Step Two
Add Creative Stimuli

Are you still sitting under the tree waiting for inspiration?

"Shake the tree" by adding creative stimuli that will help you generate new ideas.

• Thumb backwards through a magazine while just looking at the pictures.
• Play with... try out... experience your competitor's products/services.
• Pick a random word out of the dictionary and see what insights it offers.
• Decorate your whiteboard as if it were your refrigerator door at home.

These are easy ways to spark creative fluency. The toughest way is to stare at each other across a table and say, "Give me your idea!" For many, this can lead to a state of brain-draining numbness.

In our ongoing survey, the top ten places where we get our new ideas are:

10. Cutting the grass.
09. Listening to a church sermon.
08. Waking up in the middle of the night.
07. Exercising.
06. Reading.
05. During a boring meeting.
04. Falling asleep or waking up.
03. Sitting on the toilet.
02. Driving.
01. Taking a bath or a shower.

The least likely place to come up with a new idea was at your desk at work. Look around your desk, where's the stimuli to spark ideas?

An inventor with 1093 patents to his credit used to go fishing to generate new ideas. But he fished in a unique way.

"I fish with no bait because then
no one bothers me, neither fish nor man."
-Thomas Edison

The only person to have more patents than Edison is Dr. Yoshiro Nakamatsu from Tokyo. He generates his ideas by swimming underwater and now holds patents on the floppy disk, CD player and digital watch.

Click to read an interview with Nakamatsu.

"Shaking the tree" can also be accomplished by changing the ingrained patterns in your life. Dr. Lawrence Katz recommends the following ten pattern breakers to stimulate your brain. He calls this "Neurobics," the neuroscience of brain exercise.

1. Brush your teeth with your other hand.
2. Listen to a new radio station on the way to work.
3. Move your watch to your other arm.
4. Sit in a different seat in meetings or at the dining table.
5. Mix and match your clothes combinations.
6. Drive to/from work a different way.
7. Use the mouse with your other hand.
8. Start a new hobby.
9. Read aloud in bed to your partner.
10. After reading, use your imagination.

You've now seen that it's easy to be creative in your head with the right stimuli. Everyone who's ever taken a hot shower or a long soaking bath has probably generated numerous new ideas.

Your challenge is to be the person who gets out of the shower, dries off and does something about the idea. Because if you don't, the new idea will probably jump out of your head and into the head of your competitor.

Step Three: Asking Great Questions