Page 49 - The Business Idea Factory: A World-Class System for Creating Successful Business Ideas

Set ideas quota

Several years ago, I conducted a workshop, at a famous international company, about generating
business ideas. I split the participants into groups and gave them a task, “Please come up with 100
applicatio ns o f the br ick. Yo ur ideas can be cr azy o r unr ealistic, but by all means meet the quantity
requirement. You have 30 minutes, go!”

If you received such a task, at first you would quickly write down applications of the brick from your
past experience. For example, “A brick can be used for building a house or a brick can be used as a
weapon.” In a few minutes the typical applications of the brick you can recall from your past
experience end and this is the time when the brain begins really thinking.

For example, the ideas you might have will be something like, “A brick can be used as a musical
instrument, as a toy and as a fan.” You will realize that indeed creative and valuable ideas come after
yo u have exhausted the mo st o bvio us ideas fr o m yo ur memo r y and lie so mewher e between number
80 and number 100.

After the exercise with a brick, I gave participants another task, “Please come up with 200 headlines
for the upcoming advertising campaign of the company’s product. Your ideas can be crazy or
unrealistic, but by all means meet the quantity requirement. You have 60 minutes, go!” If you are
curious to know how the workshop participants finished the task, I will tell you. All groups came up
with more than 200 ideas. Some of the ideas were extremely interesting and the company
implemented one of them.

During a brainstorming session, set a goal to generate a large quantity of ideas within a short period
o f time. Put yo ur inter nal cr itic o n ho ld and let yo ur imag inatio n g ener ate eno ug h ideas, no matter
how crazy, silly or unrealistic, to meet the quota. The first third of ideas will be old ideas from past
experience, the second half will be more interesting ideas and the final third will most likely have
exceptional ideas that will make your business successful. The ideas quota technique forces the
creative brain to think, generate a large quantity of ideas, and later select the most promising among
them.

The takeaway message from this section can be excellently summarized by the words of the
international design firm IDEO founder David Kelley: “If you’re forced to come up with ten things,
it’s the clichéd things that you have off the top of your head. But if you have to come up with a
hundred, it forces you to go beyond the clichés.”