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Last weekend’s Wall Street Journal “Review” section teemed with wonderful reminders of creative ideas. These reminders were helpful for providing a handy creative thinking skills refresher on ideas that can become easy to overlook.

Check out these thirteen creative ideas pulled from three of the Wall Street Journal “Review” articles.

Pick one of these creative thinking ideas and do something about it this week – even if that is as simple as thinking about it for a few moments today. You get bonus points if you actually take action on any of these ideas to enhance your creative thinking skills this week.

13 Creative Thinking Skills worth Remembering

Each creative idea is followed by a reference to the list of articles below from which it came.

Creative Perspective

• How readily do you suspend your cynicism to be able to imagine possibilities? How do you consciously force yourself out of a cynical perspective when that’s needed? (1)
• How often do you give yourself the permission to be “new and stupid”? (1)

Creative Inspiration

• If you derive a lot of creative stimulation through online interactions, how are you regularly creating equal creative stimulation through in-person interactions? (1)
• Do you keep going back to the same creative wells repeatedly? Or do you continually seek out new creative experiences where you do not already know the whole story? (1)
• Do you know where your best ideas come from? (It is okay if you don’t know.) If you can recall where your ideas come from, are they originating from different creative inspirations? (2)

Creative Process

• When you take on a new creative project, do you have a “total immersion” process you go through to become fluent in the new subject? (3)
• As you imagine a new creative project, how are you creating a “look book” with inspiration, depictions, and prototypes for your strategic and creative approach? (3)
• When addressing a traditional topic, are you asking, “What doesn’t matter?” This helps identify unnecessary elements ripe for elimination. (3)
• Are you growing the number of people you know that face similar situations to yours? These are the relationships where you can have candid, deep conversations on challenges and opportunities you both face. (1)
• How are you leaving room for surprise and unexpected twists and turns in your creative projects? (2)
• If you enjoy planning everything out on a creative project, are you willing to pursue your next creative project with less upfront exploration? (2)

Creative Experience

• When trying to convey large amounts of information to an unfamiliar audience, how are you using design to simplify the information and draw in audience members while letting the design fade into the background? (3)
• To anticipate a major creative experience impact, ask, “What’s going to stop (the audience) in its tracks and (make them) think about this completely differently?” (3)

Creative Inspiration for these Creative Ideas:

(1) “Bordellos for the Brain (Conference Mania)” by Holly Finn

(2) “In the Beginning,” by Ron Rash

(3) “Creating – At the Side of an Expert Exhibitionist” – Melanie Ide, Museum Planner

Next Week’s Creative Thinking Skills Assignment

I hope you enjoy working one of these creative ideas this week. While you’re at it, bookmark this page and come back to it next week to refresh even more creative thinking skills! - Mike Brown

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming blog email updates.

Download the free ebook, “Taking the NO Out of InNOvation” to help you generate fantastic creative thinking and ideas! For an organizational innovation success boost, contact The Brainzooming Group to help your team be more successful by rapidly expanding strategic options and creating innovative plans to efficiently implement. Email us at info@brainzooming.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can deliver these benefits for you.

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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Today’s Blogapalooza guest post is from Jessica James. Jessica has been working for one of the world’s larget casual dining restaurant chains since 2006. She is currently working on completing her master’s degree in journalism from The University of Kansas. We’re excited to share Jessica’s seven lessons for creative success – lessons that are a valuable guide to creating no matter the industry in which you work!

Creative Success – A 7 Lesson Guide to Creating by Jessica James

For 15 years, I have been in the business of creating new products and ideas. The first eight years were formative; learning my craft, sharpening my skills, networking, and building a reputation – finding my way in an all-consuming industry.  The last seven years have been innovative – a culmination of what I have learned, whom I’ve had the opportunity to know, and the creative success challenge that comes with maintaining relevance everyday.

From these innovative years, I have identified seven lessons for creative success that are my guide to creating.

1. Take Notes…and Use Them!

I use the Notes app on my iPhone everyday.  Perhaps I’m a bit OCD, but I have lists for everything.  Ideas for my house.  Ideas for upcoming projects.  Wines I need to try.  Places I need to go.  Anything that might be useful for inspiring creativity down the road gets logged into notes.

I read the notes a few times a week, usually at night when unwinding.  I use this time to focus on something that may have grabbed my attention earlier and think about how it might apply to things I’m working on now. This process is very helpful in balancing my decisiveness and impulsiveness with my desire to present researched and thought out ideas.

2. Read All the Time

This ties to the first creative success tip.  If you’re taking notes all the time and generating lists, chances are, you’re reading things that are interesting and relevant to your personal and professional life.

I try to read a mix of things– parenting magazines, fashion magazines, cooking magazines, trade journals, blogs, websites, social media outlets, news magazines, Twitter, and the occasional ‘trash magazine.’ A mix of information will keep your ideas fresh and give you a perspective and creative success you would not otherwise have.

3. Focus on the Fix

When creating things, it is inevitable people will challenge your products or ideas, valid or not.  Don’t minimize your creative critics.  Pay close attention to your critics and what they are saying.  Be discreet about it and you will stay ahead of them.

Think about how things might go wrong and focus on how you would fix them.  Do this all the time – not just when something is near completion.  Have the voice of your creative critics in your head and use it to fine-tune your work.

4. Stay Organized

I read once somewhere (affiliate link) that creative people tend to achieve their best creative success in environments described as organized chaos.  To the contrary, analytical left-brained people work best when things are tidy, organized and maintained.  I relate to this.  My desk at work has piles of things that haven’t moved in a month or so, but I could tell you the contents of every pile. It’s a mess, but it’s organized.

Keeping your ideas and projects in organized and accessible piles or files will help you prioritize and shift gears quickly from one project to the next if needed – something critical in today’s world of news updates by the minute.

5. Do Things You Hate to Do

This is nothing new.  You should do things that make you uncomfortable.  It helps to vary your perspective on your life and work.  It makes you stronger.  Most importantly, doing things you hate to do builds character and makes you more interesting.

I recently joined my undergraduate university’s alumni association.  I was not involved on campus at all when I was there.  I was a non-traditional student who lived off campus and attended classes a few nights a week for three years.  I joined the alumni association to feel more connected to the hundreds of dollars per month I am about to start paying back as a result of student loans that funded my private, Jesuit-school education.

I don’t really enjoy my time spent with the association.  The monthly commitment is always preceded by me trying to think of how I can get out of it. The people are nice; they are just nothing like me. They are Catholic, very connected to the university, know one another, and are all adverse to taking risks or creating conflict.  They are homogenous and tend to surround themselves with people just like them. Needless to say, this experience has given me a better understanding of how to interact with people comfortable with status quo.

6. Consult a Consulate

It didn’t take me long to realize my creative success was tied directly to the success of others and their willingness to aid me when I needed it.  The half a dozen or so people I rely on most are a motley crew of experts, inside and outside of my industry.

Being nimble and being able to rally others to help you make things happen is critical to the creative process.  I’m connected with lawyers, artists, tech-guys, photographers, producers, entrepreneurs, writers, police & firemen, and educators.  You never know who will spark an idea or make a connection to redirect your path to success.

7. Fail

Being creative comes with a lot of failure.  I generate over five hundred ideas every year; half of those might be shared with other people and only a dozen or so might come to fruition.

A lot of creative success comes with a lot of failure.  Don’t be afraid to fail; fear will only hold you back. Each time you fail, you should learn something.  Each failure should change your perspective.  Creative success is built on a foundation of failure.

And what does creative success look like?

What’s the theme that ties together this seven lesson guide to creating? Always remember that creative success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm!  - Jessica James

Guest Author

The Brainzooming blog has a wonderful group of guest authors who regularly contribute their perspectives on strategy, creativity, and innovation. You can view guest author posts by clicking on the link below.

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It’s Blogapalooza season again!

If you recall Blogapalooza is a program we help coordinate through Max Utsler’s Innovation in Communications class at The University of Kansas. Blogapalooza provides an opportunity for Max’s students to have blog posts they write for class published on various blogs. Thanks to this semester’s participating blogs – Spiral16, The Pert Group, AlexanderG Public Relations, Bowden Communications, and BrandTwist.

This first Blogapalooza post is from University of Kansas grad student, Kellen Ashford. Kellen is a media research analyst with a media monitoring service, where he’s worked with clients in healthcare, IT, defense, and security industries. In today’s post, Kellen has another view of innovation from the Snowapalooza festival in Kansas recently! Here’s Kellen:

Beer Run Innovation by Kellen Ashford

Two weeks ago, eastern Kansas was beset by large amounts of snow, and with it, the levels of public hysteria associated with intense weather in this region.After being snowed in on Thursday, I decided I needed to both dig my car out and stock my refrigerator with beer. But typically, I ran into two problems: I had no shovel to dig my car out and I had no car to make the beer run.

The second problem was a very easy fix.  I live in Lawrence, KS and everything is in walking distance from my apartment complex. But, said apartment complex also failed to have shovels ready for both their maintenance crews and residents.  I decided to kill two birds with one stone and walk to both the local Dillons grocery store and the neighborhood liquor store.

At Dillons, I acquired duct tape to fashion a broom and a dustpan into a shovel. Quite pleased with how this invention would work, I walked across the street to the liquor store and bought a six-pack of beer. The clerk was quite bored and was happy to see me. We had a good chat about the apartment complex, my car, and my snow removal innovation. He also mentioned to try a “pot or a pan” if my dustpan shovel didn’t work. “Point taken good sir,” I said while beginning my journey home.

The second the dustpan met the snow, it cracked. My heart sank. I stood up, dumbfounded and looked around distraught at my misfortune. At that instant, the words of the store clerk struck me, and I immediately thought about two cookie sheets I have. My uncle is a professional chef and had left me some quality bakeware when he moved. Most notably, I have two, heavy-duty cookie sheets.  I ran into my apartment, grabbed one, and started to shovel away. Success! In no more than 20 minutes, I had dug my car out and created a path to the car door. I was very pleased with this turn of events.

The Beer Run Innovation Lessons

The beer run innovation lessons of the story are quite simple.

First, you have to take chances in order to innovate. I took a chance with my dustpan-shovel invention and failed, but, I didn’t give up.  My second chance at innovation, the cookie sheet-turned-shovel, was much more successful.

The second point is inspiration can come from unlikely sources. If I didn’t have the conversation with my friendly liquor store clerk, I don’t know if I would have thought of those two cookie sheets. His “pot and pan” idea was the seed for the cookie sheet shovel design.

And for that, I am grateful.

Oh, and don’t worry. The noble dustpan is still in use. Nothing a little duct tape couldn’t fix. – Kellen Ashford

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming blog email updates.

Download the free ebook, “Taking the NO Out of InNOvation” to help you generate fantastic creative thinking and ideas! For an organizational innovation success boost, contact The Brainzooming Group to help your team be more successful by rapidly expanding strategic options and creating innovative plans to efficiently implement. Email us at info@brainzooming.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can deliver these benefits for you.

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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“Diversity and Ideas in the Porous Community” will be my talk at the first-ever TEDxWyandotte on April 2, 2013 at Kansas City Kansas Community College (KCKCC).

TEDxWyandotte – Core Impact: Exploring Ideas that Enrich a Community

The theme chosen by TEDxWyandotte curator Shari Wilson, Jay Matlack, Organizing Committee Chair, and the rest of the organizing committee is “Core Impact: Exploring Ideas that Enrich a Community.”

Among the other presenters announced so far are Adam Arredondo, CEO and co-founder of Local Ruckus, and Afro Cuban band, Making Movies. There are a number of other fantastic speakers representing compelling community efforts, but I’m sworn to secrecy until they are officially announced!

This will be my first TEDx talk after attending a variety of TEDxKC events the past several years – both in person and on video. While the TED talks and the now familiar format seems straight forward in its expectations and constraints, it’s a speaking style quite different than I use for my presentations. The TED talks style is so one-way (all eyes on the speaker on the stage in a darkened venue); it flies in the face of creating the diverse interaction we so fundamentally espouse with the Brainzooming methodology. As a result, from a format standpoint, I’m trying to craft a TED talk that looks like a TED talk but is still interactive; it’s a challenge, without a doubt.

My TEDx Talk: Diversity and Ideas in the Porous Community

The topic for my TEDxWyandotte talk is about how the most impactful, strategic change springs from large-scale, diverse, even contradictory, perspectives brought together to forge new ideas. Creating a porous community that readily cultivates diverse thinking is vital to a truly enriched community, i.e. a community were the benefits of great ideas are available to all participants.

And that idea holds intriguing implications for communities and change.

Look up typical definitions of community and you see words and phrases such as:

• Unified
• Common interests and location
• Living in a specific area
• Common history or interests

Not a lot of diversity there – and that’s a problem. Yet we find such excitement in forces pushing diversity and disruption through:

• Crowdsourcing – whether solicited or not
• Large organizations looking outside themselves for answers (and perhaps survival)
• Information available anywhere in the cloud that challenges the idea of place

Wrapping all my thinking together on this topic in a succinct fashion while also drawing some lines through the other presentations will be an exciting opportunity.

And to carry out the theme and raise the stakes just a bit, audience members will be able to select the stories they want to hear during the presentation. That means there are nine different variations of the presentation that are possible. We won’t know which one it will be until the audience makes their decisions throughout the presentation. It’s what I’ve started to call, “Live Blogging.” Just as with hyperlinks in a blog post, the audience community is able to direct the content deeper or move on based on its preferences.

If You’re Near Kansas City, Join Us for TEDxWyandotte

Once again, TEDxWyandotte will be Tuesday, April 2, at 5:30 pm at Kansas City Kansas Community College. If you’re in or around Kansas City, it would be great to have you join us and sell out this first time TEDx event. You can reserve tickets right now! You can also keep up to date on speaker announcements and other news about TEDxWyandotte on Facebook.

And if you have any ideas on the topic, I’m interested in hearing what you think! - Mike Brown

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming email updates.

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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In the U.S. nearly twenty cents out of every dollar we spend goes to healthcare. It’s the biggest driver of future budget deficits, the source of most personal bankruptcies, and attempts to reform the system have driven much of the political dialogue—and theater—over the past four years.

Healthcare should be an area ripe for innovation, creativity, and new ways of approaching problems. This past week ten groups presented their best hacks for healthcare innovation at the Hackovate Health Innovation Competition presented by Think Big Partners, sponsored by H&R Block, and hosted by Kansas City’s own Ramsey Moshen. Presenters were vying for a $15,000 grand prize as well as the attention of H&R Block as the company contemplates how it might play in the healthcare arena.

Held in the historic and creatively inspiring Union Station in Kansas City, the finale included presenters from Boston, Los Angeles, Miami, Seattle, Ireland, and Pakistan as well as from the Kansas City area.

Five Ways to Hack the Affordable Care Act

Below, are quick slice synopsis of the five presentations I found most compelling, including what I saw as the most interesting healthcare innovation by each and what I think could come between them and success.

OkCopay, Inc.

What it does: Makes health care pricing more readily available to uninsured and underinsured.

Interesting innovation: Makes health care pricing in the elective areas—dental, vision, cosmetic—truly transparent to people that have little experience or comfort in that arena, particularly the uninsured.

What could go wrong: The revenue comes from provider promotions. That is a labor intensive sell and also might raise credibility issues with users.

Naya Jeevan Rejuvenate

What it does: Provides low-cost health care insurance and care management to traditionally uninsured consumers.

Interesting innovation: Model was developed in Pakistan, now being applied to U.S. market with coming of ACA and health insurance exchanges. Gets companies with big stake in their supply/distribution chain viability, e.g. P&G, to provide subsidies. Uses holistic approach including Nike Fuel band-like device and ePharmacy benefit.

What could go wrong: May not work in the much higher cost U.S. system. Companies may not be as willing to provide subsidies here are they are in developing markets.

SHHADE – Supplying Home Healthcare Alternatives and Dedicated Education

What it does: Takes advantage of the ground-breaking work done by Dr. Jeffrey Brenner in identifying healthcare cost “hotspots.” Brenner’s work in New Jersey found that not only did 20% of patients produce 80% of the costs, but that there was also a geographic component.

Interesting innovation: Uses an intense managed care approach to working with hotspot patients, including mobile primary care service, remote patient monitoring, health coaching, and care coordination. Their geopod approach seems extremely scalable.

What could go wrong: Only get paid if they can reduce cost to insurance companies of the hotspot patients. What if savings aren’t as great as business model predicts?

Aavya Health

What it does: Makes biometric data—which drives more than 70% of healthcare decisions—more useful and understandable for the layman.

Interesting innovation: Can use data ranging from simple height and weight to complex lab results. Translates them into meaningful results, e.g. “Your heart age is X,” and then provides ideas and solutions for making health better.

What could go wrong: Could be hard to get people to input the data. Who provides the revenue stream is somewhat uncertain.

GetHealth

What it does: Provides users both a mobile and web platform to keep track of their healthy and unhealthy activities and compare themselves to friends and family

Interesting innovation: Simple, well-designed and branded approach to making being healthy a friendly, collaborative competition with yourself and those important to you.

What could go wrong: Does it end up being just another seldom used app among the dozens on everyone’s smartphone.

Healthcare Innovation – Is your organization involved?

Major themes of the other presentations revolved around helping people understand and navigate through their insurance options—including the coming health care insurance exchanges—and different ways the health care market can be made more efficient and transparent..

One other important takeaway: there is a striking diversity of organizations working at healthcare innovation. They range from the usual suspects, such as medical groups and healthcare IT suppliers, to the less expected, ranging from experts in customer experience to young college grads from Ireland who decided they and others can use smartphones to be healthier.

And that raises the question: should your organization be part of healthcare innovation, even if you don’t currently think of yourself as being in that space? – Barrett Sydnor

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming blog email updates.

The Brainzooming Group helps make smart organizations more successful by rapidly expanding their strategic options and creating innovative plans they can efficiently implement. Email us at info@brainzooming.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can help you enhance your strategy and implementation efforts.

Barrett Sydnor

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I like revisiting a strategic thinking formula that works.

Monday night, Social Media Club of Kansas City buddy Sarah Wood suggested she’d like to read a blog post about staying focused while working from home during a blizzard. Based on Sarah’s suggestion, I wrote the post and it set near-term records for the percent of Brainzooming blog visits garnered by a new post on the day it published. A variation on the topic led to Wednesday’s post, making it a two-from-one idea!

Last night, while exploring a blog topic for today (it’s been that kind of week), I tweeted Sarah for an idea. She had another great one: the Top 5 Brainzooming posts to read for new readers (or even long-term ones) of  the Brainzooming blog.

With around 1,400 published posts on the Brainzooming site, Sarah’s top five post idea for new readers is fantastic to provide a quick guide to our thinking on strategy, creativity, and innovation.

The Top Five Brainzooming Posts to Read for New Readers

It didn’t take long to generate this short list of Brainzooming posts targeted at new readers. The underlying theme for selecting each of them is to provide new readers insight into the underlying strategic thinking and perspectives running through nearly all other Brainzooming blog posts.

1. Brainzooming – A Strategic Thinking Manifesto

This post, among the blog’s longest, compiles the first five blog posts written for the initial Brainzooming site. The original working theme for the blog was “157 Ways to Be a Better Strategic Thinker.” With that theme in the background, this strategic thinking manifesto laid out the case for why everyone in an organization needs to be a strategic thinker along with ways to put this aspirational idea into action.

2. Seven Personal Success Strategies

From a personal branding and performance standpoint, I try to take these seven principles to heart in my career. I’m hard-pressed to say how long it took to assemble the list, but they weren’t all things I knew or even believed when staring my career. While I don’t do all of them well, it’s a good representation of the scorecard by which I judge my career progress.

3. Six Gifts Behind Personal Career Accomplishments

Some readers say I don’t put enough of myself into the Brainzooming blog. That’s definitely true visually. It’s partially true in terms of written content, too. I don’t view the Brainzooming blog as a personal journal. It’s more of a teaching resource featuring information I’ve shared with co-workers over the years who wanted to learn more and set themselves apart. This post, prompted by a question during a presentation, gives perhaps the deepest insight into who you’re dealing with if you decide to become a regular Brainzooming blog reader.

4. 26 Creative Ideas – How to Be Creative When Creativity Is Blocked

These ideas for being creative when being creative is hard represents our attitude toward creativity: with the right combination of structure, tools, and perspectives, everyone is creative. We don’t see creativity as something precious, elusive, and dependent upon mysterious inspiration. We view creative thinking skills as just that – skills everyone can and should develop for both personal and professional benefit. Bonus: At the bottom of this post, we invite you to download our eBook, “Taking the NO Out of InNOvation” to learn the perspectives that cultivate creative thinking skills and an innovative approach to your life.

5. Delivering Results that Are Quick and On-strategy – That’s Brainzooming

People have also said it’s not completely clear from the blog exactly what The Brainzooming Group does. There are various reasons for that – some of are intentional and others stem from the challenge of briefly describing what we do. Our experience suggests the easiest way for people to fully understand what we do is through seeing it in action. That’s where the excitement, speed, and solid results from compelling strategic thinking really hit home. We’ve just made an investment in an online collaborative platform which will allow us to extend the Brainzooming experience to more readers, but more on that later. This post does the best job so far, in getting what we do and the benefits we deliver down in writing.

Happy Exploring!

If you decide to check out these posts, thank you for your time to peruse them. If you happen to be a longer-term Brainzooming reader, are there other Brainzooming posts you’d suggest should be on the list?  - Mike Brown

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming blog email updates.

Download the free ebook, “Taking the NO Out of InNOvation” to help you generate fantastic creative thinking and ideas! For an organizational innovation success boost, contact The Brainzooming Group to help your team be more successful by rapidly expanding strategic options and creating innovative plans to efficiently implement. Email us at info@brainzooming.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can deliver these benefits for you.

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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Woody Bendle is back with one of his favorite strategies for getting past creative blocks, using a creative thinking exercise we explored early in the days of the Brainzooming blog under the name “Change Your Character.” I really enjoy Woody’s very fun take, turning the brainstorming questions from “Change Your Character” into a creative thinking exercise that puts the FUN into a creative funk!

Overcoming the Funky Creative Funk with Scooby Doo and Friends by Woody Bendle

We’ve all heard of “creative blocks” and most of us have probably experienced one at some point in our lives.  If you have experienced a creative block, you know they can be frustrating and sometimes even worse.  So, where do they come from, and what are some strategies for getting past creative blocks?

A creative block is generally regarded as a common and temporary psychological condition.  I personally call it “creative funk.”  And if your livelihood depends upon creativity and producing creative ideas or solutions, a creative funk can feel devastating. Time in a creative funk feels like an e  t  e  r  n  i  t  y and is exceptionally nerve racking, especially if there is the looming pressure of a deadline.

For some, a creative funk can even begin to feed on itself and snowball, creating anxiety and sometimes even leading to a person seriously doubting one’s ability to be creative at all.

That’s a major creative funk!

Creative Funk and a Bad Brainstorming Session

Creative funks can be caused by a number of things ranging from fatigue, to stress, to criticism (or fear of criticism), to obsessing over self-imposed performance expectations (perfection).

And, if you’ve ever participated in a poorly run brainstorming session with your organization, you’ve probably experienced all of theses things, and possibly even more.  There aren’t too many things worse than a bad brainstorming session.

Let’s see if any of this sounds familiar. You’re cooped up for hours with a bunch of corporate stiffs in a small, sterile conference room with buzzing fluorescent lights; getting hopped up on M&Ms, Twizzlers and Coca-Cola, and you’re being told to come up with a bunch of good, game-changing ideas because you’re organization’s future (and your job) depends on it.  Yep, that’s a recipe for a real funky creative funk. YIKES!

On its own, the pressure of having to be imaginative or creative under a time crunch can be stressful.  But, add the pressure of having to be brilliantly creative in front of your peers (or perhaps, even your bosses) – it can almost be paralyzing.  I mean let’s admit it, we’re human right!  And even though you’re told that the two most important rules for brainstorming are: 1) there are no bad ideas, and 2) do not criticize the idea, you naturally might be worried about making a bad impression and being judged.

So, what do we do?  Scooby Doo!

Scooby Doo and Friends to the Brainstorming Rescue

One technique I’ve found particularly valuable in breaking through a funky creative funk is something I call, “What Would Scooby Do?”

I use Scooby Doo as my illustrative cartoon idea sleuth, but I recommend inserting as many different characters (cartoon, TV, or movie) as you like. The idea here is to put yourself into your character’s mindset and approach solving your problem as they might.  This exercise can be particularly fun in a group!  When everyone is assigned a very different character, and is asked to think about as many different ideas that character might bring to the table, some pretty interesting things can happen.  But the most important thing that happens is that the creative funk gets broken and the creative ideas get flowing!

This creative thinking exercise can help you, and your team break through your funky creative funk for the following reasons:

1. You focus on the character and not yourself – which can instantaneously de-funk your creative funk
2. A character has permission to provide “whacky”, off the wall ideas – it’s their idea, not yours
3. People often see characters quite differently and can offer additional very interesting opinions about how any given character might approach solving the problem, last and perhaps most importantly
4. It’s a ton of fun and you feel like a kid again! And who doesn’t want to have a little more fun every now and then?

Scooby Doo in Brainstorming Action

So, let’s say you’re team has been charged with coming up with a revolutionary new way to get remove dust from delicate, high-tech surfaces.  There are a number of products out there already that do this pretty well, but how many of those solutions were created by, Rambo, or Wile E Coyote, or MacGyver, or Harry Potter, or Tigger, or Po (Kung-Fu-Panda), or Ferris Bueller, or Kenny (from South Park), or Granny (from the Beverly Hillbillies)?  You’re getting the idea by now I bet.

Each one of these characters would likely approach the problem quite differently and have VERY VERY different ideas about how to solve it.

• Rambo might just decide to blow the surface up – screw the dust and the stupid surface it’s on!
• MacGyver might use duct tape – because what can’t he do with duct tape?
• Tigger might hop up and down to vibrate the dust off.

We could go on like this for hours!  And that’s actually the point in the first place. You’re looking to break down your creative funk, and once you get the ball rolling with this technique, it’s actually hard to stop those creative juices from flowing!

I’ll admit that “What Would Scooby Do” might not be the solution for every creative funk, but what have you got to lose?

Have your own techniques for breaking down creative blocks?  I’d love to hear about them! - Woody Bendle

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming blog email updates.

Download the free ebook, “Taking the NO Out of InNOvation” to help you generate fantastic creative thinking and ideas! For an organizational innovation success boost, contact The Brainzooming Group to help your team be more successful by rapidly expanding strategic options and creating innovative plans to efficiently implement. Email us at info@brainzooming.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can deliver these benefits for you.

Guest Author

The Brainzooming blog has a wonderful group of guest authors who regularly contribute their perspectives on strategy, creativity, and innovation. You can view guest author posts by clicking on the link below.

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