Creative Thinking - 11 Unique Experiences for Idea Magnets

I'm in the midst of developing new themes for the Idea Magnets webcast I'm hosting for the American Marketing Association next week (And btw, have you signed up for the webcast yet? If not, here's where you can register for Idea Magnets).

One theme from an earlier blog post is unique, once-in-a-lifetime creative thinking experiences. What got me thinking about these creative thinking experiences was our involvement assembling more than one hundred diverse people at the Kansas City Library for a large-scale brainstorming session. It struck me that this particular group would likely never convene again for creative thinking. As a result, we had great responsibility for making this unique creative experience a success.

Creative Thinking and Unique Experiences

Looking back through my career, I recognized many more unique creative thinking experiences than I'd ever imagined. It doesn't require one hundred new people brainstorming to create something that’s once-in-a-lifetime.

Consider any of these eleven possibilities:

1. Invite a well-known speaker or sports figure kick-off a creative thinking session
2. Have a less well known speaker or expert new to the group to participate
3. Hold the creative thinking session in place that you'll likely never be able to go to again
4. Never have a creative thinking meeting in the same place twice
5. Create a completely new creative thinking project for the group to tackle
6. Take on a project that seems too big for the group to pull-off (but it does anyway)
7. Devise a never-to-be-duplicated series of creative thinking events
8. Take your creative thinking interactions on the road visiting and including customers
9. Use sponsorships your organization has to see if they might provide access to unique venues or people
10. Secure new tools and resources to develop the group's creative ideas
11. Turn a wild idea into a reality for your creative team

Amazingly, one of my strategic mentors (and a true example of an idea magnet), whose birthday is today, brought all these unique creative thinking experiences to life during the time I worked with him. While I appreciated them all as they happened, it never struck me until just the past few days that it’s possible that none of them will be repeated again.

Idea Magnets Create Unique Experiences

So in order to better emulate how an idea magnet approaches creativity, I'll start asking in our client interactions, "What can we do to make this is a unique, once-in-a-lifetime creative thinking experience?" – Mike Brown

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