Creativity Practice - Part Two
(A continuation of
the page Creativity Practice)
One of the most creative and
interesting creative problem solving techniques is combining
concepts to get new ideas. It is a great way to invent new products
and services. It is also a good exercise for tapping into the
power of your subconscious mind, and good creativity practice
in general.
The process is simple. You
just randomly choose two different things, processes, ideas,
or words, and see what connections you can find between them
that lead to a new idea. For example, combining the concepts
of "subliminal affirmations" and "television show"
could lead to an idea for a cable channel that flashes helpful
subliminal affirmations on the screen while you watch regular
programming.
Most connections will not be
that direct, so you have to work with the ideas and let them
wander. For example, thinking about poker and advertising may
not immediately lead to a good idea, so you ask things like,
what is poker played with? Cards. Put advertising on playing
cards? Now that might be a great idea. Advertisers pay for the
ads there, and you give away the playing cards with 52 paid ads
on them - one on the face of each. Since they may be used for
years, this could be valuable advertising.
Now, here are some random pairs
of words or concepts to work with until you find at least one
interesting new idea for each:
Headphones - Cats
Table - Car
Free Trade - Martian Psychology
Road - Water
Coins - Business Cards
Creativity Practice - Radio
Love Poems - Lawn Care
Visualization
Spend some time exercising
your ability to visualize things. I have creatively solved problems
through creative visualization despite being relatively weak
in this ability. My creative breakthroughs came because I purposefully
chose to visualize things, even though I'm not that good at it.
By the way, in case you didn't know it, Einstein's visualizing
of himself riding a beam of light helped him develop his theory
of relativity. Obviously regular visualization can be good creativity
practice for our brains and minds.
999 Ideas | Creativity Practice
- Part Two |