Email was the spring board for so many other communication innovations that have been hugely beneficial in the evolution of business and the world in general. Think about it – after the emergence of email came blogging, then social sites, then Twitter and geo-location-based tools (the list goes on!) – all designed around communicating in a new and varied way. These new options provide myriad benefits that the physical world can’t – bringing global communities of people together around a common passion, globalization and democratization of information, real-time spread of significant world news and events, the concept of endorsement (i.e. retweeting a tweet), and even just teaching people how to drill down to short messages to get a point across quickly. And given the psychology behind real world interaction between humans, we can certainly expect the innovation in this space will only continue to evolve the way in which we communicate with one another.

While Mr. Tjan may argue that in-person conversations are a dying art, I’d propose that these technologies haven’t taught us to stop communicating, they’ve simply taught us to socialize in a whole new, and arguably more productive, manner. Certainly with the digital nature of our world, we should remember not to abandon the value of real, live conversation, but let’s not forget to appreciate the new and innovative communication and relationship building opportunities that do exist as a result of these technologies. Innovation and developments in this space will continue to grow, and new tools will emerge to mimic human behavior in a powerful way – not to replace it, but to enhance it. At the end of the day people are people and we’ll always value a live conversation, and now with geo-location software, chances are we’ll find a lot more people in the same location than we’d otherwise ever have been aware of.

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared on the Arthur W. Page Society’s blog, Page Turner. Aedhmar Hynes is a member of the Board of Trustees.

The World Technology Awards are presented to individuals and corporations deemed to be doing “innovative work of the greatest likely long-term significance.” Handed out on Oct. 28, the Awards were presented at the culmination of the two-day World Technology Summit & Awards, convened by the WTN in association with TIME, Fortune, CNN, Technology Review, Science, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), New York Academy of Sciences, and Novartis.

It was down to five formidable finalists for the award which included CEOs from some of the leading global PR agencies as well as communicators making an impact in the technology world. We are all very proud and honored to be chosen for this incredible achievement. It truly reflects our impressive longstanding history in the technology industry and is a nod to where we see ourselves moving in the years to come.

Congratulations to Aedhmar and to all of you that represent this fine company that we call TEXT 100!

A mindset, tools and practice… Our first post on creativity at work showed that being more creative is possible, but takes effort. So why should you bother, anyway? Couldn’t you just get away with a more or less intelligent copy-and-paste-strategy?

To a certain extent, you probably could. But there are two main reasons why you should make the effort: The first is a business reason. And the second, a very personal point.

So, starting with business, why is creativity important for your job? Is it just because surveys will invariably put “creative thinking” in the top three of qualities they look for in a PR agency? I’ll be quite frank: yes, of course it is. But this answer does not get to the heart of the matter.

To get things straight: Yes, creativity is important for the success of PR agencies and for everybody working in public relations. A successful PR campaign has to capture the attention of the target audience. Competition in this space is high and the clutter of digital conversations hasn’t made things easier at all. A good PR campaign will therefore build on a “big idea” that acts as framework for the messages you want to reach the target group. The big idea is, in most cases, a convincing story. In our video series, Jörg Lenuweit explains how creativity helps to build a story that works:

A very good PR campaign will even add a number of smaller, yet genuinely creative tactics, that tie in to the overarching story or concept and spark the audience’s attention at various points. This is the only way you can stand out from the crowd. In that sense, as Birgit Heinold explains, creativity is the most important asset for the future of the PR industry:

Thinking more broadly, however, this statement does not only apply to our small world of PR pros. It is not even restrained to the growing world of creative industries. In IBM’s 2010 CEO study, which surveyed more than 1,500 CEOs worldwide, they found that creativity is the factor most needed to successfully navigate an increasingly complex world. Massive shifts to the business world – geographic shifts, industry transformations, volatile customer preferences – require creative approaches for companies to survive. As a consequence, creative thinking is becoming an important leadership quality.

Or maybe, its critical role is just becoming more pronounced. After all, creativity has always been an important entrepreneurial quality. Already in 1942, Joseph Schumpeter popularized the term “creative destruction,” describing how innovation is a key driver of economic growth. Sixty years later, Richard Florida tried to establish a correlation between the concentration of creative professionals and economic growth of a region.

So, in summary, creative thinking is not only the factor that will make your company thrive over competitors. It’s the factor that drives the economy, today more than ever before.

Okay – before you shy away from the responsibility of saving the world by being as creative as you possibly can, let’s get back to the personal level. In fact, you don’t only have to be creative for business and economic reasons. There is a very private, personal aspect to it: Injecting some creativity into your everyday job can make your day more rewarding.

You can read a scientific explanation for that in the book already mentioned in post one: Mihaly Csikszentmihaly’s “Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention.” Flow, according to Csikszentmihaly is a condition of getting lost in your work, fully absorbed by what you do. In this highly concentrated state of mind, people feel relaxed, energized and serene. Just as physical exercise or playing music, creative work can bring people into this state of mind.

If that sounds too academic and serious, just think about the times you’ve enjoyed work the most. Was it when you were executing on ideas thought up by someone else, or when you could let your imagination run wild and use your own creativity? In the end, being creative is serious – seriously fun!

Big picture, I’m delighted we now have a Chief Technology Officer, and I’m heartened that he’s ostensibly focused on the right metrics, like how the U.S. compares to other countries in terms of rate of innovation, how we are using technology in government, and where we stack up in terms of higher education.  (If you want the details, see the full report from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation here; if you want the short version: at present we suck on all of these rankings.  And if we keep going this way, we’ll be, well, suckier still.)

But I’m not convinced the work Chopra is embarking upon will turn those mega-trendlines back in the right direction.  Chopra is articulate, passionate and clearly “of the Valley,” as demonstrated by his resume and his penchant for moving fast.  But for me, some of his early examples of innovation in government fell flat.  In the works is a new U.S. Immigration web site, for example, where people will be able to see in much greater detail where exactly they are in this byzantine process.  I’ve no doubt this is needed and useful (I have a friend who is losing hair and sleep over this very issue).  But is it game-changing?  Hardly.

More compelling (not to mention inspirational) was Chopra’s example of how a group came together in Virginia and applied Web technology to create updated science textbooks in a fracton of the time it used to take (see more here).  Better still, that content is now being used in other states across the country, and the program certainly has the potential to make a greater impact.

Positive steps, to be sure.  But there was so much talk of “what can we do in 90 days?” and “what can we do without any need for new legislation or incremental budget?” that I couldn’t help but think of the “quick win” mentality that, while very often useful, is sometimes undertaken because the Big Stuff is just too damn hard.

Someone asked about the woeful legacy systems that pervade government; I didn’t hear a clear answer on how that will be addressed.  Robert Scoble asked Chopra how he would address things like the Marines banning Twitter (Scoble’s broader point being, of course, that such decisions might discourage innovation in government).  At first, Chopra brushed it off as not in his remit to get involved in military decisions about security, but then acknowledged that overall, the government is so behind he couldn’t access his own financial information from the White House because his browser was a decade old.  I couldn’t help but feel like his exasperation was the most telling–and unscripted–part of the evening.

Quick wins and proof-of-concepts are without a doubt staples of Silicon Valley and illustrative of good, old-fashioned tech entrepreneurial spirit.  But the real measure of success is whether those “POCs” take off–as in, become commercially viable.  Grab market share.  Change the world.

Aneesh and team don’t have to change the world of course–just the biggest and most powerful country in that world.  I got the distinct sense from this week’s event that the Valley is rooting for Aneesh, and ready and willing to help.  But let’s think big.  That’s ultimately what technology innovation has always been about.