DENNIS INSPIRATION: 20. WE NEED NEW IDEAS

To generate some really new and interesting ideas, you need to have imagination which is important for brainstorming and perception which is important for day to day living.  When we are brainstorming to get ideas, challenge our existing patterns and reach beyond our comfort zone.  we need to jolt the system, force the brain to think in patterns and perceptions that it has no experience or former guidelines to use.

The best way to provoke imagination is to seek out environments you have no experience with.  It has been known that the best idea generators and brainstormers are people who travel frequently, who encounter different approaches and methods, who interact with a wide array of different people.  Yet organization still calls the usual group into a gray, dingy conference room full of the same cues as before.  They don't invite outsiders; they don't want to create pattern interrupts; and they also don't want to change the scenery; thus the same old gang.

Different ideas require different thinking.

Different thinking requires a jolt to the day to day patterns and expectations

that we all carry around with us like baggage.

Jeffrey Phillips

 

How can we change our thinking patterns to generate new ideas?  It is found that our education and training to logically associate related concepts reduces our ability to add the creative side.  How to nurture and build your creative capabilities:

·         Look for familiar patterns in unrelated fields

·         Change the way you look at things, and the things you look at change

·         Think the unthinkable

·         Intention is the seed of creative thinking

·         Change the way you speak, and you change the way you think

·         Become what you pretend to be

Almost every person, bosses we know view creativity as an asset -- until they come across a creative idea.  That's because creativity not only reveals new perspectives; it tends to promote a sense of uncertainty in them.  People say they want creativity but in reality, when creativity hits them in the eye, they often reject it.  Studies' done by Jack Goncalo, ILR School assistant professor of organizational behavior, findings include:

·         Creative ideas are by definition novel, and novelty can trigger feelings of uncertainty that make most people uncomfortable.

·         People dismiss creative ideas in favor of ideas that are purely practical -- tried and true.

·         Objective evidence shoring up the validity of a creative proposal does not motivate people to accept it.

·         Anti-creativity bias is so subtle that people are unaware of it, which can interfere with their ability to recognize a creative idea.

When you change your thinking patterns,

your brain makes new connections

which give you different things to focus on

and different ways to interpret what you are focusing on

 

Brainstorming, ideation, thinking outside the box, disruption, is the very essence of creative thinking.  New idea cannot be willed.  But new ideas takes time to be accepted.

New ideas lead to change.  Change takes time.  But why?  Resistance to new ideas and changes produce very bad effects.  Shifting from an old view to a new one is never a clean and seamless process.