How can you create new ideas? Last week I wrote about creativity and how people think differently. Creativity is all about being able to shift perception: How to look at things from different perspectives. Not many people are able to do that and that is why creativity is one of the few remaining legal ways of gaining an unfair advantage over the competition. That is why students should learn to be more creative. One way to come up with all new ideas is `to brainstorm`. We have all heard of it and some may have used the brainstorm tool but not many really understand what brainstorming is all about. It is for example NOT an uncontrolled storm. Not just bouncing off walls and hope for the best. Effective brainstorming asks structure and...:

 

 

Focussed thinking needs defining and redefining of the challenge that lay ahead. I teach at Swinburne University and a challenge for the Uni could be:  Swinburne University got less enrolments in 2010 compared to 2009. This however could be caused by different problems. So you could redefine the challenge into:

 

As you can see: each challenge asks a different solution.  So how do you find great solutions, well by brainstorming. The trick is to put turn the challenge into a positive focus statement like: To make the University more competitive by improving teaching standards in order to attract a wider range of students. Now you use this focus statement to brainstorm ideas. How do you do that?

 

 

Well you start with:

 

 

 

 

So concentrate on quantity during brainstorming and..

 

 

The rules are important to stay focussed and produce a waterfall of ideas:

 

 

So no....

 

 

Happy...

 

 

 

Next week more about: what next, what to do with all the ideas?