Portions of a keynote address by Dr. Robert Epstein, distinguished research psychologist and president of Creativity International, given in Hannover, Germany at CeBIT, the largest trade show in the world. Arnold Schwarzenegger keynoted there the previous year, and Dr. Epstein's speech followed one by B. Kevin Turner, the COO of Microsoft. Epstein has developed a competencies approach to boosting creativity and innovation that increases the creative output of teams by 50-100 percent, participation in suggestion systems by a factor of 10 or more, and overall creative output in organizations by at least a factor of 2. A Ph.D. of Harvard University and the author of 15 books, Dr. Epstein teaches "Innovation and Leadership" for MBA students at the Rady School of Management at the University of California. To measure your creativity competencies, take Dr. Epstein's scientifically validated tests at http://MyCreativitySkills.com (also available in Spanish).

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"I started my professional activity as a neurologist, trying to bring relief to my neurotic patients. Under the influence of an old friend, and by my own efforts, I discovered some important new facts about the unconscious in psychic life, the role of instinctual urges, and so on. Out of these findings grew a new science, psychoanalysis, a part of psychology, and a new method of treatment of the neurosis. I had to pay heavily for this bit of good luck. People did not believe in my facts and thought my theories unsavory. Resistance was strong and unrelenting. In the end, I succeeded in acquiring pupils and building up an international psychoanalytic association. But the struggle is not yet over. Sigmund Freud."

Real laboratory footage showing a pigeon solving Wolfgang Kohler's famous box-and-banana problem, which he studied with chimpanzees in the early 1900s. Dr. Robert Epstein and his colleagues used operant conditioning techniques to get pigeons to solve this problem "spontaneously" in the 1980s. A report of their research was published in the prestigious British journal Nature in 1984 ("Insight" in the pigeon, Nature, 1984, v. 308, pp. 61-62). Depending on their previous experience, pigeons could solve this problem in a human-like fashion in as little as a minute. This pigeon has learned to push boxes and to climb, and it has been rewarded with grain for pecking at a small toy banana. In this situation, the banana is out of reach and the box is not beneath it. At first the pigeon looks confused, then it begins pushing the box - sighting the toy banana as it pushes - and then stops pushing when the box is beneath the banana, then climbs and pecks. This and related studies were summarized in Dr. Epstein's 1996 book, Cognition, Creativity, & Behavior. For information about Dr. Epstein's research on creativity--and his scientifically-validated techniques for boosting creativity in HUMANS, visit http://CreativityCompetencies.com.

BUY the CDs at http://DrEpstein.com . This is one of 15 new relaxation exercises from CDs recently released by Dr. Robert Epstein, former Editor-in-Chief of Psychology Today magazine, based on two books he wrote on stress management. Each CD includes more than 45 minutes of imagery, muscle-relaxation, and thought-management exercises. You can test your stress management skills free of charge at http://MyStressManagementSkills.com .

A meeting in Japan between psychologist Dr. Robert Epstein and Repliee Q1, a beautiful and lifelike android. See "My Date With a Robot," published in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MIND, June/July 2006, available to download free of charge at http://tinyurl.com/y8hwbv6 . You can get also get information there about Dr. Epstein's new book on artificial intelligence, PARSING THE TURING TEST: PHILOSOPHICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES IN THE QUEST FOR THE THINKING COMPUTER.