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.

(Back by popular demand, the above posting appeared originally in April 2009.)

“Seasons of Love” starts with the monotonous recitation of a long number string: “Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes,” which typically is not the makings for a Tony Award-winning song. Yet, this number has meaning as the song goes on to ask, “How do we measure, measure a year?”

That’s an important question posed in the RENT musical; and, it’s an important question for every business.

Today’s businesses spend most of their time thinking about time. They live quarter to quarter, particularly the publicly traded companies which have to expose their financial laundry four times a year. And they obsess over metrics, which are driven by varying time increments, e.g., monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, and annually.

However, companies generally don’t obsess enough over how their employees actually use their time.

Most companies pay their employees for 40 hours-a-week of work, 52 weeks a year. If you set aside the two weeks for vacation, that comes to a nice round 2,000 hours a year that the average employee is paid to be “on the clock.” If you take it a step further and put it in RENT terms, it translates into 120,000 minutes a year for the average employee.

That’s a lot of minutes. Of course, the actual number of minutes a year that an employee works is much smaller. If you consider the average eight-hour day for an employee, you would need to back out the minutes for unproductive time, such as going to the restroom, chatting in the hallway, and taking numerous breaks throughout the day.

Then there’s the time an employee might be sitting at the computer checking their Facebook or Twitter accounts, or browsing on Amazon.com or Ebay.

So when it’s all said and done, the actual amount of available time each day – and each year – that remains for the average employee to contribute to the company’s bottom line is relatively small. As a result, it’s important that the employer do everything it can to ensure that each employee is making the most out of those few remaining minutes.

In sum, incent your employees in smart ways, cultivate and grow their talents, applaud their successes, and create a culture that makes every minute count. If so, I predict you’ll love the seasons that will follow.

After three years of delays, Boeing finally delivered its first 787 Dreamliner this past Sunday to its very patient customer, Japan’s Nippon Airways.

The Boeing Dreamliner is probably the most innovative aircraft in the company’s history. It successfully blends design, function, and energy efficiency. The Dreamliner’s lightweight carbon fiber design and use of new plastic-composites translate into a 20 percent fuel savings. Inside the cabin, there is more headroom and larger stow bins, dynamic LED lighting, and larger windows that can be dimmed electronically.

The accolades for the Boeing Dreamliner are already pouring in. Yesterday, it received “Best in Show” at the 2011 annual conference for the International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) in New Orleans.

But these awards can’t top its most important measure of success. Boeing has already received 800 orders for the Dreamliner valued at $164 billion, making it “one of the most successful commercial airplane launches” in history.

So it appears that the wait was worth it for Boeing.

Your company may be in the process of dreaming up your next best product or service. You too may struggle with delivery delays, glitches, and unexpected turbulence along the way.

Yet, it’s vitally important to push your team to improve upon what already has made your company successful.

Otherwise, you might find yourself stuck on the Tarmac wishing you had a better flight plan.

I was recently in Rome where I toured the artistic creations of the 173-year-old marble floor company, Ditta Medici.

Located on Via dei Papareschi not far from the Tiber, Ditta Medici has been designing and restoring marble floors for some of the most discriminating clients on the globe since 1838. Clients have included the Vatican, Westminster Cathedral, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the Getty Museum, several Bulgari stores, and hundreds of private clients.

Priscilla Grazioli Medici is the latest family member to run the oldest marble workshop in Rome, who gave me a tour of her factory. She showed me some beautiful and unique marbles, which I have not seen in the States — some of which have not been quarried for two thousand years.

Ditta Medici has a number of floor designs which they can customize to your floor, or they can work with you to design a completely one-of-a-kind floor using the rarest of marbles.

You clearly pay a premium for custom and unique. It’s always been this way. Yet, what is a relatively new phenomenon in today’s flatter world is less emphasis on creativity and design, and more on instant gratification, low cost and sameness.

Today, you can buy the same designer label dress or suit in London, Tampa, Minneapolis or Beijing. Is this ubiquity a bad thing? Yes, if it means that many small, individual designers are pushed to the curb in the process.

Have you happened to stroll through the storied neighborhood streets of Greenwich Village in Manhattan in the last two years? Gone are many of the decades-old, sole proprietor shops where you could find rare books, clothing, art, and household items. They have been replaced by global designer brand stores that drive up the rent for everyone else, and in turn, drive out the eclectic and the exceptional.

Unfortunately, a similar fate may await Ditta Medici of Rome and many exclusive and creative shops around the globe.

But I’m not counting out the creative class just yet.

All of us should do what we can to celebrate the artisans and innovators still among us, and those young artists and designers who aspire to make a career in the creative arts.

I’m still convinced that the most creative businesses will not only succeed, but will far outlast the competition. Much like the lasting beauty of a fine Italian marble floor.

With these words, the United States marshaled an unprecedented level of innovative and scientific forces to accomplish this seemingly unreachable goal. In doing so, new generations of Americans became interested in science and space. Educators, students, and the American society at large embraced this ambitious goal with a level of enthusiasm not seen before or since this period in history.

And eight years later on July 21, 1969 astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first person to step foot on the Moon.

Undoubtedly, this country’s excitement and focus on science and space in the 1960s helped plant many of the seeds that led to America’s leadership in technology over the next several decades, including the microcomputer, software, and the Internet.

With this week’s 135th and last launch of the U.S. Space Shuttle, I find myself longing for a new, seemingly unreachable goal that can spark this country’s ingenuity and innovative spirit once more. Else, I fear that we will continue to slip further behind other countries like China and India, which are turning out four times as many math, engineering, and science graduates as the United States.

Let’s hope our country’s next Moon shot comes sooner rather than later.

At the time of his death, Kennedy was considered the Democratic front runner for President. He had just given a victory speech at the Ambassador Hotel having won the California Democratic Primary that evening, defeating U.S. Senator Eugene McCarthy. After his speech, Kennedy left the ballroom and took a shortcut through the hotel’s kitchen, where Sirhan was waiting with his small caliber revolver.

Just two months before, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated in Memphis, TN. Meanwhile, the nation was in turmoil over the Vietnam War as evidenced by the violent protests on numerous college campuses throughout the country. Many Americans found hope in Bobby Kennedy and his message, and were looking to him to find a way to heal the wounds from one of the most troubled times in this country’s history.

Yet, this hope was all swept away with an assassin’s bullet that cut short the life of the brother to President John F. Kennedy, whose own life had been stopped by an assassin in Dallas less than five years earlier.

Richard Nixon went on to win the 1968 Presidential election, defeating Hubert Humphrey, who ultimately won the Democratic primary that year.

We will never know what might have been had Robert F. Kennedy taken a different path that night out of the Ambassador Hotel.

As a college student, my aunt campaigned for Kennedy as a volunteer in the spring of 1968. Her stories inspired me to leave Iran as a high school student ten years later and study abroad in the United States. If not for Robert Kennedy’s death, I’m not sure that my aunt’s stories would’ve made quite the lasting impression on me that led me to this country.

What might have been? I will never know and neither will America.

I can’t say that it’s a favorite song of mine, but the song surely resonates with my husband. Leave it to country music to always win the day in the lyrics category. And as lyrics go, “As Good As I Once Was” is as good as it gets.

The song spent six weeks at the top of Country music charts in 2005 and helped to make Keith one of the most popular singer-songwriters of the past decade.

“As Good As I Once Was” may also resonate with your company as suggested in this verse:

“I ain’t as good as I once was,
My, how the years have flown,
But there was a time back in my prime
When I could hold my own.”

Has your company seen better days? Were you once number one in your product category, or higher up the charts than you are now? Odds are that your employees may be less motivated today than they were a few years back when your workforce was probably younger and hungrier. But don’t worry, you’re not alone. I’ve probably just described over half of the Fortune 500.

Many companies today are looking over their shoulder to find younger and more ambitious competitors on their heels. Or worse yet, you may already be looking at their taillights.

There are ways to turn maturity and experience to your company’s advantage. Sure, your organization and employees may be less nimble than they were a decade ago, but you can draw upon the expertise that comes with age. The key will be to find ways to inspire and incent your workforce through creative compensation and reward programs.

A motivated workforce also starts with motivated managers. Make sure you are utilizing innovative executive and manager training programs to spur more inspired leaders.

In the end, you should not try to match your younger opponents step-by-step, but should seek to ensure that each step counts and is smarter and more efficient based on valuable experience and perspective.

That’s the type of company I would want to work for. Then again, I ain’t as good as I once was, but I’m as good once as I ever was.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the upcoming 83rd Academy Awards show on February 27 will include a major facelift for its world famous envelope, which contains the words: “And the Oscar goes to…”

LA-based designer, Marc Friedland, was tasked with the envelope’s upgrade. The redesign features an “Art Deco-influenced satin gold frame with an ecru inset panel” featuring a gold-leaf-embossed Oscar statuette. Friedland described the previous design as something that surprisingly resembled a “non-descript, office supply store bought” envelope.

Details matter, and so does image and design. Your company needs to pay close attention to how others see you, particularly the important aspects of your business that potentially distinguish it from the pack.

Look outside your organization to seek a fresh pair of eyes to advise on what may be your non-descript blind spot. Doing so could lead to your company’s own envelope and the just rewards that go with it.

Today, Thanksgiving represents a time when family and friends can come together around a dining room table to share a big meal, and give thanks for all that they have.

Thanksgiving is also a wonderful time to give to those in need. There is no better way to say “thanks” than to voluntarily share a small part of your bounty or harvest with organizations that support worthy causes. This not only applies to individual giving, but corporate giving as well.

I know company budgets are still tight, and recovery for some is not quite yet within reach. But giving can and should still occur, at whatever level possible and in whatever form. For example, a company can sponsor an annual employee volunteer day, allowing employees to donate a day’s worth of time (paid by the company) to a local charitable organization.

Employees could help deliver turkeys or holiday baskets, work at a soup kitchen, help build a house, or simply help a neighbor or stranger across town who may need it.

A corporate culture that embraces a giving spirit, can’t help but get more in return — such as a greater sense of purpose, more dedicated employees, and the genuine feeling of doing good.

So use this upcoming holiday season to celebrate what you have, but also to find ways to show thanks and to give back.

Canada’s comment is captured in the just-released documentary, “Waiting for Superman,” which opened last night in theaters in New York and Los Angeles. The documentary aims to serve as a wake-up call to the nation that our education system is failing, and every aspect of our daily lives will suffer if we do not move aggressively to heed the call.

“Waiting for Superman” was directed by Davis Guggenheim, who also directed the Academy Awarding-winning documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” which focused on the global climate change issue.

Guggenheim’s latest film paints a grim picture of the state of education in America. Among 30 developed countries, the United States now ranks 25th in math and 21st in science.

If early indications hold, the film may indeed serve to spark a national debate on education not seen since the 1983 report, “A Nation at Risk,” was released, which also warned of the lasting consequences of failing schools. That report cited dramatic drops in math and science SAT scores by American students over a 20-year period — slippage greater by comparison to students in other advanced countries.

“A Nation at Risk” proceeded to touch off education reforms at the local, state, and federal levels. Twenty-seven years later, it’s apparent that earlier reforms fell far short.

“Waiting for Superman” follows the lives of five children and their families, who are each trying desperately to get their child into a better school. The futures of Daisy, Anthony, Bianca, Emily and Francisco hang in the balance as they hold out hope that their number will be called in lotteries for one of the few slots to charter schools in their respective cities.

In explaining the name of film in an MSNBC interview, Guggenheim notes that the “education system is nearly broken,” and that thousands of people, like these five families, are “waiting for someone to save the schools, and it hasn’t happened.”

Reformers like Geoffrey Canada in Harlem do exist, but they are fighting a fierce headwind of status quo, particularly from teachers’ unions. One of the most vilified reformers is Michelle Rhee, Chancellor of DC’s Public Schools. Rhee has fired several hundred teachers within the last year, who she says were not meeting the grade in the classroom.

“Waiting for Superman” points out that one in 57 doctors each year lose their license for bad performance; one in 97 attorneys lose their law license; while only one in 2,500 teachers lose their credentials.

There is no one superman or superwoman, but there are those who are trying to find a new path in education, and we should all work with them. Administrators, teachers, parents, corporate America, and the public need to roll up our collective sleeves and get to work – challenging the current system and seeking to find new ways to teach and excite children.

Our country, our economy, and our future depend on it.