Ideas can come to us at any time. A walk in the great outdoors or a few minutes with a quiet cup of coffee often clears the head to make some space for more creative thinking. The things we see, do, read and hear around us are also stimulus to connecting the challenges we are grappling with to new possible solutions. Reading a book can unblock ideas and science fiction writing and movies have been credited as stimulus for novel products and services. So why is it when we are asked in a work context to come up with new ideas do we often go blank or come up with the same old, same old? Our experience at Pivotlab, backed up by research, is that there are a few ways to overcome this. Our top three tips are:
Use stimulus – neurotypical brains tend to think and process information in a certain way that can inhibit creative thinking. Using alternative words, pictures or physical items to describe a problem or challenge inspires imaginative thinking that wouldn’t have naturally come to mind.
Empty your head – for the stimulus to work effectively you need to park the ideas you’ve already had so that they don’t get in the way of your new thinking. You don’t want to lose these though so write them down so that you know they’re safely logged somewhere.
Find others to collaborate with – we all bring our own life and work experiences and knowledge to the idea generation process and the greater variety of these in play, the more diverse and innovative the ideas will be.
Follow our page or visit our website to find out more about this and how Pivotlab can help your teams or leaders learn how to solve problems more creatively, whatever the context. www.pivotlab.uk