A survey from IBM’s Institute for Business Value shows that CEOs value one leadership competency above all others – creativity.

CEOs identify “creativity” as the most important leadership competency for the successful enterprise of the future.

That’s creativity—not operational effectiveness, influence, or even dedication. Coming out of the worst economic downturn in their professional lifetimes, when managerial discipline and rigor ruled the day…

via what-chief-executives-really-want: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance.

With the more complex, more dynamic world, leaders are needed to be creative. A creative person who can lead can be a disrupter. They can do 3 things that are needed by companies:

Disrupt the Status Quo. Every company has legacy products that are both cash—and sacred—cows. Often the need to perpetuate the success of these products restricts innovation within the enterprise, creating a window for competitors to advance competing innovations. As CEOs tell us that fully one-fifth of revenues will have to come from new sources, they are recognizing the requirement to break with existing assumptions, methods, and best practices.

Disrupt Existing Business Models. CEOs who select creativity as a leading competency are far more likely to pursue innovation through business model change. In keeping with their view of accelerating complexity, they are breaking with traditional strategy-planning cycles in favor of continuous, rapid-fire shifts and adjustments to their business models.

Disrupt Organizational Paralysis. Creative leaders fight the institutional urge to wait for completeness, clarity, and stability before making decisions. To do this takes a combination of deeply held values, vision, and conviction—combined with the application of such tools as analytics to the historic explosion of information. These drive decisionmaking that is faster, more precise, and even more predictable.

via what-chief-executives-really-want: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance.

Earlier this month at this year’s TED conference, Bill Gates gave an informative talk on his vision of eliminating CO2 emissions.  You can watch it online now at TED.

[TED]

Here is a video about Kiva’s automated warehouse robots. I love this concept.

Heathrow Airport’s is going to have 18 personal rapid transport (PRT) vehicles.  The driver-less taxis will move passengers around Heathrow Airport.

“The four-passenger personal rapid transport (PRT) vehicles, unveiled this week at the Science Museum in London, take airport-goers on a special narrow road from Heathrow’s Terminal 5 to various parking lots. Passengers use a touch screen to type in their destination, press a start button, and the battery-powered vehicle zips along at 25 mph to their destination. There’s a reason the pods look so futuristic–they were designed by Mark Lowson, who worked on the Saturn Rocket that launched Apollo missions.”

[Fast Company]

Carol Kasyjanski is certainly connected.  She is the first person in the United States to be implanted with a wireless pacemaker.  The wireless pacemaker sends information to a wireless home monitoring system that transmits information to her doctor.

According to Dr. Steven Greenberg – director of St. Francis Arrhythmia and Pacemaker Center:

“If there is anything abnormal, and we have a very intricate system set up, it will literally call the physician responsible at two in the morning if need be. It is a tremendous convenience for the patient from even interacting with a telephone to call the doctor. On a larger scale it enhances our ability to pick up and evaluate any problems with their pacemaker and certain other rhythm disorders that could be potentially dangerous or life threatening in ways we really could not do before.”

St. Jude Medical Inc., received FDA approval in July 2009.

[St. Jude Medical Inc.] [PCMAG]

Check out the video below to see the robot in action.

Earlier this year we followed the development of Tata Motors’ Nano.  If you remember this is the world’s cheapest car with a price tag of around $2,500.  The first Nano was sold to a Mumbai resident Ashok Vichare on July 17, 2009.  Tata says it has a waiting list of around a year. [Tata Motors]

With a mobile device and face recognition software this software enables you to discover selected information about people around you. All users control their own augmented appearance and the social network links they want show to others.

The plane will travel at an average speed of 43.5 mph and has a 262.5 foot wingspan.  The pilot will be Bertrand Piccard who flew around the world non-stop in a balloon with Brian Jones in 1999. [Computer Weekly]