>The Innovator’s DNA

>A major new study involving some 3,500 executives has highlighted the key skills that innovative and creative entrepreneurs need to develop. The six-year-long research into disruptive innovation by INSEAD professor Hal Gregerson, Jeffrey Dyer of Brigham Young University and Clayton Christensen of Harvard, outlines five ‘discovery’ skills you need. But, says Gregersen, you don’t have to be ‘great in everything.

So what are the five skills:
- Associating: seeing patterns in seemingly unconnected data or situations
- Observing: spotting emerging, weak signals
- Experimenting: to see what will work
- Questioning: showing curiosity about everything
- Networking: meeting a range of people to be exposed to ideas and resources 

Read more at the Insead website here.

>The Five Habits of Highly Effective Hives

>For millions of years, the scouts on honey bee swarms have faced the task of selecting proper homes. Evolution by natural selection has structured these insect search committees so that they make the best possible decisions. What works well for bee swarms can also work well for human groups. In Harvard Business Review, Thomas Seeley helps us learn from the bees five guidelines for achieving a high collective IQ.

>Brain is not fully mature until 30s and 40s

>There is a lot of debate about how much the brain changes after our early adulthood. The strengths world suggest that it is pretty much fixed and that success is best achieved by building on those things that are already strengths for us enhancing existing neural pathways, whilst evidence from neuroplasticity indicates that the brain can undergo quite radical changes if we put sufficient effort into the change. In an interesting addition to the debate Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, a neuroscientist with the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London says that brain scans show the prefrontal cortex (responsible for high cognitive functions) continues to change shape as people reach their 30s and up to their late 40s. Read more here.

>You Can’t Multitask, So Stop Trying

>Based on over a half-century of cognitive science and more recent studies on multitasking, we know that multitaskers do less and miss information. It takes time (an average of 15 minutes) to re-orient to a primary task after a distraction such as an email. Efficiency can drop by as much as 40%. Long-term memory suffers and creativity — a skill associated with keeping in mind multiple, less common, associations — is reduced. See Harvard Business Review article for more detail:.Harvard Business Review

>Social networking affects brains like falling in love

>Neuroeconomist Paul Zak has discovered, for the first time, that social networking triggers the release of  the generosity-trust chemical in our brains.
See the article here