For when we need to innovate
We need to innovate when old ways of approaching a problem or a situation do not serve us well. We can do this without our limiting beliefs getting in our way by coming up with as many ideas as possible without judgement. Easier said than done! When we try and apply a purely logical approach to develop new ideas, we tend to come up with variations of old solutions we already know are limited.
One way to be more innovative is to play a game to stimulate your creative thinking.
You need to promise yourself to generate as many ideas as possible, as fast as possible, without any evaluation whatsoever – quantity is more important than quality. Quality will emerge through the process. This is where wacky is good! Ideas can be to develop new things, or to solve a problem, or to generate options to inform a decision you want to make.
For every idea you have, say to yourself, “Yes…what I love about that idea is… and” come up with another idea that builds on the previous on. You can do this with other people too, with them taking a turn to generate ideas as well. You can use post it notes to jot down your ideas, or just a blank sheet of paper. Speed is of the essence here, so as long as they are legible and are just a few words long that is the main thing.
When you have generated as many ideas as you can – at least 20, and more if you can – then you can review them and see which are too impractical or too difficult and decide which ones to pursue.
PS this works really well with someone else to work with. Take it in turns to generate ideas for each other