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to generate a lot of alternative ideas, we show you a range of techniques
which will allow you to reconnect with the 90 per cent of your
creativity which has been drummed out of you.

Each of these straightforward and extremely powerful techniques has a
specific role to play at particular steps within the idea development
process. Each technique is illustrated by a range of real-life business
examples, in both product and service sectors, in both large and small
operations, across a range of countries, including Europe, the United
States, Australia, Sweden, Japan and the Philippines. Ranging from
boundary-hopping to force-fitting, from analogical thinking to reverse
brainstorming, from cube-crawling to upside-down thinking, we show
how these techniques work and have delivered in practice.

Take a preview at just a few of the enterprising individuals and
organisations you will meet in the following pages who illustrate how
to – and sometimes how not to – combine logic and intuition, analysis
and imagination, in developing the germ of an idea into viable business
opportunities:

G Dame Stephanie Shirley, founder of the original software company
behind Xansa plc, who overcame massive blocks to implementation,
including conventional industry thinking which was so male-
dominated that she had to sign her early business development
letters as ‘Steve’ in order to be taken seriously.

G James Dyson, whose experience of cleaning an old property in the
Cotswolds literally brought home to him that existing vacuum
cleaners did not work satisfactorily. His subsequent combination of
intuitive and technical insight and the business skills to
commercialise his ideas, to see the entire idea development process
through from start to finish, marks him out as the consummate
innovator.

G Howard Head, whose innovations revolutionised the worlds of skiing
and tennis. He demonstrates the power of challenging convention
and the elegant effectiveness of analogical thinking.

G Sahar Hashemi, co-founder of Coffee Republic, who realised when
visiting her brother in New York that the thing they would both miss
most on their return to London was New York’s coffee houses.

G Thomas Edison, innovator par excellence who effectively created the
industries of electricity supply, sound recording and motion pictures