Donna Shirley's (Mars Pathfinder Rover team leader) online ebook "Managing Creativity," a tool for managing  high-tech startup resources.

Donna Shirley has written an online ebook that is an excellent tool for managing a high-tech startup, called "Managing Creativity"'. 

The book is available for secure online purchase & download as a PDF document from Donna's website, Managing Creativity. To view the ebook on a Windows CE Handheld &/or Pocket PC, a Windows CE PDF reader is available from Ansyr called "Primer PDF Viewer". Some excerpts from Donna's website follow:

"Donna Shirley was the (Jet Propulsion Laboratory's) manager of the Mars Exploration Program and the original leader of the team that built the Sojourner Rover for the Mars Pathfinder (Mission) and Sojourner Rover (that) successfully landed on Mars (on July 4, 1997)...Donna has...written an online book, "Managing Creativity: A Practical Guide to Inventing, Developing and Producing Innovative Products" In this book Donna shares her strategies for using the collective creativity of groups to develop ideas and efficiently and effectively turn them into real products. In covering such topics as, Using Creative Models, Building and Using Creative Teams, Creative Communication, Creative Planning, Creating Within Constraints, and Unleashing Your Own Creativity, Donna provides an invaluable tool for managers who want to get the most out of their teams...Managing Creativity: A Practical Guide to Inventing, Developing and Producing Innovative Products is available now as an electronic book...Download the Table of Contents, Introduction, and Chapter 1 for Free...Download the entire book (1630K) for US$12 (ordering takes place via our secure Web server)"

"Donna...has (also) written a new autobiography...called "Managing Martians: The Extraordinary Story of a Woman's Lifelong Quest to Get to Mars -- and of the Team Behind the Space Robot That Has Captured the Imagination of the World"...Look for it in bookstores or...Amazon.com".

"Distributive Collaborative Engineering (DCE)", 
NASA Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL)

At a recent Open House, JPL shared with the public its methods & tools for planning & executing a space mission from scratch.  In a large videoconference meeting room surrounded by large jumbotron-like video conferencing screens, monitors displayed a large model of the earth in space, surrounded by rockets moving along graphically overlaid launch trajectories, delivering satellite payloads to parking orbits, while other panels showed virtual reality models of satellite components &  cost analysis spreadsheets & barcharts. The videoconference participants could engage in any number of videophone conversations with team members & contractors around the world, while simultaneously performing Shared Whiteboard, File Transfer, Remote Computer Operation, Desktop Sharing & Application Publishing operations, using Microsoft NetMeeting. Below the suspended screens was a large conference table populated by mission team members from many departments, sitting in front of computers & responding to requests from the meeting moderator.  As the moderator would, for example explore a cost reduction measure by asking an engineer what would be the consequence of making a given rocket tail fin a little smaller, the engineer would change the shape of the on-screen virtual reality model & all the other screens, such as the cost spreadsheet & orbital trajectory views, would instantly recalculate & update, as the entire set of changes would ripple throughout the system.

DCE Meeting Video: Title, Room, Vid. Conf, VR & Sheet, Orbit

Related: 
NASA Virtual Research Center (VRC) (image)
NASA Virtual Laboratory (VLAB)