Viscid Creativity

Create - but not all at once! If you run brain storming meetings to get creative ideas, you'll know the problem. Everyone talking at once. Ideas flying all over the place. Someone criticising, someone complimenting an idea. Everyone is doing something differently.

To get maximum creativity you need to focus your thinking, taking into account all the ifferent ways your brain can come up with and evaluate ideas.

The first step is to only focus on creating new ideas. Focus on quantity. Keep firing off ideas as fast as possible. Get agreement beforehand that there will be no judging of the ideas. Assign someone to monitor this.

But once you've generated hundreds of ideas, you can move on to criticising.

So the best formula is:

• To set goals and agree what a new idea would bring to your business.
• Focus on creation. Get maximum ideas without criticising them. Any idea is valid.
• Evaluate - which ones have the most potential? Agree on a handful of ideas to develop.
• Criticise - look for problems and flaws and address these.
• Seek further information - is there anything else you need to know?

Stick to a similar plan and you avoid creativity that gets stuck in the gelatinous way we normally think.