Buzzwords rise and fall in the world of business, and at their highest, serve as flags marking a place where we need to drill down. For some time, the need to “innovate” has been creeping into the lexicon of my clients, reflecting the fact that old paradigms on so many fronts are breaking down.When my daughter was in third grade, I had the pleasure of watching a creative little boy shift the paradigm of his art assignment. He, along with his classmates, was given scraps of paper to paint and paste onto a large sheet of paper. His classmates dutifully painted and pasted within the confines of their pages. However, this child asked for a pair of scissors. He began by reshaping his rectangular paper. As he glued his fragments of paper onto his redesigned template none stayed within the margins; curly cues, concentric circles, and folded accordions spilled over the edges redefining the boundaries. What began as one-dimensional became two. It was a paradigm shift in motion. Too often, when there is a call for innovation, we tackle whatever problem we face through the same mind that was shaped by the previous paradigm. We look at the problem from the confines of the past or the confines of expectation. How do we escape this paradox of the mind and its repetitive subversion of creative thought? Most of us make the assumption that consciousness itself emanates from, and is bounded by, the mind. However, when we quiet the mind through contemplative practices such as meditation, we eventually discover that awareness or consciousness exists beyond it. True innovation, along with any act of creativity, draws from this infinite field of intelligent awareness that exists beyond the mind. This is sometimes called pure awareness. And this state is directly accessible to all. How?