The Systems Thinker V16N2M

THE SYSTEMS ® BUILDING BLOCKS THINKER BUILDING SHARED UNDERSTANDING

VOL. 17 NO. 7 SEPTEMBER 2006 IDEA GENERATION

BY EDWARD D. MILLER

high-wire acts, or who knows what. H ere are three myths associated strategy of idea generation is to let the with idea generation: This activation of the brain through divergent spew out everything they • You have to wait for the muses to inspire. association takes it along an unex- can, and then quiet them down as the • Logic will lead you to the best ideas. pected and potentially creative path. convergent put the pieces together in • Some people have good ideas, others don’t. patterns.The fundamental truth is The polite word for these common Logic Will Lead You to the everyone can play an important role in beliefs is “Nonsense!” Best Ideas idea generation; it simply won’t be the Not necessarily. Logic will lead you same role for everyone. You Have to Wait for the down a path of logical connections that Here are five principles of idea Muses to Inspire link what you know about the topic. generation: If you believe that, it’s likely to be a Brilliant ideas are the results of leaps • Defer Judgment While Generating long wait.You can—and indeed out of that narrow path. More than half Ideas. We are conditioned to be judg- must—prime the neural pump to acti- a century ago, 3M invented a new mental creatures. Consequently, when vate whatever muses reside within. adhesive for industry. No industry was we brainstorm, we spend most of our Picasso, when he knew he was going interested in buying it, and manage- time imagining all the reasons why an to be using the color green in a paint- ment actually ordered an engineer to idea can’t work. ing, would go for a long walk in the burn the samples.The engineer took • Generate as Many Ideas as Possible. woods subconsciously soaking up the some samples home.There he observed Imagine a pearl diver bringing up only shades of chartreuse until he had what his teenage daughters forming their spit one oyster, rowing to shore, and open- he called “green nausea.”Then he curls with the stuff. Later, he persuaded ing that one to see if there is a pearl would return to the studio and paint, 3M that what it had was not an indus- before rowing back to dive for another. his brain saturated in the color green. trial adhesive but a consumer product. We too often produce one or two Most of the effective techniques That product became Scotch Tape. quick ideas and proceed as if they were for idea generation force associations Logic is essential to problem solving, the only answers.A quota helps gener- of things not normally thought of but for idea generation it may only get ate quantity.Thomas Edison had a together. For example, the neural acti- you halfway. quota: a minor invention every 10 days, vator might be a metaphoric question: a major one every six months. “How is a newsroom like a circus?” The Some People Have Good • Record Ideas as They Occur. We resulting ideas are likely to involve Ideas, Others Don’t overestimate how fast our mind three rings, clowns, elephant dung, This is more mirage than myth.All works and how much focus we have. people are potentially creative; some Write everything down. need different settings in which to • Elaborate or Improve upon Ideas. exhibit that creativity. For example, Edison did not invent the light bulb; some of us are divergent thinkers, people his genius was to perfect the light bulb TEAM TIP who seem to pluck thoughts and as a consumer item. He took an idea The five principles of idea genera- flashes out of the air.These “ideas” may and elaborated on it. Later when tion can also be useful for groups make no sense or have little practical Alexander Graham Bell announced his that are identifying issues as part of applicability to the problem at hand, work on the telephone in 1876, Edi- a systems thinking intervention. but it doesn’t seem to matter.As others son immediately went to work on Capturing these items is the first are finding the logical flaws, we’re step in creating causal loop dia- ways to elaborate on it. Out of this grams and recognizing the balancing pressing forward with more ideas. effort came the phonograph. and reinforcing forces at play. For Other people are convergent thinkers. • Let the Subconscious Incubate Ideas. one method of moving from gener- They can listen to the endless babble “Sleep on it” is still good advice. • ating ideas to creating an action and blither of the divergent thinkers plan, see Designing a Systems Thinking and see patterns, connections, and asso- Edward D. Miller is the managing director of the Intervention by Michael Goodman et ciations.They can bring together silly Newsroom Leadership Group and an affiliate of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies.This article al. (Pegasus Communications, 1997). idea #1 and random thought #2 and originally appeared in the free e-newsletter see a third idea that makes sense.The Reflections on Leadership.