Creative Thinking for Small Business – Part 5

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Do you find yourself with too many ideas and not enough time to implement those ideas?  Ever wonder how you can/should test your ideas before you implement them? Read the steps on creating a texas llc if you are planning to start your own LLC.

In today’s post, Michael Michalko gives specific steps for keeping all of your ideas organized, and he reveals a proven method for testing your ideas before you spend the time, energy, and effort implementing them.

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How do you recommend business owners organize their ideas?

Michael’s Response: A habit to consciously cultivate is the habit of keeping a written record of your creativity attempts in a notebook, on file cards, or in your computer. A record not only guarantees that the thoughts and ideas will last, since they are committed to paper or computer files, but it will also goad you into other thoughts and ideas. The simple act of recording his ideas enabled Leonardo da Vinci to dwell on his ideas and improve them over time by elaborating on them. Thus, Leonardo was able to take simple concepts and work them into incredible complex inventions that were years ahead of their time, such as the helicopter, the bicycle, and the diving suit.

EDISON’S NOTEBOOKS.

Thomas Edison organized his ideas by relentlessly recording and illustrating every step of his voyage to discovery in his 3,500 notebooks that were discovered after his death in 1931. His strategy of keeping a written record of his work was a significant key to his genius. His notebooks got him into the following habits:

  • They enabled him to cross-fertilize ideas, techniques and conceptual models by transferring them from one problem to the next.  For example, when it became clear in 1900 that an iron-ore mining venture in which Edison was financially committed was failing and on the brink of bankruptcy, he spent a weekend poring over his notebooks and came up with a detailed plan to redirect the company’s efforts toward the manufacture of Portland cement, which could capitalize on the same model of the iron-ore company.
  • Whenever he succeeded with a new idea, Edison would review his notebooks to rethink ideas and inventions he’d abandoned in the past in the light of what he’d recently learned. If he was mentally blocked working on a new idea, he would review his notebooks to see if there was some thought or insight that could trigger a new approach. For example, Edison took his unsuccessful work to develop an undersea telegraph cable variable resistance and incorporated it into the design of a telephone transmitter that adapted to the changing sound waves of the caller’s voice. This technique instantly became the industry standard.
  • Edison would often jot down his observations of the natural world, failed patents, research papers written by other inventors, and ideas others had come up with in other fields. He would also routinely comb a wide variety of diverse publications for novel ideas that sparked his interest and record them in his notebooks. He made it a habit to keep a lookout for novel and interesting ideas that others had used successfully on other problems in other fields. To Edison, your idea needs to be original only in its adaptation to the problem you’re working on.
  • Edison also studied his notebooks of past inventions and ideas to use as springboards for other inventions and ideas in their own right. To Edison, his diagrams and notes on the telephone (sounds transmitted) suggested the phonograph (sounds recorded), and those notes and diagrams, in turn, suggested motion pictures (images recorded). Simple, in retrospect, isn’t it? Genius usually is.

Walt Whitman was another genius who collected ideas to stimulate his creative potential. His journals describe an ingenious technique he developed for recording ideas. Anytime an idea would strike his imagination, he would write it down on a small slip of paper. He placed these slips into various envelopes that he titled according to the subject area each envelope contained. In order to have a place for each new idea he encountered, Whitman kept ideas in many different envelopes.

Whitman, whenever he felt a need to spawn new thoughts or perspectives, would select the various envelopes pertaining to his current subject or interests. He retrieved ideas from the envelopes, randomly at times or, on other occasions, only those ideas relevant to his subject; then he would weave these ideas together as if he were creating an idea tapestry. These idea tapestries often became the foundation for a new poem or essay.

GUIDELINES FOR ORGANIZING YOUR IDEAS:

1. Collect all interesting ideas that you encounter from brainstorming sessions, ideas you read about or ideas you create.

2. Record them thematically in a notebook, in your computer, or on note cards to file them by subject (e.g. organizational improvement, sales presentations, new markets, new product ideas, etc.) in a file box. In the event you need further information about an idea, indicate the source where you found the idea. Cross reference any ideas that may fit into several different categories.

3. Once you have developed a fairly extensive idea base, there are several methods to glean insight from your collection.

Whenever you experience a problem, retrieve ideas from your file that you feel may apply to your need. Spread the ideas out before you and review them. Use the following suggestions to select the ideas most suited to your needs:

1. Select ideas containing attributes closely related to your subject’s attributes.

2. Once you have selected several ideas from the larger group, prepare to apply the ideas to your current needs. You may realize that the entire idea applies or only one procedure or portion of the idea applies. Likewise, ideas may have to be modified in order to apply them to the situation.

3. Combine and apply appropriate attributes or procedures from two or more ideas.

How can/should a business owner test their ideas before implementing them?

Michael’s Response: One way to evaluate your ideas is to do a PMI. The challenge is to find as many positive, negative, and interesting points as you can. Instead of using intelligence to support your emotions and prejudice, you are now using it to explore the subject matter. The guidelines are:

1. Make three columns on a sheet of paper. Title the columns “Plus,” “Minus,” and “Interesting.”

2. Under the “Plus” column, list all the positive aspects about the subject that you can.

3. Under the “Minus” column, list all the negative aspects that you can.

4. Under the “Interesting” column, list all those things that are worth noting but do not fit under either “Plus” or “Minus.” The “Interesting” items help us to react to the inherent, interesting aspects in an idea and not just to judgmental feelings and emotions about the idea.

With the PMI, you use your intelligence to explore the subject matter. At the end of the exploration, emotions and feelings can be used to make a decision about the matter. The difference is that the emotions are now applied after the exploration instead of being applied before and so preventing exploration. With a PMI, one of two things can happen:

  • You do not change your mind.
  • You may change your mind about the idea.

You may move from an “interesting” aspect of the idea to another idea. For example, in the early days of 1944, scientists at the Radiation Laboratory at MIT developed a new-type radar that could detect a tower at a distance of six miles, but by spring when humidity increased, the system did not work anymore. To their frustration, they discovered that they had somehow developed a radar that was tuned to the natural frequency of water vapor.  Rather than trashing their work, they looked for ways to use this “interesting” aspect for some other purpose. Their work developed the technology that eventually led to the microwave oven.

The PMI forces you to explore every aspect of your subject. Once a point has been thought and put down under any of the headings, that point cannot be “unthought,” and it will influence the final decision. You react to what you put down and your feelings change.

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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

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22 thoughts on “Creative Thinking for Small Business – Part 5”

  1. My music professor used to tell me to keep in my pocket a little notebook where I can jot down notes of any tune that comes to mind. He says that this will develop my creativity in jazz improvisation. It’s interesting to note that the same can be applied to creativity in business, in scientific inventions, or what have you. I hope I can do this since I’m not in the habit of writing down things. I just cut out newsprints for interesting ideas and I still have to put them in order. Thanks for the tips.

  2. Because my wife says I suffer from “half-heimers”, I need to write everything down.

    Your PMI technique adds one interestng twist to the usual plus/delta lists that businesses use.

  3. I think the most important function that an idea collection/organization mechanism needs to have is the abiity to do fast, local searches of saved ideas. I use Cintanotes for organizing ideas. Its search is blazingly fast. If you get some ideas of what to write in your blog you can make a new note with the title “.write” and when you search for ‘.write’ as you begin typing the keyword phrase you get all the matching notes as you type. Indispensable, IMHO

  4. I’m translating a ‘Coaching book from Hungarian into English. Michael Michalko’s book would be a great help! I like your site:)

  5. Hi, Needed to ask you some thing. Is this site a wordpress blog site? My group is pondering changing my web page from Blogger to wordpress, do you think this is feasible? In addition did you build this unique theme by yourself some how? Many thanks for your help!

  6. I am not sure where you are getting your information, but good topic. I need to spend some time learning much more and understanding more. Thanks for wonderful information I was looking for this info for my mission.

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