As a part of my teaching practice, through the blog Drawing Connections, I share with my students a variety of references from the field. Creativity, communication, invention, and design innovation are the broad thematic blog categories.
This is a great tool for brainstorming. The Visual Thesaurus is an interactive dictionary and thesaurus with an innovative display that encourages exploration and learning. The method illustrated is commonly called "webbing." Designers and writers use this method to generate ideas based on a word or theme. See the Visual Thesaurus in action.
Visual Thesaurus
Need to revitalize your creative energy? Destination: Creative Retreat. Artists’ communities, AKA, artists’ colonies, retreats, or residencies are programs that support artists by providing time and space for the creation of new work.
“Artists have always needed patrons and that is what our artists’ communities have become—the least interfering, the least demanding, and the most nourishing patrons of artists.”
Robert MacNeil, Introduction to Artists Communities: A Directory of Residencies that Offer Time and Space for Creativity
According to the Alliance of Artists Communities –
• There are more than 250 artists’ communities in the U.S., and approximately 200 in another 40 countries worldwide.
• 66% of artists’ communities are multidisciplinary, bringing together all kinds of creative professionals, including visual and performing artists, composers and choreographers, playwrights and poets, creative and scholarly writers, architects and designers, historians, ecologists, scientists, and more.
• Each year creative communities serve approximately 12,000 artists and provide an estimated $36 million in direct support to artists (in the form of stipends, travel, materials, room/board, technical support, etc.).
Learn about the hundreds of residency opportunities available for artists of all kinds. Find out about locations, offerings, application procedures, and how to get the most out of the experience.
Here are two resources:
"Be Our Guest: Finding Creative Time and Space" -- This is a series of public information sessions on artists-in-residence programs, hosted at Rhode Island School of Design, presented in partnership with the Alliance of Artists Communities. Monday, April 30, 2007, 5:30-7:00 pm, RISD, Providence, RI
Be Our Guest
Alliance of Artists Communities
255 South Main St.
Providence, RI 02903
Phone: (401) 351-4320
Aliance of Artists Communities
artist, creative resources 
Visual literacy, or the ability to evaluate, apply, or create conceptual visual representations, is an invaluable skill for business, art, design and engineering students and professionals.
Most are familiar with visual diagrams such as maps, charts, diagrams, matrixes, lenses, tables, and coordinates. Some examples include, mind maps, histograms, timelines, flow charts, cognitive maps, cartoons, and synergy maps.
See one hundred visualization methods illustrated in an online interactive diagram, whimsically represented in a
Periodic Table of Visualization Methods.
Credit: Kudos to Prof. Dr. Ralph Lengler and Prof. Dr. Martin J. Eppler, faculty of Communication Sciences Università della Svizzera italiana, and Partners of Visual Literacy, as well as all partners of Visual Literacy.
Fine tune your conceptual visualization competence. Check out these resources:
Visual Literacy’s online tutorials: Visual Literacy
Reference book, titled, Information Graphics: A Comprehensive Illustrated Reference, By Robert Harris
Edward Tufte, Everything Edward Tufte
innovation
design, designer, great thinkers, innovation 
What serendipity is, that is what happened to me when by chance noticing the cover of the book titled, What Painting Is
It is a very special book indeed, as it gives voice to the painter’s inexact work process, lifework, and physical relationship with paint. Anyone who paints (or used to paint), especially with oil paint, and anyone who looks at paintings with serious intent and attention, would enjoy the comparisons James Elkins makes, that of painting and alchemy.
Below are two of my favorite excerpts from the book.
“It (painting) is a kind of immersion in substances, a wonder and a delight in their unexpected shapes and feels. When nothing much is know about the world, everything is possible, and painters watch their paints very closely to see exactly what they will do. Even though there is no contemporary language for that kind of experience, the alchemists already had names for it centuries ago. They knew several dozen varieties of the material prima, the place where the work starts, and their terms can help us understand there are different ways of beginning the work. They had names for their transmutations, and those can help give voice to the many metamorphoses painters try to make in paint.”
“Science has closed off almost every unsystematic encounter with the world. Alchemy and painting are two of the last remaining paths into the deliriously beautiful world of unnamed substances.”
James Elkins, a former painter, is a Professor of Art History, Theory and Criticism at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Additional titles by the same author:
The Object Stares Back
Why Are Our Picture’s Puzzles?
Our Beautiful, Dry, and Distant Texts
Why Art Can’t Be Taught: A Handbook for Art Students
What Happened to Art Criticism
Stories of Art
Look at the book:
What Painting Is
Below is a link that includes a beautiful mindmap drawing by Elkins.
Ideas for Dozens
Brainstorming is a rapid, spontaneous idea-generating activity in which one or more people participate. It is a great tool for quickly amassing many possible solutions to a problem or issue.
Anyone can brainstorm. It is fun work.
How to conduct a brainstorming session – Begin with a comfortable space and all necessary tools, including large sheets of paper or flip chart pads (3-M makes a pad of large Post-It Notes pads, which are nice to work with because they don’t damage the wall and they can be moved around easily), a set of colored markers like the thick Sanford Super Sharpie permanent markers, tape, digital camera, small multi-colored Post-It Notes, and open wall surfaces.
When brainstorming in a group setting, assign one person to document the session. Ideally, this person should be able to easily visualize ideas in drawings, diagrams and words. Designers and Graphic Facilitators excell at this activity. It’s an additional luxury to ask a second person to lead the group. Their primary responsibilities include initial introduction and activity launch, keeping the group focused, redirecting the group (if necessary), and keeping time.
Tasks for the solo idea-generator are combined.
Basic ground rules:
1. Begin with a clearly stated problem statement. Create a sentence that defines the problem. For example, “Provide better customer service for families with young children.”
2. Have fun. Be outrageous and silly in the ideas. Reserve critical, analytical and negative thinking for another time. Think expansively. Freely associate. Build upon other ideas.
3. Freely, quickly and clearly document ideas. Use exact descriptors, avoiding general statements or one-word responses.
4. Stay on-topic and focused on the problem.
5. Strive to generate a lot of ideas – 100 ideas is not an unreasonable goal. Rapidly document ALL ideas in words and sketches, displaying them so all participants can see. Number the ideas.
6. During the ideation, think about the problem in different ways, including various viewpoints, scenarios, and conditions.
7. Brainstorm for 30-40 minutes.
Using this concept-generating technique alone or in a group setting is a productive way of loosening-up and amassing large quantities of ideas.
Further explore Brainstorming
Want some random inspiration from the masses? Check out the tags 
brainstorming, innovation and 
ideas at Technorati.