Harald Lepisk suggests techniques that turns our imagination into creative value:
http://creativity.trainings.ee/the-most-effective-creativity-techniques-for-getting-fresh-ideas/
Reverse brainstorming by asking how do we make the problem worse. Then turn around the ideas to express them as a positive.
Superheroes technique to borrow brains; generate a list of people who are better than you in a specific field and ask: "how would X approach this problem?"
Forced connections to combine. Look at the problem and brainstorm different keywords, writing them on Post Its. Now start combining the words to make new connections
The journey and go an adventure for ideas. Here we change our environment
Switch your thinking by switching your environment. Go out to get some fresh stimuli.
Scott Berkun summarises how we think about innovation and often get it wrong:
http://visionarymarketing.wordpress.com/2010/04/14/scott-berkun-spells-out-the-myths-of-innovation/
1. The epiphany Here we see creativity as the sudden moment of brilliance. We get more innovative when we realize that hard work precedes the magic moment of insight.
2. We understand the history of innovation. We sign up to the conventional wisdom as popularized in biographies and stories of Archimedes’ bath and Newton’s apple, and we forget the messy reality.
3. There is a method for innovation. We assume there is a recipe in which process and ingredients must equal innovation.
4. People love new ideas. Ideas typically require a shift in habits, from customers and employees that will be resisted initially.
5. The lone inventor. Edison invented electrical lighting all by himself. No. The reality is that sustainable innovations are the outcome of a group effort.
6. Good ideas are hard to find. The reality is that ideas are everywhere. The issue is to locate those that can be implemented.
7. Your boss knows more about innovation than you. Bosses may have power but they also can become detached quickly from the front line of the trends that indicate genuine opportunities for innovation.
8. The best ideas win. No, only in fairy tales do the good guys of innovation win.
9. Problems and solutions. Some ingenuous innovations solve problems that don’t exist. Rely on experimentation, prototypes and feedback to put innovation to the test in the market place.
10. Innovation is always good. Some innovations are bad and can only be damaging and disruptive in the wider scheme of things.
"Don’t try to control or make safe the fumbling, panicky, glorious adventure of discovery....If you want to follow the rapidly moving leading edge, you must learn to live on your feet. And out must be willing to make necessary, healthy stumbles." Bill Coyne, Head of Research and Development at 3M
Because we don’t like mess and uncertainty, we attempt to establish rational control to the innovation enterprise to make it cleaner, neater and safer. And in the process we remove the mess and uncertainty that is essential to genuine creativity.
Innovation does need a degree of robust discipline check Diversity Gains.
Kathan Krippendorff identifies the thinking habits of creative strategists from history:
http://www.fastcompany.com/1733244/the-five-habits-of-great-innovators
1. Mental time travel
When we fast forward to a distant future and imagine possibilities we trigger new insights.
2. Seeing the interconnected system
"Out thinkers" think interdependencies within systems, often a simplified one that keeps them focused on what is important to make fresh connections.
3. Frame-shifting
When we shift our perspective we can draw from a more diverse of experiences. Reframe the issues to explore different angles to the original problem.
4. Disruptive mindset
This is the willingness to explore the white spaces that the competition isn’t looking at but represents profitable strategic space.
5. Influence
Ideas without action are dreams. "Out thinkers" also look things happen, and a first step is to "step into the minds" of others to win their support.
Dustin Wax identifies when we’re at our creative peak and how to use this knowledge to enhance our innovation efforts:
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/when-are-you-most-creative.html
There are certain times of the day when we seem to be more or less creative. One survey claims that late evening- around 10pmwe hit our creative peak, and late afternoon is our low spot. But we are all different.
To help find your most creative times, Wax recommends:
Add a "creative assessment" to your weekly review to identify where and when you were at your creative best.
Keep a log to track when you found yourself working for an extended period on a single task. The chances are that this highlights a time of creative flow.
Switch it up if you think you might be wasting time on mundane tasks when you could be working on something more creative.
Be prepared. Have a note pad with you to jot down any creative prompts or ideas. And if like most people your "eureka" moment often happens in the shower, have a crayon handy to scribble down the trigger. Or try using a Dictaphone
Donald Cooper identifies where we are at our most creative:
http://www.donaldcooper.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=131:artwheremostcreative&catid=31:how-to-manage-more-effectively&Itemid=62
Surveys indicate we report our greatest creativity:
The point isn’t that we now disappear more often to the toilet or take more showers. But it is to ensure we create space and time in our schedule to allow us to relax and think rather than be driven by "one damned thing after another".
David Moldawer suggests two tactics for greater creativity:
http://www.lifeclever.com/two-methods-to-maximize-creativity/
Creative work can be hard work. Sometimes we feel our brain hurting as we grapple with an unusual problem or attempt to generate new ideas.
Julia Cameron in "The Artist’s Way" argues that we each have a well of creativity. This well is filled through good habits in sleeping, eating and exercising, and it becomes depleted when we fail to good care of our bodies and minds.
We’re on a creative roll, and it’s tempting to keep pushing on. But if we’re not careful we become burnt out and exhausted. David Moldawer suggests you end the session on a high note, leaving the task while you’re still fresh and motivated by the challenge. Here he recommends the advice of writing teachers: "leave your last sentence unfinished at the end of the day so you have a logical place to continue next time."
Even although we think we have the physical stamina to keep pressing on, our brains get tired. Rather than skip breaks to find more time, we should do the opposite, and extend our "down time", by taking a longer lunch break, or going for a walk for an hour. Here wasting time gives our brain a chance to recover and keep the well replenished.
Dan Goodwin suggests that we may be our own worst enemy:
http://www.howtodothings.com/hobbies/how-to-kill-your-creativity
Scott McDowell revisits Bob Sutton’s "Weird Ideas That Work" to suggest how taking tried and tested management advice and doing the opposite might trigger greater creativity:
http://the99percent.com/tips/6998/Use-Weird-Rules-To-Boost-Your-Creativity
1. Find some happy people and get them to fight. This isn’t an invitation to introduce organisational feuding, but to encourage employees to be robust in the debate of ideas and proposals. It gets quickly to any inherent flaws and helps accelerate innovation of the most promising ideas.
2. Reward success and failure; punish inaction. If the employee who consistently plays it safe is the individual who receives the most favourable performance review or gets promotion, creativity is unlikely.
3. Ignore people who have solved the exact problem you face. Here organisations get the same solutions when assigning the task to the most unlikely team member in the group might generate a fresh perspective.
4. Hire "slow learners" Typically we look to recruit those smart people who learn rapidly our processes and procedures and get up to speed quickly to make an immediate impact. If we shifted approach to bring in a few misfits we might "increase the spectrum of what is possible".
5. Seek out ways to avoid, distract, and bore customers. What would you have to do to alienate your customers? And then pursue the opposite.
Eight ways to improve brainstorming: http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/jul2006/id20060726_517774.htm?chan=innovation_innovation+++design_innovation+and+design+lead
Put a group of people in a room, ask them to operate to a few simple rules:
That was the theory of Alex Osborn, an advertising executive in the 1940s. And the approach - brainstorming - has become a standard group creativity technique.
Brainstorming has now been tested to evaluate its effectiveness as a tactic to improve creativity. And unfortunately it doesn’t do all that well. http://digicynic.wordpress.com/2008/03/18/fact-brainstorming-doesnt-work/ In the vast majority of experiments participants working on their own produce a higher quantity and quality of ideas than those working in groups. Why?
So why does brainstorming and variants of creative group work continue? Because intuitively we know that "two heads are better than one", and the power of diversity emerging from different people collaborating stimulates creativity. For group collaboration to generate innovation:
James Trezona argues for the blending of art and science in innovation to integrate "head in the cloud ideas with feet on the ground know how"; http://changethis.com/manifesto/show/89.03.ArtScience
"When James Dyson invented the bagless vacuum cleaner that was to make him world famous. His eureka moment did not come overnight. In fact it took James 15 years and 5,127 prototypes to create the winning idea. Success came by combining art and science in the development process."
10 ways to mix art and science: