Page 51 - The Business Idea Factory: A World-Class System for Creating Successful Business Ideas

Set constraints and think inside the box

One Monday when I was 12 years old, a teacher gave us homework. She said, “Please write an essay
on any topic.” In 3 days, my friend Max went to the teacher and said, “I was thinking hard for hours,
but still don’t have any ideas. I can’t write even one line.” The teacher asked, “Max, where do you
live?” He said, “I live across the street from the theater.” The teacher said, “Well, please write an
essay about the left wing of the theater in front of your house.” Max went home and wrote a 10-page
essay in the afternoon. His essay was the best in class. Now Max is a director at an international
creative agency and generating ideas is his everyday work.

In cr eativity ther e is no thing mo r e par alyzing than the task to cr eate anything yo u want with all the
resources you need. Suppose you say, “I want to generate any business ideas. I have an unlimited
amount of time and money for the project.” That just kills creativity and you will be very unlikely to
generate really good ideas. However, if you define how many ideas you want to generate, set a
deadline, limit the budget for the project, and describe a task for your subconscious as specifically as
possible, you will generate many outstanding ideas, some of which will eventually become successful
businesses. Well-defined problems with a deadline, ideas quota and resources limitation have much
more chance of being solved creatively.

Don’t assume fake constraints for your task, however. If a solution didn’t work in the past, it doesn’t
mean that it won’t work this time. If experts say that an idea is bad, it certainly needs consideration. If
this is how things always worked here, challenge it.

The best idea cr eato r s kno w: To g ener ate a successful idea, yo u need to g ive the subco nscio us full
freedom and generate many ideas, no matter how crazy, controversial or unrealistic. However, to be
able to generate them you need to give your brain a direction: define an idea quota, deadline,
resources and most importantly describe a task as specifically as possible. Your subconscious will
generate amazing ideas for you, but before generating them it needs to know exactly what you want.