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.

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

The Red Bull energy drink founder, Chaleo Yoovidhya, died last week in Bangkok at the age of 89. Chaleo was worth $5 billion according to Bloomberg, which made him the third richest man in Thailand.

Chaleo was born to a poor Chinese immigrant family in northern Thailand in 1923, and was a duck farmer early in his career before importing antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals, as reported by Time.

In 1962, Chaleo developed a highly caffeinated, sugary, non-carbonated drink, which he named Krating Daeng, meaning “red bull” in Thai. He targeted working class Thai consumers in an effort to build “the brand to convey strength and power.”

Red Bull soon became very popular in Thailand as the sleep-deprived began purchasing the high energy drink on a regular basis, including farmers, truck and taxi drivers, and factory workers.

Then in 1982, an Austrian toothpaste salesman, Deitrich Mateschitz, was traveling in Thailand and tried Chaleo’s drink and found that it cured his jet lag. Two years later, Mateschitz approached Chaleo and suggested that he carbonate the beverage and market it worldwide. The two men formed a 49-49 partnership with two percent of the company owned by his son.

And the rest is Red Bull history as they say.

Red Bull’s success spawned an entire high-caffeine energy industry. Over the years, numerous competitors have tried to emulate the Austrian-based Red Bull energy drink king, but none has quite measured up. Last year, Red Bull sold 4.6 billion cans – up 11 percent from the previous year. The Austrian-based company employs 8,000 worldwide.

Chaleo’s business empire included a pharmaceutical company, a hospital chain, a winery in Thailand and two international soccer teams: the New York Red Bulls and the Red Bulls Salzburg in Austria.

Throughout his career Chaleo was always friendly and kept a low-profile, preferring to let Mateschitz serve as the company’s more showy executive. His son Sarawut described his father as “lively and happy,” content with his work, and someone who “valued honesty and credibility.”

These ingredients are as important to one’s success as they are for building a global brand-leading energy drink. We all would be wise to follow the lead of this Thai business entrepreneur. And that’s no bull.

If you’re like me, you’re still finding gift cards that you received last Christmas, but never used.

Oh joy, with Christmas 2011 only 11 days away, we’ll soon be starting the gift card mania all over again.

Try going to any store these days without being inundated by gift cards from scores of retailers. The supermarket. The drugstore. The office supply store. Even the 7-Eleven down the street has umpteen variety of gift cards. I guess that’s why we call them convenience stores. But is there such a thing as too much convenience?

Standing in the checkout line of any of these stores, you can find yourself an arms-length away from any number of brightly colored gift cards from places like Barnes and Noble, Applebee’s, Best Buy, and Bass Pro Shops. Hey, don’t snicker. Bass fisher men and women need a little love during the holidays too.

What happened to the good old days when you had to actually go to an individual store to purchase that store’s gift card, or God forbid, purchase a gift itself? And try giving someone a $50 American Express Gift Certificate these days, redeemable like a traveler’s check. They came in matching gold-colored envelopes and made a great Christmas or graduation gift. Nowadays, you might as well try giving someone a rotary dial phone.

I must admit that I too find it hard to resist buying a gift card or two each year for that special someone — or not so special. It’s easy, and requires little thought or planning. Isn’t that the American way?

Let’s try something bold and new this holiday season. Physically go to a store and actually buy a real gift for that friend or loved one. And pay extra to get it wrapped by a human being.

In fact, make it a point this year to demonstrate a little inconvenience. Go out of your way. And do the same with your customers and clients. You’ll enjoy the results and the good cheer it will bring.

It’s hard to add to what has already been said from so many corners of the globe about the enormous contributions of Steven Paul Jobs to the fields of technology, movies, music, telecommunications, and design itself. But I do feel compelled to say something about Mr. Jobs. We just lost our country’s Chief Innovator.

Steve Jobs was a once-in-a-generation visionary who demonstrated a unique blend of design, business, and marketing savvy. He took a quirky, irrelevant computer company named after a fruit, which he co-founded in the 1970s, and turned it into a global business powerhouse boasting the largest market cap of any other company on the planet  – equaled only by Exxon Mobil.

The last decade, in particular, has been truly impressive as Jobs led Apple as it redefined the music industry via the iPod, wireless communication via the iPhone, and more recently, the computer itself via the iPad.

Jobs didn’t always get it right. In 1985, after being fired by Apple, he started the NeXT computer company. NeXT folded in 1996 after shipping only 50,000 units, but its high performance personal computers impressed many, including Apple, which re-hired Jobs in 1997.

Most important, Jobs learned from his mistakes and he wasn’t afraid to make them. At every turn in his career, he ignored traditional business school dogma, and chose to take a different path – always guided by what he felt the consumer wanted.

Jobs concluded that consumers would be willing to pay more for a product if it was well-designed and simple to use.  He was right, and Apple and its shareholders have benefited handsomely.

Business schools will be studying the “Jobs Effect” and his hyper-successful business methods for years to come, and rightfully so.

At some point, there will be another Steve Jobs. He or she will also achieve success by eschewing the safe path. And most likely, he or she too will succeed as a result of a keen focus on innovation, smart design, and creative business approaches.

British painter and portrait artist Lucian Michael Freud died last week in London at the age of 88.

Not as famous as his grandfather, Sigmund Freud, Lucian was well-known nonetheless in the world of art for his “stark and revealing paintings of friends and intimates,” according to the New York Times.

Lucian Freud was born in Berlin on December 8, 1922 to Sigmund Freud’s youngest son, Ernst Ludwig Freud, who was an Austrian architect. Lucian’s mother, Lucie née Brasch, was German. As both parents were Jewish, the Freuds moved their family to the St. John’s Wood district of London in 1933 to escape Nazi Germany.

I know St. John’s Wood well and have walked down many of its streets given my grandfather lived in that district for many years. I also know the work of Lucian Freud and have always respected it for its thought-provoking nature. His earlier Surrealism works gave way to bluntly-presented nude portraitures by the 1950s, which served to shock the senses. For example, his “Naked Man with Rat” (1977-1978) depicted a man lying on a couch holding a sleeping rat.

The central figures of Freud’s paintings many times appear tired, aged, and distressed – which has unnerved some observers over the years, particularly in the United States. Yet, no matter what one thinks of Freud’s work, there is an undisputed market for it. In May 2008, his 1995 portrait “Benefits Supervisor Sleeping” sold at auction by Christie’s in New York City for $33.6 million, which set a record for sale value of a painting by a living artist.

Conformity is the enemy to both the artist and the innovator. Corporations are generally expert at promoting conformity, but seldom proficient in providing for a culture that promotes creative thought and action. And they do so at their peril.

The next time you find yourself trying to conform, ask this question: “What would Freud do?” No, not the father of psychoanalysis, but his grandson.

On May 25, 1961 President John F. Kennedy spoke before a joint session of Congress and laid down a challenge to the country and the U.S. space program: “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”

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.