1. Arrange the items in order of difficulty, placing easier items first, to avoid discouraging participants unnecessarily.
2. Construct each item so that it is independent of all other items. A series of items in which the correct answer to the first item becomes the condition for answering the next item can prevent the measure from providing an accurate reflection of the student’s knowledge or skills.
3. Avoid constructing items by taking quotes directly from a handout, overhead transparency, or book. Direct quotes tend to encourage memorization rather than understanding, and quotations taken out of context tend to be ambiguous.
4. Avoid trick questions. The intent of a test is to determine the skills, knowledge, and attitudes of the participants, not to cause them to mark an item incorrectly.
5. Avoid negatives, especially double negatives. Such items take considerably longer to read and are often misinterpreted. If negative words must be used, underline or italicize the word or phrase to call attention to it.
6. Avoid providing clues to items in previous or subsequent items.
7. Use a variety of types of items in the test rather than limiting items to only one type. If the measure is lengthy, variety can add interest. When a variety of types of items are employed, group the items by item type so participants do not have to constantly shift response patterns or reread instructions.

In the case of those businesses whose shares are publicly quoted, the success with which organizations manage their intellectual capital is increasingly mirrored in their market values, values that are often many times the book values of enterprises. Bridging the gap between these two values provides one motivation for seeking to account for intellectual capital.

Another motivation for seeking to account for intellectual capital is the need to manage intellectual capital successfully. Given the importance of managing intellectual capital successfully, accounting is being challenged to develop new approaches to performance measurement that capture the quality of management evident in the context of intellectual capital.

Stewart (1997) has suggested several tools for measuring intellectual capital. Value is defined by the buyer, not the seller. A company, therefore, is worth what the stock market says: price per share x total number of shares outstanding = market value; what the company as a whole is worth. One measure of intellectual capital is the difference between its market value and its book equity. The assumption is that everything left in the market value after accounting for the fixed assets must be intangible assets. If Microsoft is worth 100 billion dollars, and its book value is 10 billion dollars, then its intellectual capital is 90 billion dollars.

Three components of intellectual capital can be identified. Human capital is the first component, consisting of the know-how, capabilities, skills and expertise of human members of an organization. Relational capital is the second component, consisting of any connection that people outside the organization have with it, together with customer loyalty, market share, the level of backorders, and so forth. Structural capital embraces the remaining component of intellectual capital, including both systems and networks, and cultures and values, together with elements of intellectual property such as patents, copyrights, trademarks, and so forth.

To begin intellectual capital accounting necessitates an acceptance that it is possible to include within the same financial statement objective measures of value, as in the case of tangible assets for which there are historical expenditures. Intangible assets such as goodwill are already problematic in accounting. For example, in the UK, only purchased goodwill can be reported in the accounts of the business that acquires it.

If goodwill continues to prove problematic for financial accounting and reporting, intellectual capital as the new goodwill serves to multiply the difficulties involved. Intellectual capital assumes many more forms than does goodwill, and while both concepts are ultimately open-ended, several years of thinking about intellectual capital have confirmed its greater breadth and depth.

One consequence of this, according to Roslender and Fincham (2001), is that we might now think in terms of degrees of intangibility, so that while brands, patents and know-how still count as intangible assets, customer data, distribution channels and employee qualification profiles are more intangible. Off the scale are such assets as employee commitment, organizational culture and corporate values, yet it is just such assets that ensure that some businesses exhibit impressive market-to-book value ratios.

The study’s findings are described in a working paper, titled Idea Generation and the Quality of the Best Idea, coauthored by Karan Girotra, Christian Terwiesch, and Karl T. Ulrich. “The front end of the ideation stage is very important,” notes Girotra. “But companies are not as structured or as rigorous about this phase of the research and development process. Management tends to focus its attention on the later stages.” Those later stages are indeed critical — and expensive — but managers needn’t risk getting that far with a subpar idea. No matter how well conducted the back end of the innovation process may be, it cannot elevate a fundamentally low-quality idea.

Perhaps it’s natural for managers to assume that idea gathering cannot be codified. After all, some of the most celebrated discoveries and inventions — from penicillin to 3M’s Post-it Notes — have been the offspring of serendipity. But in a business environment where many product development techniques have been commoditized, or even outsourced, Girotra observes thatthe idea generation and selection process may be the last remaining source of competitive advantage.

In the study, two distinct types of brainstorming groups generated ideas. One type followed the traditional model, assembling a group of people (in this case, students studying product design) and having them come up with product ideas that would be appropriate for, say, dorm rooms. The other group took a “hybrid” approach, combining individual and teamwork. Those students worked on ideas by themselves before coming together to share their thinking.

Which technique yielded the best ideas? Strictly speaking, the traditional brainstorming groups consistently came up with the very best idea — and the very worst one, too. In other words, the quality of their results varied much more than those that came out of the hybrid groups that combined individual and group idea generation. However, the hybrid groups produced more ideas that were, on average, of higher quality. Nonetheless “for the very best idea, you need to have a pure brainstorming group,” notes Girotra. “Random interactions are likely to produce better-quality ideas.”

That finding contradicts most existing literature on the subject, which concludes that working alone is most effective for idea generation, while working as a team is most satisfying. “What we found makes sense, since the most successful creative firms do mostly use team processes for brainstorming,” notes Terwiesch. “We just brought some new thinking to the subject.”

For more information, download the paper at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1082392.

According to IDS research, more than 80 percent of the companies are deeply committed to the concept of BPM. Increasing efficiency, reducing cost, and improving process effectiveness and innovation are the most important issues these days. They believe that optimization to enhance performance and cost reduction are the most important strategic objectives of BPM.

Companies have begun to look at BPM and its intended value, particularly to manage business processes in highly turbulent market. BPM offers business people a common language and view into how things are done and can be done effectively. Innovative companies do this all the time. If you want to focus on a specific technology there are several software vendors that are more than capable at helping you implement BPM. One of them is ActiveVOS from Active Endpoints.

Active Endpoints is the world’s first all-in-one, standards-based visual orchestration system that allows enterprises and developers to automate business processes, collaborate across IT and business boundaries, control the overall state of the business, as well as adapt rapidly and easily to change.

ActiveVOS is an all-in-one, 100% standards-based orchestration and business process management system (BPM) that permits developers, business analysts and enterprises to develop and manage true services-oriented architecture (SOA)-based applications. Indeed, you can dig more information on their ActiveVos Blog.

This latest release of ActiveVOS 6.0.2 is available for download. Active Endpoints allow you to download their SOA software for a free, 30-day trial. You will not only get a full support to assist in the evaluation, but also documentation, samples, and tutorials to help you.

Over the years I’ve discovered that many entrepreneurs who become successful idea generators follow a routine. By learning their brainstorming patterns, you can demystify your creative thought processes and generate better ideas with more regularity.

Daydream. Muse. Visualize. Mull. Doodle. Those activities are considered by many to be a waste of time, but they’re actually invaluable pieces of the creativity puzzle. You should loiter in your brain whenever you can. I usually go fishing for ideas when I’m exercising in the morning. The increased blood flow and endorphin rush seem to stimulate my brain, coaxing all my ideas, even the ones that might at first seem loopy, out of my subconscious and into the open.

When ideas come to you, write them down without worrying about their value–what may seem a lark today could spark a brilliant idea tomorrow. I fill memo pads with scribbled notes, far-out doodles, and crazy ideas that eventually grow into keynote speeches, unusual marketing strategies, and new business opportunities. I adhere to the Chinese philosophy that reminds us that the weakest ink is better than the strongest mind.

Your creative capabilities are just the same. They actually grow as they are used. But you don’t need to spend thousands of hours to increase your creative-thinking abilities. By practicing a few simple exercises and applications, you can start your creative juices flowing, and you may even amaze yourself at the quality and quantity of good ideas that you come up with. Let’s start off with the definition of creativity.

In my estimation, after years of research on this subject, the very best definition of creativity is, simply, “improvement.” You don’t have to be a rocket scientist or an artist in order to be creative. All you have to do is develop the ability to improve your situation, wherever you are and whatever you are doing. All great fortunes were started with ideas for improving something in some way.

In fact, an improvement needs to be only 10 percent new or different to launch you on the way to fame and riches. It has been estimated that each year, driving to and from work, the average person has about four ideas for improvement, any one of which could make him or her a millionaire. The problem is not that you don’t have the ideas you need to accomplish anything you want but, rather, that you fail to act on those ideas.

Most people dismiss their own ideas because they think that those ideas cannot be very valuable if they were the ones who thought of them. Thomas Edison, arguably the most successful creative genius in human history, once said that creativity is 99 percent perspiration and only 1 percent inspiration. Extensive research on creativity tends to bear him out.

There are four generally accepted parts of the creative process: There is preparation, where much of the work is done. There is cerebration or rumination, where you turn the matter over to your subconscious mind. There is realization, where the idea or ideas come to you. And finally, there is application, where you work out the creative idea and turn it into something worthwhile. Of the four, preparation seems to be the most important, and it involves gathering the right data and asking the right questions. Your success in life will be determined largely by the quantity of ideas that you generate.

It seems that the quality of ideas is secondary to the quantity and that if you have enough ideas, one or more of them will turn out to be prizewinners. You can begin building your creative muscles with focused questions. Some that you might think of are the following: What are we trying to do? How are we trying to do it? What are our assumptions? What if our assumptions are wrong? All improvements begin with questioning the current, existing circumstances. If you are not making progress for any reason, stop and think, and begin asking yourself the hard questions that will stimulate your mind to consider other possibilities.

When they were doing the research to land a man on the moon, scientists were stumped for months and even years. They could not figure how to send a rocket to the moon with enough fuel to land on the moon, blast off, break the moon’s gravity and come back to earth. The problem was that if the rocket had that much fuel to start with, it would be too heavy to take off from the earth in the first place.

Finally, they began to question the assumption that the lunar rocket ship had to land on the moon. When they questioned that assumption, the scientists concluded that a main rocket could orbit around the moon while a smaller module dropped to the surface of the moon and then rejoined the orbiting rocket for the trip back to earth. The mental logjam was broken, and the rest is history.

Asking focused questions-hard questions that penetrate to the core of the matter-is the real art of the creative person. The next step is to have the courage to deal with all the possible answers. Once you have come up with a possible solution, ask yourself, “What else could be the solution?” If your current method of operation were completely wrong, what would be your backup plan? What else would you or could you do? What if your current procedure or plan turned out to be a complete failure? Then what would you do? And what would you do after that?

All of those questions will force you to think further and come up with better answers. The second way to build your mental muscles is with intensely desired goals. The more you want something and the clearer you are about it, the more likely it is that you will generate ideas that will help you to move toward it. That is why the need for clearly written goals and plans for their accomplishment is repeated over and over. Any intense emotion, such as desire, stimulates creativity and ideas to fulfill that desire. And the more you write down your goals and plans, and review them, the more likely it is that you will see all kinds of possibilities for achieving those goals.

The third generator of creative-thinking muscles is pressing problems. A good question to ask is “What are the three biggest problems that I am facing in my life today?” Write the answer to this question quickly, in less than 30 seconds. When you write the answer to a question in less than 30 seconds, your subconscious mind will sort out all extraneous answers and give you the three most important ones. When you have your three most pressing problems, ask yourself, “What is the worst possible thing that can happen as a result of each of these problems?” Then ask yourself, “What are all the things that I can do, right now, to alleviate each problem?”

If you have a problem that is worrying you for any reason, think about what you could do immediately to begin alleviating that concern. This is a prime use of your creative powers. So a key to success in creative thinking is clarity. Take the time to think through, discuss and ask questions that help you to clarify exactly what you are trying to accomplish and exactly what problems you are facing at the present moment. Just as fuzzy thinking leads to fuzzy answers, clear thinking leads to clear answers.

A second key is concentration. Put everything else aside, and concentrate single-mindedly on focusing all your mental powers on solving one single problem, overcoming one particular obstacle or achieving one important goal. The ability to concentrate on a single subject without diversion or distraction is a hallmark of the superior thinker. A third key is an open mind. The average person tends to be rigid and fixed in his thinking about getting from where he is to where he wants to go.

The creative thinker, however, tends to remain very flexible and open to a variety of ways of approaching the problem. The average person has a tendency to leap to conclusions and determine that there is only one way to achieve a particular goal. The superior thinker, on the other hand, tends to be more patient and willing to consider a variety of options before moving toward a conclusion.

There is one other creative concept that can be very helpful when it is used in combination with what we have already discussed, and it is called the “limiting step.” Between you and any goal that you want to achieve or any problem that you want to solve, there is almost invariably a limiting step or a “choke point” that determines the speed with which you move from where you are to your destination. This limiting step may be another person, a particular obstacle, a specific difficulty, or even a lack of some information or skill.

Invariably, there is a particular factor that determines how fast you get there. Your job is to think about it and decide what it is, and then go to work to remove it. For example, if you are in sales, your limiting step may be the number of prospects you have. If this is the case, then your job is to do everything possible and to use all your creative capacities to increase your number of prospects until it is no longer a problem. Then, of course, there will be another limiting step, and your job is to go to work on that.

If you have a business, your limiting step may be the number of qualified people who are responding to your advertising. If this is the choke point that hinders the amount you sell and the speed at which your company grows, it behooves you to concentrate your mental powers on relieving that bottleneck. You must concentrate the very best thinking abilities of yourself and others on increasing the number of qualified prospects that your advertising and promotional efforts attract.

In relationships and misunderstandings between people, there is almost invariably a sticking point or subject area that needs to be resolved in order to bring about harmony again. Your job is, first, to identify this limiting step and then, second, to find a way to alleviate the difficulty to the satisfaction of everyone involved. You are a genius, and you were born with the potential for exceptional creativity.

But creative abilities are latent. They are like muscles that grow with use. You can increase your creative powers by using them, over and over, in every situation, deliberately and specifically, until creativity and a creative response to life is as natural to you as breathing in and out is. There are very few things that you can do that can have a more powerful positive impact on your entire life than becoming excellent in creative thinking.

And you can if you think you can.

By: Brian Tracy

According to this 1991 article by Japanese organizational theorist Ikujiro Nonaka, the problem is that most Western managers defi ne knowledge — and what companies must do to exploit it — too narrowly. They believe that the only useful knowledge is “hard” data. And they see the company as a kind of machine for information processing.

Nonaka shows us another way to think about knowledge and its role in business organizations. He uses vivid examples from highly successful Japanese companies such as Honda, Canon, NEC, and Sharp. Managers at these companies recognize that creating new knowledge is not simply a matter of mechanistically processing objective information.

Rather, it depends on tapping the tacit and often highly subjective insights, intuitions, and ideals of employees. The tools for making use of such knowledge are often “soft” — such as slogans, metaphors, and symbols -– but they are indispensable for continuous innovation.

The reasons Japanese companies are especially adept at this holistic kind of knowledge creation are complex.

But the key lesson for managers is quite simple: Much as manufacturers worldwide have learned from Japanese manufacturing techniques, companies that want to compete on the knowledge playing fi eld must also learn from Japanese techniques of knowledge creation.

Adopted from Ikujiro Nonaka (Harvard Business Review, Jul 2007)