where you feel you are at your most creative and productive. It may be a bench in your favorite park, a special nook or room in your house or spot in your yard, a quiet desk at a library, a small bistro table in a busy Starbucks, or a spot at work where no one can interrupt you.

Frankly, your creative place may not be a physical location. It could be a particular state of mind. It could be a certain mood, time of day, or the type of music that you are listening to at the time. It could be something you do such as driving or walking. Or it could be any combination of the above.

Every employee has at least one place that focuses the mind and puts them in a more inspired state. Not a state that will necessarily lead to a nuclear fusion breakthrough, or the next generation of computer chip. But it could be a state that helps them think through a more creative presentation, design a more environmentally-friendly container, improve the profitability of a company service offering, or find a more efficient way to process expense reports.

A company’s challenge is to help find those places for employees where they can be more innovative. Most companies insist that employees produce results in sterile environments under rigid conditions. Ask yourself this question: if you were using your own money to fund a composer to come up with a great score for your next blockbuster movie, would you insist that he or she do it between 9 to 5 on a Tuesday in the small conference room down the hall? I don’t think so.

I realize that organizations may not have the flexibility or the resources to put their employees into their most creative physical spaces. But with a little bit of ingenuity, leadership, and guts to try something different, they could clearly get employees to a better place or frame of mind.

Let New Lantern help your company find its creative place. It could be the beginning of a more beautiful and productive relationship between you and your employees.