Page 58 - The Business Idea Factory: A World-Class System for Creating Successful Business Ideas

Leonardo da Vinci discovered that the human brain can’t concentrate deliberately on two ideas no
matter how different without forming connections between them, eventually.

Psychologists have discovered that our brain always tries to find patterns and sense in everything. If
you concentrate on two absolutely dissimilar concepts, eventually the brain will build connections
between them in order to make them a combination that makes sense. For example, if you think about
a donkey and TV, your brain may generate the following ideas: a cartoon about a donkey, a TV in the
form of a donkey, a donkey that carries TVs on its back, a TV producer logo in the form of donkey
or a TV channel about donkeys.

When you want to generate a successful business idea, simply concentrate your attention on your
problem and a random idea. The subconscious mind will deal with creating combinations and
modifications. The more random ideas and thoughts your brain combines with your problem, the
more chance you have of coming up with a really brilliant idea.

Exercise: Random objects

“Rando m o bjects” will develo p yo ur habit o f co mbining seeming ly unr elated o bjects to cr eate new
business ideas. The way you will generate ideas in this exercise is very similar to how business
geniuses produce their best ideas.

Pick two random unrelated objects and make a connection between them in order to create a new
product or a new business idea. Within 5 minutes generate as many combinations as possible and
write them down. Don’t try to make your ideas realistic, try to generate as many ideas as possible, no
matter ho w cr azy. Yo u will always be able to think abo ut ho w to make so me o f these ideas a r eality
and choose the most viable one later, however at this stage let your subconscious generate
combinations without any limitations.

For example, if you pick soap and a car, the combinations may be: car in the form of a soap, use soap
to wash a car, a car seat in the form of a soap, a bathroom in a car, soap used as a fuel instead of
gasoline or a car that sprinkles soap on a street to wash it.

Do you see how this exercise can be applied in generating successful business ideas? Imagine that
one object is a question you want to solve and a second object is a random item or idea. Do this
exer cise with many r ando m items and ideas and eventually yo u will find a g enius so lutio n fo r yo ur
task. This is exactly the process that the world’s best innovators use. Successful ideas are
combinations of other ideas. And the most effective way to generate them is to make many
combinations of random ideas. The more connections you make, the more likely you are to generate
a successful idea.

When a chef wants to create a new, delicious dish he or she takes different ingredients from the
refrigerator and combines or modifies them with a knife, a mixer or a cooker. The more a chef
experiments, the higher are the chances to create a tasty original dish. In business, ingredients are
ideas and life experiences that are stored in your memory. To create new combinations among the
ideas (ing r edients), instead o f kitchen appliances, yo u use yo ur subco nscio us mind. If yo u make it a
habit to r eg ular ly fo cus attentio n o n yo ur task and r ando m ideas, co ncepts and tho ug hts, yo ur br ain
will generate a lot of ideas, some of which will make your business enormously successful.