Somewhere along the way I subscribed to a site called ChangeThis and then promptly forgot about it (you never do that, do you?!)....but then this morning a ChangeThis newsletter showed up in my email inbox. ChangeThis bills itself as a "new kind of media" that will "challenge and change the way ideas are spread." They do this essentially by publishing manifestos for free.

So I looked through this email of manifestoes, and shortly thereafter got an email from Stowe Boyd pointing me toward the one that had already caught my eye: How To Be Creative, by Hugh MacLeod. Sat down with a printout of the PDF and promptly pushed everything else on my desk aside, regardless of deadline, until I finished reading it. It's fun. It's good. It's more than good. My favorite quote of many:

"Good ideas alter the power balance in relationships, that is why good ideas are always initially resisted.

Good ideas come with a heavy burden. Which is why so few people have them. So few people can handle it."

Innovation often causes imbalance of power because innovation by default kicks over the status quo, whether it is in an industry, a business, a team or a relationship. Getting your idea -- or even the need for innovation in the first place -- accepted is perhaps more important than having a good idea.

That reminds me -- Squirrel Inc. author Steve Denning did a great presentation at Innovation Convergence last September about how to use storytelling to convince people to innovate. His site's worth looking at too.