Kickstart Your Creativity
TURN UP THE HEAT
Technology and the future
Some problem-solvers are like particle physicists. They
think that to really get to grips with a problem it needs to be under extreme
pressure. Observing a problem or issue being pushed to its limits can open up
new avenues as well as reveal limitations. Extend the problem in each direction
as far as you can. How far can you go and to what extreme? What if the problem
was significantly worse than it is now? Make it the highest, longest, toughest,
fastest, biggest, slowest, worst, ugliest or least reliable. What if everyone
had it? What if everyone did it? What would life be like if the problem grew to
mammoth proportions? What if the whole organisation, country or the whole world
wanted it?
EXPERIENCE
You will think me lamentably crude: my experience of life
has been drawn from life itself. -Max Beerbohm, ‘Zuleika Dobson'
Dive in saturate, immerse, touch, feel, eat, observe,
surround, live, sit beside, experience and play with the problem. Research
shows that first-hand experience with the problem or issue is better than our
imagination alone for jolting creative ideas. Shift it around or lie under it.
Whatever it is, try to encounter the problem or issue in original ways if you
cannot just in the way everyone else has. And if we have already spent time
with the problem, service, or product, maybe we need to think about how we can
experience it in even more tangential ways. For example, eat the competition'
lunch, look at another person's photos of the problem or read their notes.
SAVOUR YOUR SPILT MILK
Sometimes when grappling with one problem, we find a
solution to another. Remember, Alexander Graham Bell was working on designing a
hearing aid when he invented the telephone.
Accidents can be important sources of information to
generate new ideas and not necessarily ideas related to what we are directly
working on. An ability to use and notice accidental discoveries is a
fundamental characteristic of entrepreneurs. If you're on the wrong track you
could still be on the right track to something completely different. Means may
become entirely detached from ends and become a worthwhile pursuit in their own
right. In trying to find the right colour for our current project we may
discover a new one. In checking meanings of words we may find totally different
ones.
Learn to expect the unexpected. Serendipity is when we find
things of value when we are not looking for them. We accidentally discover
things that we weren't setting out to find. Be aware of these moments.
HINDSIGHT AND FORESIGHT
The future is here. It's just not widely distributed here.
-William Gibson
Step into a time machine with your problem or idea. Go back
or go forward in time. Be curious. How would people react? For example, many
people thought frozen food and Saturday morning shopping would never take off,
and when the first cinema opened in Hong Kong
people initially had to be paid to go. The Chinese believed the people on the
screen were evil ‘moving spirits'. Go into the past, before TVs, telephones,
railways or roads. How would the problem be viewed historically? People once
thought radio would not only be useful for Sunday sermons. And we know how, in
1949, IBM dismissed the idea of PCs because they thought world demand for
computers would be satisfied with five mainframes. Most people close their
minds to the future. Transporting your problem into the future creates a new
con text, new relationships, new perspectives and therefore new ideas.
ADJUST THE FOCUS
One way to jam your thinking is to fill it with everything
at once. Experiment by focusing on one thing at a time. For example, notice all
red things within your view. Notice people who leave and those who stay. Spot
all the different types of fences people have as you drive by. Take a different
focus by using selective perception. Don't let the problem direct your focus
because the solution may lie elsewhere. For example, if you were considering a
design for a better chair, notice people who stand. You may get better ideas
about what's comfortable from talking to them.
DO YOU REALLY NEED A BIGGER BOAT?
Your kids today have it easy. When I was a kid everything
was HUGE. My dad was nearly four times bigger than me. You couldn't even see
the tops of counters… Then gradually everything became smaller until it was the
manageable size it is today.
‘Bizarro' comic strip Coming up with something new can
easily involve rearranging what you've got. You don't always need a bigger
boat. Rearranging need not be something we just do every now and then with our
living room furniture. Often the answer is right there in front of our eyes. We
just need to shift things around a little bit. By playing around with the
pieces of a problem we can find a better fit. Ask if it can be reorganised or
rearranged. What other arrangement could be better? Will this improve it or
create something else? How could offices, resources and staff be rearranged in
your organisation to do a better job?
(Mike Hutcheson & Rebecca Webster FE070819)
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