About a month ago, I read an article in the New York Times about a new hi-tech pedometer called Fitbit Ultra. The reporter, Stephanie Rosenbloom, gave a first-hand account of her Fitbit and credited the little memory stick-size device for motivating her to walk and take stairs like never before.

Now I’ve tried a few pedometers in the past, but after a couple of days, the novelty wears off and the pedometer always finds its way into a drawer. But given the rave review of Rosenbloom, I thought I would give Fitbit a try and I went online to buy one from fitbit.com.

Priced at $99, the Fitbit Ultra isn’t cheap. Yet, I convinced myself I had to have it. And before I clicked “purchase,” I asked my husband if he wanted to buy one too and he scoffed at the suggestion, saying: “I’m already a walker and don’t need this expensive toy to motivate me.”

Within a couple of days, it showed up in the mail, and I installed it on my computer. It comes with a small USB charging station that also serves as a wireless connector for the device. Within minutes my account was set up online. It took about two hours to fully charge, and I proceeded to clip it on my waistband. A full charge lasts about three days.

On the unit I can push a button and get an update on my number of steps that day, my mileage covered, my estimated calories burned, and the number of sets of stairs I’ve climbed. In the morning, it even welcomes me with my name and a random motivational greeting such as “Hold me,” “Burn it,” or “Game On.”

With the online dashboard, you get all this information and plenty more, including charts showing your progress against your own daily or weekly goals or goals provided as a default based on your age and weight. It even comes with a wrist-band if you want to measure your sleep patterns at night, i.e., less movement means a more restful sleep.

By wearing the Fitbit, I immediately found myself taking more walks throughout the day, taking the stairs when possible, parking further away from the store, and even walking around the house before I went to bed if I needed a few more steps to get to my 10,000-step daily goal.

Within days, my husband had witnessed my unprecedented enthusiasm for walking, and he decided he had to have one too – and as soon as possible – so he bought one that day at the new Microsoft Store in Tysons Corner Mall in McLean, VA.

Now he and I compete against each other with our steps, stairs, and mileage covered each day and week. We gladly volunteer to go to the mailbox or put out the trash at night just so we can accumulate more steps. What other little device can do that?!

I don’t expect this obsession to last forever, but while it does, we’ll both be healthier for it and will lose a few pounds in the process. The Fitbit Ultra is not the only new electronic step or activity tracker out there, but it’s clearly one of the most popular and easy to use.

Fitbit took a healthy and low tech idea like a pedometer and used innovative present day technology to make it a very compelling product that might just extend one’s life.

That’s well worth $99 in my book.

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.

Nothing says November like the feel of wearing a wool sweater from L.L. Bean.

I’ve been a fan of L.L. Bean’s no-frills, long-lasting clothing products for over 30 years. They are comfortable, affordable, and always get the job done.

If I had a dollar for every “Blucher Moc” moccasin shoe that L.L. Bean has sold over the years, I would, well, have a lot of dollars. The shoe is timeless and iconic, and the product description today was the same 30 years ago: “The handsewn upper conforms to your foot for a fit that only gets better with time. Traditional rubber sole has channel grooves to provide traction on wet surfaces.” Current retail price: $69 a pair.

If it ain’t broke, keep selling it. Or something like that.

L.L. Bean owes its success not only to great products, but to great customer service. Year after year, L.L. Bean ranks among America’s top 10 companies for customer service according to the National Retail Federation, based on written surveys of over 9,000 shoppers.

The company was founded in 1912 by Leon Leonwood Bean in Freeport, Maine — a place that knows something about the importance of keeping warm and dry. Today, L.L. Bean’s flagship store and campus is still in Freeport on the original site where Bean opened his retail business.

Open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, the 200,000-square-foot flagship store draws nearly three million visitors each year.

Next year marks L.L. Bean’s 100th anniversary. Few companies on the planet survive long enough to celebrate this milestone, much less one that is still at the top of its game. The company’s annual sales now top $1.5 billion.

L.L. Bean wrote the book on succeeding as a mail-order business, and decades later was able to successfully pivot to capitalize on the e-commerce revolution. Like its famed Blucher Moc, L.L. Bean has been able to effectively adapt and conform “for a fit that only gets better with time.”

Yet, L.L. Bean’s current President, Chris McCormick, knows that the company’s success will continue to rely on its commitment to putting the customer first: “It goes back to L.L.’s Golden Rule of treating customers like human beings.”

That’s using the old bean from which we all can learn.

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.

You don’t meet your quarterly targets, blame this event or that circumstance.

You fail to close a deal with a huge potential customer, blame this team or that team – or blame your competitor who undercut you.

Your new product advertisement falls flat. Blame your outside ad firm.

Finding a scapegoat is easy. Dealing with your own weaknesses and mistakes, and learning from them is much harder. That’s why both companies and people generally take the former route.

This past weekend, I had a close and personal encounter with blame.

I was awakened this past Friday at 5am by my three indoor cats growling at the front door at a cat on the outside of the door. I got up and peered out the window, and saw what I thought was our neighbor’s black cat. It was still dark outside and I was still in the fog of sleep.

My concern was that the cat had escaped its owner’s house and was now stranded outside in 20-degree weather. I took out some food, which the cat devoured. Just before the cat finished the food, I thought (or I didn’t think) that I would reach down and grab the cat, take it inside for a few hours, and then call the neighbor to come pick it up. This cat thought differently.

When I reached down to pick up the cat, in an instant, it turned and took a huge bite out of my hand, while pushing its back feet against my other hand. I ripped my hands away, and stood there with both hands bleeding while feeling pretty stupid for trying to pick up this cat. I knew now that it was not my neighbor’s cat.

My dumbness resulted in an emergency room visit in response to my bitten hand doubling in size and turning red with apparent infection. The hospital kept me two days to pump strong antibiotics into my body via IV to aggressively attack the toxins that were in my hand. An infectious disease doctor saw me and told me that this type of deep cat bite could do permanent damage to the use of my hand.

I kept telling myself, which was also echoed by my husband, that I had no one to blame but myself.

The hospital was so crowded they put me on the oncology floor with the cancer patients. On the first night, I shared a room with a feisty 82-year old woman who had come to the hospital due to bad reactions to the cancer drugs.

On the second day, they brought in an Egyptian woman in her mid-30s, along with her husband, her mother, her young daughter and several friends and family. She was so ill, so weak, so emaciated, and clearly suffering from the rages of her cancer and the treatments.

My wounds suddenly felt insignificant. Here I was blaming myself for my predicament, and learning from it — and this woman, wife, mother and daughter had no one to blame.

Over the holidays, a magazine cover caught my eye while I was browsing in a local bookstore. Its title, “Real Simple: 799 New Use for Old Things,” published by Time Inc.

Granted, I’ve seen these types of books or articles in the past, but something about this one at this moment in time struck a particular chord. Of course, the vibrant colors and appealing design of the cover (as shown above) helped get my attention.

Today, every aspect of our lives is controlled or influenced by some sort of complicated device. Many of us now read our books or newspapers on a slate-type screen. We have 900 channels on our cable or satellite boxes, and access to thousands of movies and shows “on demand,” not to mention the hundreds of thousands via the Internet.

Our home security systems rival that of small town banking institutions. And our cars talk to us and react to our own voice commands. A refrigerator can now tell me when my milk is expired, and may soon be reporting me to the anti-bacteria police.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not anti-technology. But I am becoming increasingly pro-simple. Of course, some will argue that many of the technologies I cite above, and scores of others, provide conveniences that we could not have dreamed of 20 or 30 years ago. I guess that may be true, but at what cost to simplicity?

Some days, I long for the glow of a simple incandescent light or the simple latch of a screen door for a bit of added security. My friends love to tease me when I give them a ride in my 1997 base-model Jeep Cherokee, and they look around for the “window button“ to “roll down” the window. I happily point to the hand crank on the door and say, “you actually have to roll it down yourself.”

So on the eve of the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where some of the world’s top companies will be showing off their magical new gadgets that will surely serve to dazzle, I’m thinking about how I can make things more simple in 2011.

Your company may want to put simplicity on its list of things to do in 2011 as well. Are there internal processes that you can reexamine, and actually make simpler – and more cost effective? Are there services that you provide to customers that could be retooled or streamlined to lead to simpler, not more complicated outcomes? Are there products that could be simplified and made more user-friendly?

Or, are there products or services that you currently offer, or maybe shelved a while back, that could actually be put to other good and simple uses?

These are all fair questions that any of us should be asking ourselves this coming year.

I’m betting simple will sell in 2011.

What’s that I hear? It’s the sound of an old, reliable manual cash register going “cha-ching.”

To some, business innovation is a science – rational, methodical, and predictable. I prefer to see business innovation as more of an art – part science, but with a healthy dose of creativity and fearless ingenuity.

What is the genesis of the next best-selling car? It is a creative design team member, working on a white board or with clay, sculpting the outlines of the vehicle by hand, possibly mimicking the contours of another natural or man-made object that captures his or her imagination.

Then you bring in the engineers, the CAD team, the developers, and the focus groups to build out and test the proposition. But it starts with an idea, sparked by a creative moment by a talented employee.

How do I get one of those you might be asking? One of those creative employees who could be the ticket to your company’s next hot product or service? I’m guessing you already have more than one of these employees who are capable of such feats. Your challenge is to find and develop this talent.

Artists and innovators need the right stimulation. They need a suitable environment that promotes imaginative thought. And most importantly, they need a corporate culture that embraces, not discourages, new and original thinking.

Starting today, commit to a business innovation program that seeks to engage employees, managers, and executives in a new way. Shine light on those who show promise and inventive traits. Challenge them with provocative training and events that develop their talents. Cultivate the artist in them. Once you’re able to get this down to a science, you’ll likely be one step ahead of your competitors.

When I stopped into my local Starbucks this morning to get my usual tall cup of Joe, I found a store buzzing with a new entrant in its coffee line-up – instant coffee.

I must admit I was skeptical. Instant coffee? After all these years of treating my taste buds to the full-throated flavor of my Starbucks favorite blends such as Verona, Estima, and Sumatra, how can I take instant coffee seriously? The last innovation I witnessed in instant coffee was the “freeze-dried” branding of Taster’s Choice in the 1970s, which was a must-have for every college dorm room. Today, that same freeze-dried brew tastes a little too freezer-burned to me, with all due respect to Nescafe.

Yet, my coffee snobbery this morning quickly gave way to curiosity (and the notion of something free), and so I tried Starbucks’ new “VIA Ready Brew” (aka, instant coffee), which they were handing out in Dixie-like cups. And to my surprise, I liked it. Now, I will admit that it’s not quite in the league of my favorite fresh-ground brew I’m accustomed to, but it’s remarkably good considering it is, well, instant.

Give Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz credit, it’s a pretty gutsy move. This is the same guy who swam against the tide years ago, and proceeded to build a corporate empire one cup at a time — when most everyone else at the time was saying, “you can’t get rich selling coffee.”

Today Starbucks has more than 5,000 stores in over 40 countries. Sure, it had to close a few stores over the last year and dial back some prices in light of the bad economic times. But its stock is up 75% in the last 6 months. I like that math.

So stay tuned. Will Starbucks’ gamble on instant coffee pay off? Wall Street didn’t seem too impressed given SBUX closed down over one percent today, despite its big instant coffee roll-out.

But I don’t count Starbucks out, and for this reason. Its success to date is not simply the result of great coffee and market savvy. It also has something to do with how management runs the company and how they treat their employees (or “partners” as they are called). Starbucks routinely gets some of the highest marks in corporate America in terms of employee satisfaction, and “best places to work.”

As Howard Schultz puts it, “We realize our people are the cornerstone of our success, and we know that their ideas, commitment and connection to our customers are truly the essential elements in the Starbucks Experience.”

Happy and satisfied employees lead to greater productivity and greater innovations. And companies that get this important point, and live by it, will generally prosper.

In fact, prosperity has been known to have a very distinctive aroma. It smells like a great cup of instant coffee.

Cinematography is “the art or technique of motion-picture photography,” according to our friends at Dictionary.com.

Today’s cinematographers, or directors of photography, are harnessing technology like never before to master this art form. They are responsible for every technical aspect of a film’s images, including: composition, lighting, lens choice, exposure, filtration, and film selection. Advancements in digital photography, computer technology, and photo-editing software in recent years are dramatically changing the way films are made.

As viewers, we readily see much of this technology at work in the greatly enhanced image quality of today’s motion-pictures – whether on a high-definition screen at the theater or in your own home. Yet, we are not privy to technological changes that are taking place behind the scenes, which are resulting in not just a better product, but a more timely and cost-effective one.

When you combine these new technology tools, with bright, young cinematographic professionals who know how to leverage these tools, you find a motion-picture industry that is literally reinventing itself one image at a time.

Take for example, Jessica Clarke-Nash, from Sydney, Australia – a Preview Stills Assistant, who represents the next generation of cinematographers. At the ripe old age of 24, Jessica already has over 70 feature films, television shows, commercials and videos under her camera belt.

As a preview assistant, Jessica is responsible for taking thousands of high-quality digital still photos during the course of making a full-length feature film alongside the motion-picture camera. Throughout the day of a shoot, Jessica downloads her stills into sophisticated photo-editing software such as Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2, makes needed adjustments, and readies them for the cinematographer’s review within minutes.

The cinematographer in turn, based on this immediate feedback, can adjust the technical elements of his or her motion-picture photography in real-time. Jessica’s photos provide instant input on light, exposure, coloration, and texture that the video playback in the field cannot provide. Equally important, these daily adjustments made by the cinematographer serve to cut the traditional two months of lab time needed at the end of a film’s shoot to merely a few days.

I met up with Jessica yesterday, who was traveling through Washington DC. She described her work on the set of the Hugh Jackman blockbuster, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which was released earlier this year. Jessica answered my most important question: Yes, Hugh Jackman is amazingly handsome right down to his smallest pixel. She should know given she spent several months working only a lens-length away from Jackman during the filming of Wolverine.

Creativity and innovative thinking not only lead to better products, they can also lead to smarter and more cost-effective processes, which can pay valuable dividends for your company. Take a long, hard look at how you do business – frame-by-frame. Make sure your company is leveraging the latest technologies, and incentivize your employees to help you in this cause.

It may give rise to results that are truly worthy of an Academy Award.

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.