Generating New Ideas- Think Differently and Spark Creativity

"We need to think differently!"
"This needs some fresh ideas!"
"We have got to be more creative around here!"

Are messages like these popping up more and more in your workplace?

Faced with complex, open-ended, ever-changing challenges, organizations realize that constant, ongoing innovation is critical to stay ahead of the competition.

This is why we need to be on the lookout for new ideas that can drive innovation, and it's why the ability to think differently, generate new ideas, and spark creativity within a team becomes an important skill. You need to work actively on building and cultivating this skill, and it can be done!

Often, though, we make the mistake of assuming that good ideas just happen. Or worse still, we get caught in the mind trap that creativity is an aptitude; some people have it, others don't. Then there is the other self-defeating belief – "I am not intelligent enough to come up with good ideas."

These assumptions are rarely true. Everyone can come up with fresh, radical ideas – you just need to learn to open your mind and think differently. This article shows you how to do so.

How to Generate New Ideas

Standard idea-generation techniques concentrate on combining or adapting existing ideas. This can certainly generate results. But here, our focus is on equipping you with tools that help you leap onto a totally different plane. These approaches push your mind to forge new connections, think differently and consider new perspectives.

A word of caution – while these techniques are extremely effective, they will only succeed if they are backed by rich knowledge of the area you're working on. This means that if you are not prepared with adequate information about the issue, you are unlikely to come up with a great idea even by using the techniques listed here.

Incidentally, these techniques can be applied to spark creativity in group settings and brainstorming sessions as well.

Breaking Thought Patterns

All of us can tend to get stuck in certain thinking patterns. Breaking these thought patterns can help you get your mind unstuck and generate new ideas. There are several techniques you can use to break established thought patterns:

• Challenge assumptions: For every situation, you have a set of key assumptions. Challenging these assumptions gives you a whole new spin on possibilities.
• You want to buy a house but can't since you assume you don't have the money to make a down payment on the loan. Challenge the assumption. Sure, you don't have cash in the bank but couldn't you sell some of your other assets to raise the money? Could you dip into your retirement fund? Could you work overtime and build up the kitty in six months? Suddenly the picture starts looking brighter.
• Reword the problem: Stating the problem differently often leads to different ideas. To reword the problem look at the issue from different angles. "Why do we need to solve the problem?", "What's the roadblock here?", "What will happen if we don't solve the problem?" These questions will give you new insights. You might come up with new ideas to solve your new problem.
• In the mid 1950s, shipping companies were losing money on freighters. They decided they needed to focus on building faster and more efficient ships. However, the problem persisted. Then one consultant defined the problem differently. He said the problem the industry should consider was "how can we reduce cost?" The new problem statement generated new ideas. All aspects of shipping, including storage of cargo and loading time, were considered. The outcome of this shift in focus resulted in the container ship and the roll-on/roll-off freighter.
• Think in reverse: If you feel you cannot think of anything new, try turning things upside-down. Instead of focusing on how you could solve a problem/improve operations/enhance a product, consider how could you create the problem/worsen operations/downgrade the product. The reverse ideas will come flowing in. Consider these ideas – once you've reversed them again – as possible solutions for the original challenge.
• Express yourself through different media: We have multiple intelligences but somehow, when faced with workplace challenges we just tend to use our verbal reasoning ability. How about expressing the challenge through different media? Clay, music, word association games, paint, there are several ways you can express the challenge. Don't bother about solving the challenge at this point. Just express it. Different expression might spark off different thought patterns. And these new thought patterns may yield new ideas.

Connect the Unconnected

Some of the best ideas seem to occur just by chance. You see something or you hear someone, often totally unconnected to the situation you are trying to resolve, and the penny drops in place. Newton and the apple, Archimedes in the bath tub; examples abound.

Why does this happen? The random element provides a new stimulus and gets our brain cells ticking. You can capitalize on this knowledge by consciously trying to connect the unconnected.

Actively seek stimuli from unexpected places and then see if you can use these stimuli to build a connection with your situation. Some techniques you could use are:

• Use random input: Choose a word from the dictionary and look for novel connections between the word and your problem.
• Mind map possible ideas: Put a key word or phrase in the middle of the page. Write whatever else comes in your mind on the same page. See if you can make any connections.
• Pick up a picture. Consider how you can relate it to your situation.
• Take an item. Ask yourself questions such as "How could this item help in addressing the challenge?", or "What attributes of this item could help us solve our challenge?"

Shift Perspective

Over the years we all build a certain type of perspective and this perspective yields a certain type of idea. If you want different ideas, you will have to shift your perspective. To do so:

• Get someone else's perspective: Ask different people what they would do if faced with your challenge. You could approach friends engaged in different kind of work, your spouse, a nine-year old child, customers, suppliers, senior citizens, someone from a different culture; in essence anyone who might see things differently.
• Play the "If I were" game: Ask yourself "If I were ..." how would I address this challenge? You could be anyone: a millionaire, Tiger Woods, anyone.
• The idea is the person you decide to be has certain identifiable traits. And you have to use these traits to address the challenge. For instance, if you decide to play the millionaire, you might want to bring traits such as flamboyance, big thinking and risk-taking when formulating an idea. If you are Tiger Woods you would focus on things such as perfection, persistence and execution detail.

Employ Enablers

Enablers are activities and actions that assist with, rather than directly provoke, idea generation. They create a positive atmosphere. Some of the enablers that can help you get your creative juices flowing are:

• Belief in yourself: Believe that you are creative, believe that ideas will come to you; positive reinforcement helps you perform better.
• Creative loafing time: Nap, go for a walk, listen to music, play with your child, take a break from formal idea-generating. Your mind needs the rest, and will often come up with connections precisely when it isn't trying to make them.
• Change of environment: Sometimes changing the setting changes your thought process. Go to a nearby coffee shop instead of the conference room in your office, or hold your discussion while walking together round a local park.
• Shutting out distractions: Keep your thinking space both literally and mentally clutter-free. Shut off the Blackberry, close the door, divert your phone calls and then think.
• Fun and humor: These are essential ingredients, especially in team settings.

LOOKING WITH FRESH EYES

Generating New Ideas

Think Differently and Spark Creativity

As mentioned in my last post we are currently getting ready to move into our new house and I have been thinking about how can we use the land to create more income options.  This reminded me about being creative and thinking of things differently. 

"We need to think differently!"
"This needs some fresh ideas!"
"We have got to be more creative around here!"

Are messages like these popping up more and more in your life?

Faced with complex, open-ended, ever-changing challenges, organizations and people realise that constant, ongoing innovation is critical to stay ahead of the status quo.

This is why we need to be on the lookout for new ideas that can drive innovation, and it's why the ability to think differently, generate new ideas, and spark creativity within a team becomes an important skill. You need to work actively on building and cultivating this skill, and it can be done!

Often, though, we make the mistake of assuming that good ideas just happen. Or worse still, we get caught in the mind trap that creativity is an aptitude; some people have it, others don't. Then there is the other self-defeating belief – "I am not intelligent enough to come up with good ideas."

These assumptions are rarely true. Everyone can come up with fresh, radical ideas – you just need to learn to open your mind and think differently. This article shows you how to do so.

How to Generate New Ideas

Standard idea-generation techniques concentrate on combining or adapting existing ideas. This can certainly generate results. But here, our focus is on equipping you with tools that help you leap onto a totally different plane. These approaches push your mind to forge new connections, think differently and consider new perspectives.

A word of caution – while these techniques are extremely effective, they will only succeed if they are backed by rich knowledge of the area you're working on. This means that if you are not prepared with adequate information about the issue, you are unlikely to come up with a great idea even by using the techniques listed here.

Incidentally, these techniques can be applied to spark creativity in group settings and brainstorming sessions as well.

Breaking Thought Patterns

All of us can tend to get stuck in certain thinking patterns. Breaking these thought patterns can help you get your mind unstuck and generate new ideas. There are several techniques you can use to break established thought patterns:

• Challenge assumptions: For every situation, you have a set of key assumptions. Challenging these assumptions gives you a whole new spin on possibilities.

• You want to buy a house but can't since you assume you don't have the money to make a down payment on the loan. Challenge the assumption. Sure, you don't have cash in the bank but couldn't you sell some of your other assets to raise the money? Could you dip into your retirement fund? Could you work overtime and build up the kitty in six months? Suddenly the picture starts looking brighter.

• Reword the problem: Stating the problem differently often leads to different ideas. To reword the problem look at the issue from different angles. "Why do we need to solve the problem?", "What's the roadblock here?", "What will happen if we don't solve the problem?" These questions will give you new insights. You might come up with new ideas to solve your new problem.

• In the mid 1950s, shipping companies were losing money on freighters. They decided they needed to focus on building faster and more efficient ships. However, the problem persisted. Then one consultant defined the problem differently. He said the problem the industry should consider was "how can we reduce cost?" The new problem statement generated new ideas. All aspects of shipping, including storage of cargo and loading time, were considered. The outcome of this shift in focus resulted in the container ship and the roll-on/roll-off freighter.

• Think in reverse-If you feel you cannot think of anything new, try turning things upside-down. Instead of focusing on how you could solve a problem/improve operations/enhance a product, consider how could you create the problem/worsen operations/downgrade the product. The reverse ideas will come flowing in. Consider these ideas – once you've reversed them again – as possible solutions for the original challenge.
• Express yourself through different media: We have multiple intelligences but somehow, when faced with workplace challenges we just tend to use our verbal reasoning ability. How about expressing the challenge through different media? Clay, music, word association games, paint, there are several ways you can express the challenge. Don't bother about solving the challenge at this point. Just express it. Different expression might spark off different thought patterns. And these new thought patterns may yield new ideas.

Connect the Unconnected

Some of the best ideas seem to occur just by chance. You see something or you hear someone, often totally unconnected to the situation you are trying to resolve, and the penny drops in place. Newton and the apple, Archimedes in the bath tub; examples abound.

Why does this happen? The random element provides a new stimulus and gets our brain cells ticking. You can capitalize on this knowledge by consciously trying to connect the unconnected.

Actively seek stimuli from unexpected places and then see if you can use these stimuli to build a connection with your situation. Some techniques you could use are:

• Use random input Choose a word from the dictionary and look for novel connections between the word and your problem.

• Mind Map possible ideas: Put a key word or phrase in the middle of the page. Write whatever else comes in your mind on the same page. See if you can make any connections.

• Pick up a picture. Consider how you can relate it to your situation.
• Take an item. Ask yourself questions such as "How could this item help in addressing the challenge?", or "What attributes of this item could help us solve our challenge?"

Shift Perspective

Over the years we all build a certain type of perspective and this perspective yields a certain type of idea. If you want different ideas, you will have to shift your perspective. To do so:

• Get someone else's perspective: Ask different people what they would do if faced with your challenge. You could approach friends engaged in different kind of work, your spouse, a nine-year old child, customers, suppliers, senior citizens, someone from a different culture; in essence anyone who might see things differently.
• Play the "If I were" game: Ask yourself "If I were ..." how would I address this challenge? You could be anyone: a millionaire, Tiger Woods, anyone.

• The idea is the person you decide to be has certain identifiable traits. And you have to use these traits to address the challenge. For instance, if you decide to play the millionaire, you might want to bring traits such as flamboyance, big thinking and risk-taking when formulating an idea. If you are Tiger Woods you would focus on things such as perfection, persistence and execution detail.

Employ Enablers

Enablers are activities and actions that assist with, rather than directly provoke, idea generation. They create a positive atmosphere. Some of the enablers that can help you get your creative juices flowing are:

• Belief in yourself: Believe that you are creative, believe that ideas will come to you; positive reinforcement helps you perform better.
• Creative loafing time: Nap, go for a walk, listen to music, play with your child, take a break from formal idea-generating. Your mind needs the rest, and will often come up with connections precisely when it isn't trying to make them.
• Change of environment: Sometimes changing the setting changes your thought process. Go to a nearby coffee shop instead of the conference room in your office, or hold your discussion while walking together round a local park.
• Shutting out distractions: Keep your thinking space both literally and mentally clutter-free. Shut off the Blackberry, close the door, divert your phone calls and then think.
• Fun and humor: These are essential ingredients, especially in team settings.

Key Points:

The ability to generate new ideas is an essential skill today. You can acquire this skill by consciously practicing techniques that force your mind to forge new connections, break old thought patterns and consider new perspectives.

Along with practicing these techniques, you need to adopt enabling strategies too. These enabling strategies help in creating a positive atmosphere that boosts creativity.

Remember to share the wonderful breakthroughs you will experience. 

PATIENCE!!!

The other day I spoke about some opportunities that have become evident in my life. While it is tempting to jump at every opportunity, there is still a place for patience. Patience is a virtue I admire so much. It says a lot about a person’s character. I’m very fortunate to have known inspiring role models who displayed patience, grace and class under pressure. Even when Life seems to throw them curve ball after curve ball, they remain standing tall and proud. Their mindset declares to the world, “I’m not going to let another temporary setback define who I am. I will keep going until I succeed!” In this age of instant everything – instant noodles, instant messaging, instant…you get the picture – it’s hard for people to cultivate patience. We’ve become so used to instant gratification that the idea of waiting has become somewhat alien. Do you know the old saying “Rome wasn’t built in a day?” This means great things take time to achieve. It took the people of the Roman Empire years to establish themselves as a world power. But with patience, perseverance, guts and political maneuverings (this one wasn’t pretty though!), their conquests spanned several nations. Art and philosophy flourished in that period. Their cities were the most beautiful in the world. We can take the Roman Empire analogy and apply it to ourselves. All of us want to succeed, but sometimes we are either too impatient or pessimistic that we end up negating all the hard work we’ve done so far. Speed and pessimism are success killers, and here’s why: Faster may be better, but not always. Completing tasks ahead of schedule is always a plus. You save time and money. But when you’re in too much of a hurry, the quality of your work may suffer. On the personal front, if you’re working towards achieving inner peace, you need to allow yourself time to reach your goal. We have to remember that certain things happen according to their own timetable. Professional success coach Jim M. Allen shares the same pragmatic view in his article “Success Coaching: Instant Success” published in Healthy Wealthy nWise: “(Success) comes to you on its own schedule as the result of consistent, persistent action.” My personal favorite line in his article is “Do what needs doing and let life take its own course.” I couldn’t agree more. Do what you have to do, and do them well. You might get results right away or you might not at all. But rather than panic, you need to sit back and wait. Do other things besides waiting. Ever heard of the expression “a watched pot never boils?” As funny as it sounds, things manifest themselves when we’re not focused on them. Pessimism attracts negative results. When you focus on what you don’t or can’t have, you build barriers that repel success. Your thoughts shape your subconscious. They determine results. Easther Sudharta echoed this in his Healthy Wealthy nWise article “How to Cultivate a Mindset of Abundance”: “For (people), unfortunately, especially with a mind focused on what they can’t have, this will likely always be true.” So how does one cultivate a mindset of abundance? Embrace the possibilities in this world, ignore the limitations and work on what you can do to start improving your life. There is no point on dwelling on the stumbling blocks. Focus on what you actually have and can do. Sometimes we need a boost to help us manage the more challenging aspects in our life. This is where coaching comes in. If you’re having performance issues at work, for instance, a good coach can really do wonders for your development. In his article “Coaching Vs. Managing”, also from Healthy Wealthy nWise, Craig Nathanson says, “Coaching helps to unlock a person’s potential to maximize their own performance and help them to learn vs. teaching them.” It helps him weigh the pros and cons of a situation, his own strengths and weaknesses, and map out solutions. Like the Roman general who led his troops to victory and rewrote history, a coach can help you rewrite your own life by boosting your critical thinking, giving you feedback when necessary and guiding you to attain results while respecting your need to be independent. The ancient Romans did not stop believing in their own abilities. They worked incessantly and did not let setbacks in battles stop them from winning the war. They patiently built their empire, and their persistence paid off. Modern age individuals like us certainly could take a page from history’s movers and thinkers on how to be on top of the world! Igniting the fire within. www.fraserstirling.co.nz

WHERE TO FIND OPPORTUNITIES.

The dictionary says that opportunity is a “fit or convenient time; a time favorable for the purpose; suitable time combined with other favorable circumstances.” 

For generations, success gurus have been saying that opportunity lies in the person and not in the job.  That’s validated by the fact that legal immigrants, regardless of where they come from, are four times as likely to become millionaires as are those people who are born in America, despite the fact that they frequently start with minimum-wage jobs, sub-standard housing and often do not speak English.  One of the major reasons for the immigrants’ success, generally speaking, is that they regard America as the land of opportunity, so they arrive with great expectations and immediately go to work to make the American Dream a reality.  Its just like people move away from a location expecting their problems will be left behind, only to find they have followed them.  

Lord Stanley said that “opportunity, sooner or later, comes to all who work and wish.”  I would add the word “expect” to the end of Stanley’s statement.  That means that we keep our eyes open and our minds working to take advantage of those opportunities which come our way.  One interesting observation is that opportunity frequently comes dressed in work clothes and there are far too many people who turn it down because of the costume it wears. I like a definition of the word success that I came across a while ago.  Someone defined it as opportunity.  The ability to not only notice but act on the things around them.  

John B. Gough said, “If you want to succeed in the world, you must make your own opportunities as you go.  The man who waits for some seventh wave to toss him on dry land will find that the seventh wave is a long time arriving.  You can commit no greater mistake than to sit by the roadside until someone comes along and invites you to ride with him to wealth or influence.”  How true it is!  Think about it – take advantage of the countless opportunities which surround each of us, and ignite the fire within.

www.fraserstirling.co.nz 

Opportunity

Every day we are greated with an opportunity. We have a choice of either to pursue these or ignore and carry on with the same old same old and wonder why we are still in the same place as we were last week, last month and before we know it last year. Just because something may appear as a road block to our path way, it in fact may be an opportunity. We are either sitting and waiting for life to happen but hopefully you are out there making it happen. Every day we have the choice to make a walk happen, make the apple into our lunch, make the walk to the work place rather than driving to the door. Every decision we make is either moving us closer to or further away from our chosen desination...it is your opportunity with every decision.