John Adair's 100 Greatest Ideas for Effective Leadership

Idea 58: Seven ways to stimulate creativity

1. Use analogy to improve imaginative thinking – find models or solutions in nature, in existing products or services and/or in other organizations, so that you are not always ‘reinventing the wheel’.
2. Try, as appropriate, sometimes to make the strange familiar and the familiar strange in order to spark new ideas.
3. Make connections with points that are:
   • Apparently irrelevant.
   • Disguised, buried or not easily accessible.
   • Outside your own sphere of expertise.
   • Lacking in authority.
4. Suspend judgment to encourage the creative process and avoid premature criticism – analysis and criticism repress creativity.
5. Know when to leave a problem for solutions to emerge – remain aware but detached. Patience is important ...