I have been thinking a lot lately about the ideas of creativity and innovation.  Being an artist as well as a teacher of art, design, and photography the concept of creativity is central to my profession and daily interaction with my students. The later concept of innovation was central to the Apple Education Leadership Summit I attendened in Hong Kong in April. Since then I have been doing a lot of reading about innovative people and what it truly means to innovate. Through reading and having discussions about these two topics, an underlying theme of passion as a driving force emerged.  It seems without passion neither creativity nor innovation can occur.  A passionate emotion, thought, value, or experience kindle and provoke the fires of creativity and innovation. Without passion there lies a void of initiative that is central to both the abstraction of ideas in creative process and the courage to forge newness through innovation.

In further connecting the idea of passion to both creativity and innovation, I created a concept map using mindmeister. The map is still under construction and will evolve as my ideas about passion unfold.