Here are six ways to improve your own
creative thinking and innovation skills…
1. Create your own “Three Ifs”
Many good innovators take an existing
object and ask clever questions to twist the very concept of it and make it
new. Steve Jobs didn’t start with the idea of a smartphone. He just took an
existing cell phone and asked a very simple question: how can we improve it to
make it better – or the best?
Let’s be clear about this – there are
no universal recipes for innovation, and each person should develop her or his
own approach depending on specialty, interest, type of thinking, or even the
type of team s/he is participating in.
I usually suggest you build creative
thinking around three “ifs”:
(1) What would happen if I change it
(the object/ system/ social relationship, etc)?
(2) What would I change or improve about this object if I wanted to use it in 10 years?
(3) What would I do if I had a one-million-dollar investment to improve it?
(2) What would I change or improve about this object if I wanted to use it in 10 years?
(3) What would I do if I had a one-million-dollar investment to improve it?
These questions can become powerful
tools that can help you to think differently. It is important to exercise these
skills by repeatedly using the “three ifs” formula (or designing your own set
of questions) about all sorts of things. And many new ideas will pop up.
2. Practice dreaming
The greatest paradox is that creative
thinking is not necessarily the product of IQ or enlightenment via the
proverbial apple falling on your head. It is a matter of regularly training
your imagination, practicing your powers of observation and dreaming, big or
small. It sounds so simple, and yet in this era of information overload and
highly charged urban life, this important element is often missing from our
everyday lives.
All too often we stay focused on the
main task at hand, devoting our mental powers to routine actions (including
Facebook and movie – well, I am sometimes guilty of this too), so that at the
end of the day the most creative idea we can come up with is just to finally
take a break in front of the smart phone or computer screen. Sound
familiar?
Whatever you’re doing – whether it’s
work or leisure – practice spending time applying the “three ifs” formula to
anything you see or imagine. This will help you get into the habit of making
space in your mind for dreaming – essential for creative thinking and
innovation.
3. Make time for cohesive creative thinking
Every textbook on creativity affirms to
the importance of setting aside clearly defined time for creative thinking and
innovation. For example, Google asks its teams to allocate at least 20% of
their time to creative thinking or new projects. But often, even if we
show up ready to innovate, still something doesn’t work and fresh ideas fail to
pop up like popcorn. There are two reasons for this stalemate. The first is
that we don’t practice dreaming, and the second is we don’t practice focusing
on cohesive ideas.
Therefore, the next rule of creative
thinking is very simple: allocate time – it might be an hour per day or per
week – in which to exercise creative thinking about something specific.
4. Learn to pitch your ideas (in an elevator)
There is simple truth in the fact that
Steve Jobs of Apple was great at exploring and explaining innovations based on
existing products – laptops, cell phones, music players. He didn’t invent those
products, but he made them better and he was great at explaining why his
version was superior to other competing goods.
Probably you did have a wonderful idea,
but you didn’t express yourself clearly and excitingly enough to grab people’s
attention, or help others to grasp the nature of your innovation or project.
There is an old saying, “If you cannot
express your idea in three sentences – you don’t have an idea!” One of the most
important innovation skills is the ability to present a very short and clear
description of a new idea (two to three sentences – like shouting through the
closing door of an elevator) and to make a short presentation (two to three
minutes – what is called an “elevator pitch”). Like any other skill, the
ability to articulate in this way can only come through much practice.
5. Bounce ideas off others
Even a great innovator needs people
around her or him to discuss – or “bounce” – new creative ideas and
innovations. What do the major innovative ideas of our time have in common,
from Microsoft (well, when it was young) to Google? All of them were created by
teams of people who stayed together to conceive the idea, plan their innovative
projects, take them to investors and the public, and most importantly jointly
brainstorm those innovations within the team – bouncing ideas, questions and
improvements until the product was perfected to become the next multi-billion
dollar “eureka.”
Therefore, a final important asset to
add to your innovation skillset, is the ability to be a valuable team player,
capable of bouncing ideas to the next level. For some young people this is very
natural, while for others it does not come so easily to be a team player. But
it is never too late to train yourself in this mode of interacting
source: http://www.topuniversities.com/blog/5-ways-improve-your-creative-thinking
source: http://www.topuniversities.com/blog/5-ways-improve-your-creative-thinking
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