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1134 : STEP TWO – GENERATING NEW IDEAS

paint?’ The background to his question was the difficulty home owners
encountered in trying to remove old and cracked paint prior to
repainting their homes. Rather than dismiss out of hand his idea of
using gunpowder to literally blow the paint off houses, his
brainstorming colleagues used this wild idea as a stepping stone to
considering how to create a chemical reaction to remove old house
paint. Their creative practical solution introduced additives into the
paint which remained inert until they came into contact with a solution
containing other additives which was applied prior to repainting. The
contact caused a reaction which stripped the old paint right off.

a particular value of wild ideas lies in
their ability to provoke, and to act as
stepping stones to, highly innovative and
workable follow-up ideas

If you enter the idea generation step believing that you need to produce
nothing but rational and practical ideas, that is probably the type of
idea you will get. Although such ideas frequently will be workable,
they may fall into the 10 per cent process improvement category which
is no match to the higher-quality process-elimination category which
might have been stimulated by a wild initial idea.

ground-rule 4: take a break from the problem It is

good practice to take routine breaks from creative idea generation. It is
all too easy to become so immersed in the process that without
realising it our minds tire and inhibit us from thinking freely.
Alongside 2,500 bottles of chemicals, the laboratory in Thomas
Edison’s ‘Invention Factory’ included a pipe organ which was the focal
point for singing and beer drinking during breaks from late-night
working sessions.

Individuals generating ideas on their own should take a break every 15
minutes. For a group, around 30 minutes is the recommended period,
although if the group dynamics are working really well, you may on
some occasions want to exceed this norm.

So with these principles in mind, let’s start our creative workout.