Page 119 - 100 Great Business Ideas: From Leading Companies Around the World (100 Great Ideas)

591 3 3. SLEEPING/DREAMING ON IT

One of the easiest ways to generate alternatives is to think
rationally, very hard, and very long about a problem just
before going to sleep. Put it out of your mind and then go to
sleep. When you wake up in the morning, the odds are that
you will have come up with an interesting alternative or se-
ries of alternatives for solving the problem. The reason this
technique works so well is that your subconscious continues
to work on the problem while you are asleep.

Thomas Edison often used brief periods of sleep to develop
ideas. He would sit in a chair and holding pebbles in his
hands allow himself to fall asleep while thinking about a
problem. As he fell asleep, the pebbles would fall from his
hands into tin plates on the floor. This, he claimed, helped
him come up with new ideas by taking advantage of his sub-
conscious efforts to solve problems in a state of near-sleep."

Solutions to complex problems often appear in dreams. The
concept of the benzene molecule came to German chemist
Friedrick August Kelkule in a dream. He saw a snake biting
its own tail and realized that the benzene molecule was a
closed loop, not an open one. Noted writer Robert Louis
Stevenson, who often used his subconscious to develop story
ideas, reports that the
characters of Dr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde
came to him in
a dream.5°

1. Think long and hard about your problem just before going to
sleep and as you begin to drift off.

2. If you awake during the night with a solution or other ideas,
write them down on notecards that you have left on the
nightstand next to your bed.

3. When you awake in the morning, think about your thoughts and
dreams and see if they suggest solutions to your problem. Write
the possible solutions on notecards.

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