Creative Thinking for Small Business – Part 2

  • Sumo

This is part two of our five-part series on how creative thinking can help you get past the obstacles that are holding your business back, and how creative thinking can help you take your business to the next level.

In each part I ask Michael Michalko, one of the most highly-acclaimed creativity experts in the world and author of the best-seller Thinkertoys, specific questions about creative thinking for small businesses.

Want a Free Copy of Thinkertoys?

Want to win a copy of his book Thinkertoys?  All you have to do is leave a comment below, and I’ll randomly select one winner.

If you missed the first post, you can go here to view Creative Thinking for Small Business – Part 1.

My business is stuck. I need more customers and have a limited marketing/advertising budget… so how do I use creative thinking to solve this problem?  Where do I start?

Michael’s Response: The key to generating a lot of ideas is to separate your thinking into two stages: possibility thinking and practicality thinking. Possibility thinking is the raw generation of ideas, without judgment or evaluation of any kind. You turn off your internal critic. Your internal critic is that part of your mind that is constantly telling you why something can’t work or can’t be done. The strategy is to generate as many ideas, obvious and novel, as possible, without criticism of any kind.

Creative thinking involves a Darwinian process of the mind. In nature, 95% of new species fail and die in a short period of time. Nature creates many new possibilities and then lets the process of natural selection decide which species survive. Creative thinking is analogous to biological evolution in that it requires two mechanisms: one for producing many novel ideas and a second for determining which ideas should be retained and evaluated.

After you have created the maximum number of ideas possible, you change your strategy to practicality thinking, which is the evaluation and judgment of ideas, to find the ideas that have the most value to you. Edison once declared that he constructed three thousand different theories in connection with electric lighting, each one of them reasonable, before he decided on the one theory that was the most practical and profitable. His first goal was to construct as many possibilities as he could and then he turned to the business of evaluation to find the one that was the most practical and profitable. Possibility thinking and practicality thinking are two separate mental operations and there is no compromise, in-between position.

Finding Pearls.

Quantity breeds quality. Imagine a pearl diver on an island in the South Seas. He pushes his canoe off from shore, paddles out into the lagoon, dives deep into the water, picks an oyster off the bottom, surfaces, climbs into his boat, paddles to shore, and opens the shell. Finding nothing inside but an oyster, he pushes his canoe off again, and begins paddling into the lagoon.

What an incredible waste of time. The reasonable thing to do is not to paddle back to shore with one oyster, but to dive again and again, to fill up the canoe with oysters and then return to shore. Pearls are rare—a diver must open many oysters before finding one. Only a foolish person would waste time and energy making a separate trip for each oyster. It’s the same with producing ideas. Many times we’ll produce one or two ideas and proceed as if they are the answer. But creative ideas, like pearls, occur infrequently. So the sensible thing to do is to produce many ideas before we evaluate. Just as a good idea may stop you from going on to discover a great one, a great idea may stop you from discovering the right one.

Increasing your idea production requires conscious effort. Suppose I asked you to spend three minutes thinking of alternative uses for the common brick. No doubt, you would come up with some, but my hunch is not very many. The average adult comes up with three to six ideas. However, if I asked you to list 60 uses for the brick as fast as you can, you would have quite a few in a short period of time.

GIVE YOURSELF AN IDEA QUOTA.

A quota focuses your energy in a competitive way that guarantees fluency of thought. To meet the quota, you find yourself listing all the usual uses for a brick (build a wall, fireplace, outdoor barbeque, and so on) as well as listing everything that comes to mind (anchor, projectiles in riots, ballast, device to hold down newspaper, a tool for leveling dirt, material for sculptures, doorstop and so on) as we stretch our imagination to meet the quota. Because we exert effort, it allows us to generate more imaginative alternatives than we otherwise would.

By forcing yourself to come up with 60 ideas, you put your internal critic on hold and write everything down, including the obvious and weak. The first third will be the same-old, same-old ideas you always get. The second third will be more interesting and the last third will show more insight, curiosity and complexity. Early ideas are usually not true ideas. Exactly why this is so is not known, but one hypothesis is that familiar and safe responses lie closest to the surface of our consciousness and therefore are naturally thought of first. Creative thinking depends on continuing the flow of ideas long enough to purge the common, habitual ones and produce the unusual and imaginative.

Thomas Edison guaranteed productivity by giving himself and his assistants idea quotas. He also assigned invention quotas. His own personal invention quota was one minor invention every 10 days and a major invention every six months.

ELABORATE YOUR IDEAS.

Once you have a list of alternative ideas, you can elaborate and change them. Every new idea is some addition or modification to something that already exists. You take a subject and manipulate or change it into something else. There are nine principal ways you can manipulate a subject. These ways were first formally suggested by Alex Osborn, the father of brainstorming, and later arranged by Bob Eberle into the mnemonic SCAMPER.

S = Substitute?

C = Combine?

A = Adapt?

M = Magnify? = Modify?

P = Put to other uses?

E = Eliminate?

R = Rearrange? = Reverse?

You isolate the subject you want to think about and ask the checklist of SCAMPER questions to see what new ideas and thoughts emerge. Think about any subject, from improving the ordinary paperclip to reorganizing your corporation, and apply the “Scamper” checklist of questions. You’ll find that ideas start popping up almost involuntarily, as you ask:

Can you substitute something?

Can you combine your subject with something else?

Can you adapt something to your subject?

Can you magnify or add to it?

Can you modify or change it in some fashion?

Can you put it to some other use?

Can you eliminate something from it?

Can you rearrange it?

What happens when you reverse it?

You take a subject and change it into something else. (e.g. drilled petroleum becomes chemical feedstock becomes synthetic rubber becomes automobile tires. Natural gas becomes polyethylene becomes milk jugs. Mined ore becomes metal becomes wire becomes parts of a motor.)

——-

Michael Michalko is one of the most highly-acclaimed creativity experts in the world and author of the best-seller Thinkertoys (A Handbook of Business Creativity), ThinkPak (A Brainstorming Card Deck), and Cracking Creativity (The Secrets of Creative Genius).

Michael has provided speeches, workshops, and seminars on fostering creative thinking for clients who range from Fortune 500 corporations, such as DuPont,  Kellogg’s, General Electric, Kodak, Microsoft, Exxon, General Motors, Ford, USA, AT&T, Wal-Mart, Gillette, and Hallmark, to associations and governmental agencies. In addition to his work in the U.S., Michael speaks and provides workshops in countries around the world.

You can learn more about Michael on his website at: www.CreativeThinking.net

 
CRUSH IT ON FACEBOOK
  • Likes, Shares, & Comments WON'T Put Money In Your Bank Account.
  • In Our Free Course: Crush It On Facebook In 30-Days Or Less
  • You'll Discover: A Simple Facebook Strategy We Used To Take a Client From Losing $10k Each Month To Making Thousands...In Only 86 Days.
  • The 3-Step Formula We Used To Increase Another Client's Sales By Over $9,000 per Month (and they're spending less than $400 per month on Facebook Ads)
We'll Also Share Our "24-Hour Audience Identifier Campaign"

21 thoughts on “Creative Thinking for Small Business – Part 2”

  1. I find it interesting how straight forward these suggestions are. If every person that owns a business would take the time to be creative or just take some of their spare time and try something new with their business, then I conclude that there would be many more possibilities, industries, clients, new businesses, products, monies, and so much more.In fact, I would say that our economy situation now, would be a whole lot different for just about everyone. Creative thinking rules!!

    1. @ Shawn McCord – I agree with you 100%. Give SCAMPER a try and let me know how many ideas you generate for your business. I think you’ll be amazed, by both the quantity and the quality of ideas you generate.

  2. This is a very refreshing way to create creativity! It is similar to the funnel method that I have learned in school. However, this way of creative thinking allows for more possibilities and unlocks the imagination in all of us. If only more businesses would be creative thinkers then maybe our economy may not be in this dire situation! Creative Thinking Rocks!

      1. The funnel method starts off with generating ideas, then you start eliminating your ideas one by one based on a few different things like, how applicable is the idea, is it practical, does it get me closer or further from my goal and so on. By the time you are finished with eliminating or adjusting your ideas the last couple should be the ideas that will work best with the accomplishments of obtaining our goals. SO lots of ideas funneled down to one or two ideas. That’s the basic of the funnel method.

  3. I am thoroughly enjoying this question and answer dialogue. I believe people don’t understand that we all have the ability to think “out-side” of the box, creatively. We seem to want to only think “safely” but that never pushes us to grow as humans or our businesses. I love the process of establishing a “criteria” for the amount of ideas to come up with in a discussion. It does allow a person or group to reach beyond the “normal” and look to the unknown for other possibilities. I agree with Shawn and his assessment that our economy might not be where it is if we had people thinking creatively instead of safe. As a part of upper management in a university, I am always looking for the creative to move us forward as opposed to staying the norm and being just another university. I believe that this generation can break the barriers of “how we always have done it” and finally move us forward. I look forward to more of your conversation and reading the book.

    1. I’m always excited when I hear of people (like yourself) who are passionate about changing and challenging the “status quo”. Keep fighting….

  4. I know this if off topic but I’m looking into starting my own blog and was
    wondering what all is required to get setup? I’m assuming having a blog like yours would cost a pretty penny?
    I’m not very internet smart so I’m not 100% certain. Any recommendations or advice would be greatly appreciated.
    Many thanks

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

CRUSH IT ON FACEBOOK
Likes, Shares, & Comments WON'T Put Money In Your Bank Account.

In Our Free Course:

Crush It On Facebook In 30-Days Or Less

You'll Discover:

A Simple Facebook Strategy We Used To Take a Client From Losing $10k Each Month To Making Thousands...In Only 86 Days.

The 3-Step Formula We Used To Increase Another Client's Sales By Over $9,000 per Month (and they're spending less than $400 per month on Facebook Ads)

We'll Also Share Our "24-Hour Audience Identifier Campaign"

“If you are looking for design or development services, Ugly Mug Marketing is a great solution. Wayne and his team are honest, fair, and reasonably priced. Best of all, they deliver the work on time.”

NEIL PATEL

Named one of the top influencers on the web by the Wall Street Journal,