CEOs at Davos this year got introduced to creativity and design through a series of elaborately designed workshops. Now they've put all the material online including photographs and some of the best visualizations of brainstorm ideas ever.

April 26th was World Intellectual Property Day, and this year's focus was on ideas.

Mankind's inexhaustible capacity for producing ideas makes us unique. Yet this extraordinary ability is often taken for granted. We hardly notice the countless ideas we generate every day, or how much of what we value is the fruit of others' ideas: labor-saving inventions, pleasing designs, life-saving technologies.

Forbes  has this opinion piece, which points out that many of the most innovative inventions came during times of crisis.

The Minnesota Sustainable Design Guide educates and assists architects, building owners, occupants, educators, students, and the general public concerning sustainable building design. The Guide is a design tool that can be used to overlay environmental issues on the design, construction, and operation of both new and renovated facilities.

CNET says It was a week for innovation. The three short videos are worth a look.

Strange new products were on display at Stanford University, including a robo-giraffe of Burning Man fame that was a really big hit. We also came across Apple Computer co-founder Steve Wozniak playing the relatively new sport of Segway polo. And finally, we take a look back at the verbal creativity of Sun Microsystems' outgoing CEO, Scott McNealy.

Ford makes promises of sustainability at the recent LOHAS conference. The Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability are considered an emerging demographic, and an increasingly important one for businesses eyeing the profits in 'natural' and 'organic'.

The Municator - the Chinese contender to the $100 laptop draws plaudits for it's low cost configuration and design.

Forecasting and futures planning firm Social Technologies of Washington DC released their Top 20 Global trends report that takes a big picture view of what companies need to predict and plan for in the next 5 years. While the Kitchen and Bath Industry Show threw up it's own Top 20 trends report, Guy Kawasaki adds the Top 10 Lies told by Marketers.

This Q&A on when and why to rebrand will come in useful for AT&T this week, as their intent to kill the Cingular brand is hotly debated in ad circles. Other rebrands in the news include Nintendo's Wii, also making waves in the market, as well as Lenovo's intent to build a strong brand by signing on soccer star Ronaldinho as their icon.

"One should not only see how much we spent but need to foresee the potential profit in such promotion," Chen said.

Sony has figured out that the way to compete with the iPod is to design an MP3 player that allows you to change your own batteries. Apple deals with its dismal recycling record by launching a free recycling program for old Macs.

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