Is There A Secret To Generating Useful Ideas?

I was once asked by a Regent University College of Science and Technolgy student whether I thought the ability to generate ideas was inborn or a learned process.

I thought about it for a moment and answered that I was of the view that all humans have the ability to generate ideas - but that most were too focused on the business of day to day living to think up ideas regularly.

In other words one has to actually make time for thinking things through in order to come up with new ideas to resolve challenges when they crop up. At any rate that works for silly old me. Always.

A Guardian (UK) article by Jon Card, entitled: "Hacked spaces, brainstorms, calligraphy...where do great ideas spring from?" will be of particular interest to small business owners in Ghana desirous of empowering their employees to come up with new ways of creating value for the businesses that  employ them and their customers.

Please read on:

Hacked spaces, brainstorms, calligraphy ... where do great ideas spring from?

Creative thinking can come from unusual places. Academics and entrepreneurs reveal the secrets behind an innovative company culture

By Jon Card

Monday 27 February 2017 07. on Monday 27 February 2017 09.31 GMT

Businesses live or die by the strength of their ideas. In the modern age, products, services and brands need to be continually updated or reinvented. There are also times when businesses need to go back to the drawing board and start again.

The key to generating good ideas is to get out of the meeting room and allow staff to work on different concepts, thinks Ed Molyneux, CEO and co-founder of cloud accounting software company FreeAgent. The walls of his office are covered in scribbles from team brainstorming sessions.
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Molyneux’s staff have also tried round-robin brainstorming, “brainwriting” (where a person writes down all their ideas and then passes them on) and SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis to evaluate ideas. But he thinks the working environment is more important than method for idea generation. “We’ve incorporated break-out areas in our office where our staff can come together and informally work on projects,” says Molyneux. “This has been far more effective than if we’d just had one meeting room.”
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For Darren Fell, founder of Brighton-based Crunch Accounting, the office itself is too constrictive and instead he opts for walking meetings. “It a fresh perspective and I find I am often at my most creative when moving.”

Academics and researchers are finding there is much to commend about both of the above approaches. Ileana Stigliani, assistant professor in design and innovation at Imperial College Business School, says businesses should let their employees “break free” to explore ideas. She recommends bosses allow their staff “a walk in the woods, a visit to an art gallery, or just listen to music to get inspiration”. She says good ideas cannot be forced out and creative people may benefit from flexible hours. “Companies need to let go of the traditional nine to five working week. Team members need to come into work when they are rested and at their best.”

But while time out of the office can stimulate the mind, businesses do need employees to be at work sometimes. Stigliani, therefore, recommends the creation of “war rooms” or “hacked spaces”, citing the success of Silicon Valley tech giants who use this approach.

“The best creative spaces should have plenty of whiteboards and surface area to put sticky notes and visual imagery on the walls, with furniture that can be easily rearranged,” she says. “Google is famous for its creative war rooms, where employees can brainstorm but also listen to music, play with toys, and generally chill out.”

Mark Batey, a senior lecturer in organisational psychology at Alliance Manchester Business School says we need to process information before brainstorming. “If you give people time, their brains can start working on ideas in the background. So when they do get to the idea-generation stage they are all ready to go.”

But, when seeking inspiration, business owners should also remain open-minded, watching new trends and technologies, even if they don’t seem obviously relevant to their industry. “By looking outside of their immediate sphere, a business can find the seeds of fruitful ideas,” Batey says.
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But he warns entrepreneur-led companies that a founder or owner can get in the way of their staff. It’s easy for this to happen if a company is the brainchild of one entrepreneur who has become accustomed to being the main provider of ideas and solutions. In order to avoid this, they must aim to create a culture of creativity. “Business owners need to ask questions [of staff] but be careful to not give the solutions when framing those questions.”

Vikas Shah, a professor of entrepreneurship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management, says creative environments are generally happy ones. Entrepreneurs, he reasons, should aim to cut the stress of their employees’ environments if they want people to perform at their best. “Companies absolutely have to make sure they prioritise the mental health of employees, both for their well-being and also because this hugely increases creativity and innovative thinking,” he says.

Shah says the key to creativity is often found in seemingly unconnected ideas and spheres. He says researchers are increasingly interested in the concept of serendipity – how our brains connect seemingly unrelated concepts to produce creative insights. This was a gift displayed by Apple founder Steve Jobs, who spent much time studying calligraphy prior to launching Apple, which supposedly helped inspire the design of the Mac.
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Shah adds that many successful organisations attempt to inculcate serendipity by bringing in external expertise. “Many of the most successful organisations I have worked with have structured sessions inviting inspirational speakers from outside their industry, and also encouraging creative tasks and workshops across departments,” he says.

Carole Gaskell, managing director of Full Potential Group, has coached executives and entrepreneurs from a range of organisations including Heinz, Hilton Hotels, Nationwide Building Society and VW. She says entrepreneurs that want to stimulate new ideas should make changes in what they are thinking about in general. “Encourage both yourself and your team to learn something new,” she says. “You might want to watch an inspiring TED Talk or YouTube video, buy a book or ask someone you admire to mentor you; these are great ways to stimulate new thinking.”
The eight steps to creativity

Mark Batey of Alliance Manchester Business School and Anna Walker, associate professor in business and management at Bath Spa University, have identified eight main components to help ideas flow:

Collaboration – people must work well with others. The more diverse the group the better.
Team cohesion – a tight team that pulls together is key.
Good goal awareness – the clearer the goal, the more creative the output.
Access to resources – time and people are the most important at the outset, but funding will be needed later.
Openness to intelligent risk-taking – organisations must get used to the idea that failure is normal. When a project fails, evaluate it – don’t die of shame.
The creative problem-solving process – first accumulate the facts and immerse yourself in the details, then brainstorm widely and only afterwards evaluate the ideas. Remember, creativity takes time.
Autonomy – entrepreneurs must not give the solutions but allow their teams to find them. The more skill the team has, the more autonomy it should be given.
Value creativity – the previous seven steps leads to the most important factor, a company that values creativity."

End of culled Guardian article by Jon Card.