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111 : THE IMPORTANCE OF DEVELOPING STRONG IDEAS

inventor Dr Edwin Land held the view that creative ability was
commonplace but generally uncultivated, reportedly claiming that his
‘whole life has been spent trying to teach people that intense
concentration for hour after hour can bring out resources in people that
they didn’t know they had’.8

everybody has an innate intuitive side
which can be developed, nurtured and
used at every step of the process

Trevor Baylis of clockwork radio fame shares this view, claiming that
the key to success is to risk thinking unconventional thoughts.
Convinced that convention is the enemy of progress, Baylis firmly
believes that everybody has the potential to invent something.9 We
develop the theme of whole-brain thinking more fully in subsequent
chapters.

creativity is not needed just at the beginning In

addition, emerging research supports our experience that the skills of
creativity can and should be applied at every step of the development
process and not just front-loaded to the generation of the original ideas
– in other words, intuition does not give way to rationally driven
implementation once an apparently workable idea has been produced:
intuition and logic should interplay throughout the process.

Our book draws on the latest academic research, together with real-life
examples from business, the public sector and the not-for-profit sector
drawn from our own business practice, consultancy and teaching in
order to show you how to acquire and practise these skills. It develops
the notion that everybody is capable of creativity and describes the
power of consciously harnessing both intuitive and logical skills.
Techniques are provided to allow effective switching between these two
types of thinking.

This means that almost everybody can develop the germ of an initial
business idea into a viable business opportunity by following a
systematic idea development process in virtually any organisational
setting.