Often, we make the mistake of presuming that advantageous ideas simply happen. Or more hazardous still, we get stuck in the mind trap that creativity is an aptitude; some people have it, others don’t. Then there’s the additional self-defeating belief – “I’m not bright enough to come up with advantageous ideas.”
These hypotheses are seldom honest. Everyone can summon fresh, radical ideas – you simply need to discover how to open your brain and think otherwise.
Standard idea-generation techniques center on blending or adjusting existing ideas. This may surely yield results. However here, our focus is on outfitting you with tools that help you jump onto an entirely different plane. These approaches force your brain to devise fresh connections, think otherwise and consider new views.
A caution – while these techniques are highly effective, they’ll only succeed if they’re backed by robust knowledge of the area you’re working on. This means that if you’re not organized with enough data about the topic, you’re unlikely to summon a dandy idea even by utilizing the techniques listed here.
By the way, these techniques may be utilized to spark creativity in group settings and brainstorming sessions likewise.
All of us tend to get attached to particular thinking patterns. Breaking these thought rules may help you get your brain unstuck and yield fresh ideas. There are many strategies you’re able to use to break constituted thought patterns:
Dispute conjectures: For each state of affairs, you have a set of key conjectures. Disputing these conjectures gives you a whole fresh spin on theories.
You would like to buy something but can’t since you assume you don’t have the income to. Dispute the conjecture. Sure, you don’t have money in the bank but couldn’t you sell some of your other assets to raise the revenue? Can you dip into your retirement pension? May you work overtime and grow the pot in 6 months? Suddenly the picture begins looking brighter.
Reword the problem: expressing the problem otherwise frequently leads to a different idea. To rephrase the problem view the issue from different angles.
“Why do we need to settle the problem?”, “What’s the roadblock here?”, “What will come about if we don’t settle the issue?” These questions will give you new insights.
You might muster up new ideas to resolve your new problem.
In the fifties, shipping companies were losing on freighters. They decided they needed to concentrate on building faster and more effective ships.
However, the problem persevered. Then one adviser defined the problem otherwise. He said the issue the industry should think about was “how may we bring down cost?” The fresh issue statement yielded new ideas. All facets of shipping, including warehousing of cargo and loading time, were viewed. The result of this shift in focus ensued in the container vessel and the roll-on/roll-off freighter.
Imagine in reverse: If you feel you can’t think about anything fresh, try turning things inverted. Instead of centering on how you might resolve an issue/improve operations/heighten a product, consider how could you produce the issue/worsen operations/downgrade the merchandise. The reverse thoughts will come flowing in.
Consider these ideas – once you’ve inverted them again – as possible solutions for the original dispute.
Show yourself another medium: We have multiple intelligences but for some reason, when faced with challenges we simply tend to utilize our verbal thinking. How about expressing the challenge through another medium? Clay, music, word affiliation games, paint, there are many ways you may convey the challenge. Don’t fret about solving the challenge at this time. Just express it. A different expression might activate different thought formulas. And these fresh thought formulas might generate new ideas.
