Today is a great day to pro-flect forward to this coming new year and decade, to declare what we want to see and create, to imagine possibilities that we do not have to explain, justify, or defend. Dare today to imagine what you would love to be possible, knowing that the so-called “impossible” happens every day.

There is no “getting it right” when we image the future we want to create. Every scenario has intended-knowable and unintended-unknowable consequences. Everything we create is a learning experience in which every act has upsides and downsides, advantages and disadvantages. The best we can do is to maintain an openness to learning continuously, nothing more, nothing less.

Creative guru/diva Michelle James talks about 7 principles for successful improvisation, the basis for all creative and innovative collaborations as we invent the future, whatever the discipline or domain. They map to the core principles of complexity sciences.

1. Yes and. Fully accepting the reality that is presenting, and the adding a NEW piece of information - that is what allows it to be adaptive, move forward and stay generative. Each performer (agent) interacts with what is offered and offer a unique contribution.

2. Make everyone else look good. That means you do not have to be defending or justifying yourself or your position - others who will do that for you and you do that for others. Without the burden of defensiveness or competition, everyone is free to create. Complex characters can form that enable unpredictable complex actions and direction to emerge.

3. Be changed by what is said and what happens. At each moment, new information in an invitation for you to have a new reaction, or for your character to experience a new aspect of them. Change inspires new ideas, and that naturally unfolds what’s next. You adapt as one structure dissipates and re-organizes into a new structure that expands, yet includes, what was before.

4. Co-create a shared “agenda.” This principle involves the recognition that even the best-laid plans are abandoned in the moment, and to serve the reality of what is right there in front of you. You are co-creating the agenda in real-time. In order to keep the play going, you respond to the moment and an “agenda” co-emerges that is more inclusive than anything that could have been planned. It is no consensus, which reduces. It is co-creative, which expands.

5. Mistakes are invitations. In improv, mistakes are embraced – they are the stimulating anomalies that invite the performers into a new level of creativity. By using improv techniques such as justifying any mistake can be transformed into surprising plot point or dialogue that never would have happened in following a conventional pattern. In improv, justifying creates order out of chaos. Mistakes break patterns and allow new ones to emerge.

6. Keep the energy going. No matter what is given, or what happens, you accept it and keep the energy gong. Unlike in everyday life, where people stop to analyze, criticize or negate, in improv you keep moving. A mistake happens - let it go move on. The unexpected emerges - use it to move on. Someone forgot something important - justify it and move on. You’re lost or confused –make something up and trust the process. Just keep moving. The system is not static – it is alive and dynamic.

7. Serve the good of the whole. Always carry the question, “How can I best serve this situation?” and then you have a better sense of when to run in and when to stay back, when to take focus and when to give it, how to best support your fellow performers and how to best support the scene. By focusing away from how you will look into serving the larger good – the aliveness of the system - you have more creative impulses and resources available to you at any moment. And the choices you make are more in alignment with the higher levels of creative integration that form a coherent play.

It has been an incredible decade, the oughties. Those of us who work in the innovation space tend to define innovation as creating the impossible and the impossible as “that which takes longer.”

In this spirit, let’s take a look at the things we never would have imagined in 2000 that would be obsolescent 120 months later in 2010: cell phones the size of bricks, print catalogues and encyclopedias, dial up internet, CD’s, landline phones, fax machines, snail mail, and film cameras. Everything we take for granted today was a decade ago thought to be impossible. All of this is done instantly and wirelessly.

The message: do not take seriously any cynicism about impossibilities!

3M is building its 23th Customer Innovation Center, leading the pack of companies now employing the approach to innovate their innovation processes.

These are R&D facilities where customers become 3-D collaborators in the tinkering and testing of new product possibilities, taking customers from sources of “verbal input” to conceptual partners in the process of every kind of commercial and consumer product imaginable. Part of the innovation innovation is going beyond customer stated needs to observed success requirements relative to use.

The lesson: the only way to innovate your next generation of product is to innovate your innovation process in the first place.

Seth Godin on customer intimacy:

Many brands want deep and long-lasting relationships with their customers.

Social media makes these interactions even more likely, because it encourages customers to speak up and to connect.

The fallacy is believing that whining equals intimacy. It doesn’t. Whining and complaining is easy and natural, but it’s not a foundation for a long term relationship.

Instead, the goal should be to get your customers to share their dreams, not their peeves.

Most customers are consumers not creators, they do not “dream” so the invitation to dream is an invitation to a conversation they are not prepared for, and therefore holds great transformative power for all. How can social media next year do a better job of engaging dreams rather than grievances when it comes to customer engagement?

If you took inventory on the spectrum of holidays here in the States, you’d find special days dedicated to honoring those we esteem and principles like giving, gratitude, spiritual journeys and freedom.

So what if we agreed to dedicate every day to these instead of making most days not dedicated specially to these? Why not make every day as significant as all others?

This year, Vancouver passed  legislation to make all things civic transparent to citizens. May all other cities, regions, and governments on the planet follow in their own ways.

It open sources public data to further engagement and economic development, which translates into the cost of new kinds of conflict and problems, with the benefit that once again, transparency will bring about accountability.

Companies that value learning outperform those that don’t. A study by independent research firm McBassi & Company shows that it pays to invest in people-focused practices including building learning capacity, knowledge accessibility, and professional development. Institutions that demonstrate the greatest commitment to their human capital seem to enjoy the greatest financial rewards. Fast Company Magazine

Look for organizations to thrive primarily because their strategic and operational doing flows from strategic and operational learning.

In a dynamic environment where change is both intention and given, when learning is the point, failure becomes impossible.

Author Joel Postman talks about his social and tech media predictions for 2010. He suggests we look for:

Large software providers like IBM, SAP and Oracle will launch, or announce, the first enterprise-grade social networking and Web 2.0 collaboration platforms that will gain broad momentum and recognition in the marketplace.

The whole metaphor for search will change. Search won’t be a separate function. Instead of going to a site like google.com or bing.com, users will receive meaningful, personally relevant search results within the context of whatever they are currently doing.

2010 will be the year AR explodes. Expect to see applications from major corporations, municipalities, and institutions of higher learning … These might include realtime campus maps and guided tours; theme park guides; capital equipment location and inventory; and even applications in which the operator makes computer-based notes on top of realtime images