Busy busy busy week for everyone at Corante. Hopefully, the lighter-than-normal editorial traffic hasn't slowed you down. If it has, we'll be back to daily editorials on the Marketing hub next week.

Here's a quick recap of some of the best posts (by topic) so far this week:

Innovation: John Winsor's "Day To Day Innovation", which points us to Diego Rodriguez' "Organizing for routine innovation" article. (Seth Godin serindipidously posted a piece very much in tune with this very topic this week as well. Check it out here.) John takes the conversation a few steps further in his "Maximize Your Innovation Resources" post, which is well worth the read.

Evelyn Rodriguez also shares some great insight into Innovation in her "The Marriage of Receptivity and Presence" post.

Mary Schmidt also exposes some of Innovation's tragic realities in "Innovation Behind The Curtain". (What do I mean by that? Well, in Mary's words:

"Everybody says they want it, yet few people actually value or do it (at least if you believe what you read in surveys and articles.) But why is it so hard?"

Great, quick little read.

Customer Service: Mary Schmidt takes her turn at the "why is this customer service thing so hard" helm this week with her aptly titled "Service Stupidity" post. (I just love that title.)

Here's some of her advice:

"If you’re a vendor, here’s what you do: Quit paying consultants like me to tell you no-brainer things like, “don’t hide from your customers” and “answer the damned phone.” Walk your talk about your commitment to customers (and your employees). Trust me, the ROI in customer profitability and loyalty will far exceed your initial costs. I used to package, market and manage call center services and I know all the reasons, excuses, financials, and CEO speak. Stop whining. Just do it."

Tell it, Mary. :)

Marketing & Business Wisdom: Chris Carfi gives us this to ponder this week:

"Good social networks provide ways for people to create just the sort of information to create useful affinities or ways to find the people you're interested in networking with. This is something I call the social surface area (graphic) but I think the potential for this in the enterprise are clearly still there, once initial concerns are overcome. Thus, the social media companies that find good ways to increase a user's social surface area without disrupting the business itself will tend to be most successful." -- Dion Hinchcliffe (ZDNet), from his post Social Networking Makes A Play For The Enterprise

Blogging Friction: Shel Holtz and Amanda Chapel are having a little disagreement over transparency that illustrates some of the issues that blogging - as a fairly new medium still - is still faced with. Shel's response is an abbreviated manifesto of sorts that sheds a whole lot of light on transparency, credibility, A-listers and the long tail. Revealing and very honest (dare I say transparent?) post.

Inspiration: (Where innovation and strategic planning often come from.) Yep, John Winsor again. His "Six Steps To Finding Inspiration" post is fantastic. Save it, print it, staple a copy to your scrapbook, post it to your wall... It doesn't matter. Read it. It's well worth the five minutes.

That should about do it for today. Check out the other network posts to see if there's anything else you might be interested in. (And let me know so I can add your favorite themes and topics next time.)

Have a great Friday, everyone. :)