2. Milk Your Surroundings for Ideas

This is a fun technique that frequently yields great new ideas and innovative solutions to problems. Picture the following: You need to write a paper about the Napoleonic wars, and you want to come up with a really original angle, but nothing is popping into your mind. You sit there staring at the computer screen in total writer’s block. What do you do? Stop looking at the computer. Get up and look around the room. What do you notice? Maybe it’s a letter opener. Could you write a paper about Napoleon’s correspondence with his generals? Look outside. What do you see? A tree? What’s made out of trees? Ships. Could you write about French naval strategy in contrast to the British? What do you see next? The car in your driveway? What about writing about troop transport? The more you let your mind run free, the more topics you’ll explore, and the more likely you are to find a good one.

This technique works because it breaks your mind out of the box that it was in. The key to making this work is to try to find a way in which everything you notice could be relevant to your topic. If you just look around for things that seem relevant, you won’t force your mind to think in new directions. But if you try to find a way in which a microwave oven or a telephone repair crew or a golf course are relevant to the Napoleonic war, you’ll have to think outside the box.

You can apply the same technique to problem solving. Let’s say you need to structure a marketing campaign to launch a new product. Rather than sitting in your office racking your brain about how to do this, go for a walk outside and start thinking about how everything you come across could be used to sell your product. You see someone walking a dog. Could ads involving animals boost sales? You pass a garbage truck collecting glass and metal for recycling. Maybe you can sell your product from an environmental angle by donating a portion of profits to saving the rain forest (or supporting ReEvolution...). Get creative. The more outlandish the better. Frequently, seemingly crazy ideas will lead to good ideas that you never would have thought of if you hadn't let your imagination run wild. For instance, a few decades ago, a creative marketer was watching people walking around a shopping district in the rain, and thought “wouldn’t it be great if people didn’t have to go outside to shop – if the store could be brought to them in their homes” At the time (pre internet), this seemed like an impossible idea. But it occurred to him that people could shop through their televisions. The home shopping network was born, and the rest is multi-million dollar history.