In this week's Sunday Links we explore mindfulness, understand the human body, discover how smart people are stupid, uncover a customized news service, and differentiate between patents and innovation

I'm currently reading The Element by Sir Ken Robinson and he briefly touched on the concept of 'groupthink' and how it affects individuals. Groupthink occurs in a close group of individuals who make decisions based on avoiding conflict, conforming to the perceived expectation, and ignoring your individual beliefs

In this week's Sunday's Top Links we learn about innovation from kindergarten, discover a summary tool, explore the future of art, have a laugh with some generators, and learn about our love for popular technologies

This year’s State of the Union Address focused more on innovation, entrepreneurship, and new jobs, in particular for the youth and those just graduating from college. You can see the word cloud from this years address below. You can compare this to last year’s SOTU Address word cloud. As you can see, last years SOTU was more focused on the overall economy and the people, as well as health and energy. A much more overarching approach, but in this years version, we see a more focused vision around new business, creating jobs, and an actual plan to take this forward. Many have been wondering how exactly Obama will bring in this new wave of innovation, entrepreneurship, and the like. One new initiative just launched by the White House is the Startup America Partnership that brings together a number of big players, combining the private and public sectors to promote startups. This focus on entrepreneurship appears to be a good strategy, as the unemployment issue is not getting much better. A recent article by Umair Haque exemplifies the fact that the issues of youth unemployment are not isolated to countries like Egypt or Tunisia, but are very real problems in Europe and the U.S. as well. He focuses on the solution lying with innovation, but more specifically institutional innovation, which should support the rest of the economoy. Hopefully the Startup America

Last one for January, enjoy! 1. LinkedIn Maps Ever wanted a way to visualize your LinkedIn network? A development from LinkedIn Labs brings you Maps, a visualization of your network and their connections. It does a surprisingly good job of forming clusters of your network, definitely worth a look. 2. 3 Ways To Boost Your Curiosity Author Dan Pink shares some insight into how we can all boost our curiosity. He also introduces a new book from Tom Kashdan entitled Curious? Discover the Missing Ingredient To Fulfilling Life. 3. Do Nothing For 2 Minutes I love the concept behind this site, essentially getting us to just stop our days and be in the moment for just 2 minutes. Its funny that this is the best way to bring forward the value of mindfulness and taking a break in the day, but if it works then why not. 4. Will.i.am Named Director of Creative Innovation Very interesting strategy here by Intel, but I question how well Will.i.am can fill this role. I’m sure he understands the music industry pretty well, but even so, I feel like there’s a lot more to it for such a position. Earlier this year we saw Lady Gaga assume a similar position for Polaroid, so maybe we’re seeing a new trend. 5. Philanthroper.com There’s been a huge craze focused on coupon sites, such as Groupon and

In this week's Top Links we look at the Top 10 Lists from Time, a new way to look at the news, a fresh version of a classic game, a TED Talk on education, and a look at innovation trends for 2011.

INNOVATION. It is one of the most fascinating topics out there – possibly THE most fascinating. Innovation is a very simple concept, yet the concept itself deals with the complex, the indefinable. There are no simple methods or procedures, no equations that put innovation into a pretty little package that can be mass-produced. Innovation is a constant, a verb – something you must consistently work to attain and THAT is what is so intriguing about it. You’ll never bore of it, as it is always challenging and by its very nature – always new. Innovation requires constant reinvention and rebirth. Everything about it can be taken a step further, to that next disruptive, revolutionary realm. Its a thing of beauty. I’m in no way an expert on Innovation, although one could argue you could never be an expert in this field. Truly, its just something I’m passionate about and is related to everything in life

In a rare appearance on stage, Chris Anderson shares his discovery of Crowd Accelerated Innovation, which is essentially a self-fueling cycle of education that could be as significant as print. I’m a huge fan of open education and can see this being massively beneficial, but I’m still curious to see how it trend globally. I feel that a lot of people are still not open to that direct communication that video provides, as we see today in social networks that people prefer to communicate through Facebook messages or write on walls instead of call someone and get that direct contact. And so where this really comes into play is will everyone start making videos? I have no doubt everyone will start watching them so it should be interesting to see how this develops. On another note, what do you think of this concept of Crowd Accelerated Innovation? It’s a concept that clearly applies to video but where else may it apply? One thing is for certain, the power of video has arrived and its impact will be timeless for generations to come