Well? Do you feel any different?

Lot's of people have asked that question but few seem willing to answer it.

Speaking personally, I don't feel different but I'll join several of my media colleagues to point out that it will be nice to have a President who can craft a coherent sentence.

It will be wonderful to have a President who makes it socially acceptable once more to be a smart person in America.

Rumor has it that one of the things of which our new President is enamored is out-of-the-box thinking that is still pragmatic, thinking fueled by data, offering fresh approaches to solving perennial problems.

As much as he may enjoy that sort of thing, I suspect that it will be easier for me to find those sorts of thinkers than it will for him — especially now that he has been officially enclosed in his very own, personalized bubble inside the Beltway Bubble.

(There's limits to what you can do with a Blackberry. The real question may turn out to be this: how much time can you spare to surf the Web, Mr. President?)

That is unfortunate. President Obama has surrounded himself with a lot of very smart people who have access to a lot of data and information. But none of them could accurately be described as unconventional thinkers, which makes one wonder just how much change will really emerge from the new Administration when all is said and done.

I was noticing that when I was looking over the proposed economic recovery package (because we aren't allowed to call it a stimulus package anymore, evidently). Nothing in it represents a bold departure from the government's standard back of policy tricks, nothing really different in the way of either goals or innovative routes to get there.

More often than not, Pennsylvania Avenue is not the place to look for innovative ideas.

But those different ways of thinking, of seeing what the problems are and of finding ways to address them, are out there. The ideas are not especially far-fetched and the folks who are thinking up those ideas are not even all that hard to find.

Just watch.

This week, The MicroEnterprise Journal officially launches a new article series, which I'm calling Unconventional Thinkers. The series will report on conversations with people with new ideas and new ways of thinking. And we will examine those ideas based on two simple thoughts.

First: repeating today what you did yesterday, and expecting different results, is often considered a sign of insanity.

And second: you cannot solve problems by using the same kind of thinking that created the problem.

I hope you enjoy the journey as much as I expect to.