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DEVELOPING NEW BUSINESS IDEAS48

you struggle to write down the ideas as they poured out or did you stop
at just four or five? Did you decide against some ideas because they felt
frivolous? Did you think that cutting the belt into smaller pieces was
breaking the rules? Did you focus just on the belt’s original uses? Did
you ignore the uses to which the buckle could be put? How you fared
will tell you a lot about your ability to be actively imaginative and to
defer your critical judgement.

how you fared will tell you a lot about
your ability to be actively imaginative

stretching your right-brain Whether the earlier questionnaire
identified your preferred thinking style as left-brain or whether you are
a natural right-brainer who wants to see whether you can be even
better, the following exercises will help you stretch your right-brain.
Many of the activities are also effective for when you want to make a
conscious transition from left-brain to right-brain thinking.

G Use metaphors and analogies to describe things and people in your
conversations and writing

G Make eye contact with people you meet in order to help feel their
point of view

G Take off your watch when you are not working
G Suspend your initial judgement of ideas, new acquaintances,

movies, TV programmes
G Record your hunches, feelings and intuitions and calculate their

accuracy
G Take a stroll to no place in particular
G Surf the net just to see where it takes you
G Indulge in detailed day-dreaming and visualising things and

situations in the future
G Do some doodling and draw faces, caricatures and landscapes
G Perceive the bigger picture and float above the details
G Collect junk mail and peruse it for unusual ideas
G Place a deliberate spelling mistake in your next letter or business

paper and check whether the world falls in.