In this post, I present a mind map of the book The Medici Effect: Breakthrough Insights at the Intersection of Ideas, Concepts, and Cultures, along with a quick review of the book (to skip directly to the mind map, click here).

Step Into the Intersection

In The Medici Effect, author Frans Johansson explores one simple yet profound insight about innovation: in the intersection of different fields, disciplines and cultures, there’s an abundance of extraordinary new ideas to be explored.

Putting together ideas from different areas — ideas that were always seen as completely apart — can easily generate an explosion of new ideas. And since the best way to have great ideas is to have lots of ideas, the best chances for innovation are at those intersections.

The book makes a case for learning broadly and the importance of keeping a curious attitude. This comes as an inspiring invitation to explore other areas than our own and as a reminder to always pursue our ‘side’ interests.

Johansson shares many interesting stories of cross-pollination between disciplines, as he does in his blog. Ecologists helping logistics experts to plan truck routes more efficiently, or astronomers unintentionally unraveling old ecology mysteries: the intersections are literally everywhere.

Idea Generation and Execution

What I really like about this book is that it doesn’t focus solely on the dynamics of generating innovative ideas: it goes on to discuss the implementation of ideas. All of us have great ideas every now and then. However, a great idea alone is never enough for true innovation: the bottleneck for innovation usually lies in executing your ideas.

And that is largely because there are many psychological barriers associated with pursuing novel ideas: fear of failure, social rejection, or risking one’s reputation — just to mention a few. Discussing these barriers and giving tips to overcome them makes the book even more practical and useful.

Interested? Get It All for Free.

Great news: Nicely for us, author Frans Johansson made the full book available as a free download in his website. If you don’t mind reading on the computer screen, you can’t miss the opportunity to read a great book for free.

As for the book summary, here it is in three flavors:

Get the mind map for The Medici Effect:

• Online interactive version
  Viewable in your browser, requires Flash Player.
• Download map in MindManager format
  410 kb, requires MindManager.
• Download map in FreeMind format
  60 kb, requires FreeMind.

Next Book, Please?

I usually get positive feedback for the book summaries I present here, so I will keep posting them. I have some books in my reading queue and since I’m not quite sure what to read next, I figured I should ask my readers.

Let me know what to read next by taking the poll below. These are the books I currently have in my reading queue — let’s hope they’re good enough to deserve a summary: if you have another suggestion, please let me know in the comments and I could maybe add it to my next Amazon shipment. Thanks!

Note: To to participate in this post's poll, please visit the original post.

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SCAMPER is a technique you can use to spark your creativity and help you overcome any challenge you may be facing. In essence, SCAMPER is a general-purpose checklist with idea-spurring questions — which is both easy to use and surprisingly powerful.

In this posting, I present a complete SCAMPER primer, along with two free creativity-boosting resources: a downloadable reference mind map and an online tool that generates random questions to get you out of a rut whenever you need.

SCAMPER Primer

SCAMPER is based on the notion that everything new is a modification of something that already exists. Each letter in the acronym represents a different way you can play with the characteristics of what is challenging you to trigger new ideas:

• S = Substitute
• C = Combine
• A = Adapt
• M = Magnify
• P = Put to Other Uses
• E = Eliminate (or Minify)
• R = Rearrange (or Reverse)

To use the SCAMPER technique, first state the problem you’d like to solve or the idea you’d like to develop. It can be anything: a challenge in your personal life or business; or maybe a product, service or process you want to improve. After pinpointing the challenge, it’s then a matter of asking questions about it using the SCAMPER checklist to guide you.

Consider, for instance, the problem "How can I increase sales in my business?"

Following the SCAMPER recipe, here are a few questions you could ask:

• S (Substitute): "What can I substitute in my selling process?"
• C (Combine): "How can I combine selling with other activities?"
• A (Adapt): "What can I adapt or copy from someone else’s selling process?"
• M (Magnify): "What can I magnify or put more emphasis on when selling?"
• P (Put to Other Uses): "How can I put my selling to other uses?"
• E (Eliminate): "What can I eliminate or simplify in my selling process?"
• R (Rearrange): "How can I change, reorder or reverse the way I sell?"

These questions force you to think differently about your problem and eventually come up with innovative solutions.

A classic example is MacDonald’s founder Ray Kroc. In hindsight, it’s easy to identify many of the ideas he used through the SCAMPER lens: selling restaurants and real estate instead of simply hamburgers [P = Put to other uses]; having customers pay before they eat [R=Rearrange]; letting customers serve themselves, avoiding the use of waiters [E=Eliminate] — just to mention a few.

SCAMPER Reference

You will find below a comprehensive help guide to using SCAMPER. There are more than 60 questions that can be asked, along with almost 200 words and expressions you can create associations with.

(icons by Everaldo Coelho)

SCAMPER Resources

1. SCAMPER Random Question Tool

There are many ways to use SCAMPER. For example, you can sequentially go through all the questions in the previous section as fast as you can; or you can stay on each question until you think you exhausted all possibilities.

However, when it comes to creativity, getting random — and unexpected — input can really help your mind find a solution for that ‘impossible’ problem. With that in mind, as a companion to this article, I created the SCAMPER Random Question Tool: it shows you an unexpected question drawn from all the SCAMPER questions in the previous section. Think about a problem that has been nagging you then give the tool a try to see how many options you can generate.

• SCAMPER Random Question Tool

2. SCAMPER Reference Mind Map

I’ve put together all the SCAMPER questions from the previous sections in a mind map, formatted for a single printed page. Think of it as a handy one-page reference you can use whenever you are stuck or just need a kick start to get your creative juices flowing.

• SCAMPER Reference Mind Map [.pdf, 646 KB]

3. Thinkertoys Book

The best resource I know about SCAMPER is Michael Michalko’s wonderful book Thinkertoys: it has more than 40 pages dedicated to SCAMPER alone. Michael’s book is the most comprehensive creativity reference I have put my hands on: there are more than 40 creativity techniques that should suit every taste — from the most logic to the most intuitive types. Highly recommended!

• Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques

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If you’re stuck trying to find ways to achieve a goal or solve a problem, there’s a quick analysis tool that can put you back in perspective and save you hours of frustrated brainstorming. It’s as effective as it’s simple: all it takes is asking ‘why’…

Finding Your Motivation

Behind every goal you set or every problem you’re working on there’s a motivation. Even though the reasons we’re doing something are usually clear, next time you’re brainstorming solutions for a challenge you’re facing, take a few seconds and deliberately ask yourself:

“Why do I want this?”

Knowing your motivation is the most fundamental step before taking any action; after all, if you don’t know the reason for doing something, why do it in the first place? While this may seem blatantly obvious, the truth is that we often don’t consciously clarify the reasons for our actions beforehand.

Suppose you have the goal “Get more customers to my business”:

—“Why do I want to get more customers to my business?”
—”To increase sales” you may say.

Don’t try to be particularly clever about your answer: just give the first and most evident reason. While you may regard “to increase sales” as the most obvious of the possible answers, consciously bringing it to light accomplishes a lot: it gives you a fresh new perspective about your challenge.

That simple answer gives you an entire new dimension of brainstorming possibilities: if what you really want to accomplish is increasing sales, you don’t necessarily need to get more customers — What about making bigger sales each time? What about making your customers return more often?

Focusing too narrowly on a goal or problem without understanding your underlying motivations prevents you from coming up with many creative and effective solutions.

Motivation Comes in Layers

You can extract full benefit from this technique by realizing that your motivations are layered: each motivation is a way to fulfill a higher-level one. To find out upper levels of motivation, all you need is to keep asking ‘why’. In our example, the exercise could unfold like this:

—”Why do I want to get more customers to my business?”
—”To increase sales.”

—”Why do I want to increase sales?”
—”To expand my profits.”

—”Why do I want to increase my profits?”
—”To retire earlier.”

—”Why do I want to retire earlier?”
—”To spend more time with my family.”

Working the motivation ladder in this manner is a great way to find the perspective you’re more comfortable working with. You may be paralyzed about “getting more customers”, but brainstorming ways to “spend more time with family” may be much more appealing to you.

The trick is to find the motivation layer that resonates better with you and then work from there. When you purposefully think in terms of motivations, problems become multidimensional: you can always choose more effective approaches to get unstuck immediately.

More surprisingly, each level of motivation can bring you new insights that may drastically change the direction you approach your goal. In the example above, consider the high-level motivation “to spend more time with my family”: blindly tackling your lower-level motivation of “getting more customers to my business” may force you to spend even more hours at the office — which is the exact opposite of what you really want, isn’t it?

5 Main Benefits of Asking Why

There are many more reasons why considering your motivations can make all the difference in a brainstorming session. Here are just a few:

1. Multiplying your Creative Output

If you were stuck with only one goal to go after, now you have many more to choose from: that means that if you could accomplish it in a hundred different ways, now you can do it in five hundred ways or even more.

2. Bringing a Sense of Purpose

Even if you end up choosing the original challenge you had at hand, you’ll now work on it with a clearer purpose in your mind. This may give you just that extra enthusiasm boost that you need.

3. Spotting Misalignments

Just like in the example of discovering that ‘getting more customers’ really meant ’spending more time with family’, you may find that a lower-level goal is misaligned or conflicting with a higher-level motivation. In this case, simply drop your lower-level goal and approach your objective from a higher-level one instead.

4. Finding broader solutions

Brainstorming at higher levels of abstraction can give you solutions that encompass multiple areas of your life and address many issues in a single blow.

5. Uncovering Personal Values and Mission

If you keep climbing the ‘why ladder’ as high as you can, you’ll notice that soon enough you’ll inescapably uncover your core personal values — and ultimately your life mission. This is an extremely simple and practical “bottom-up” approach to understanding what really matters to you.

It’s a Habit

We’re so used to just spitting out solutions to problems that, more often than not, we just get into auto-pilot mode — forgetting to connect with our underlying motivations. But asking ‘why’ is nothing more than a habit. In fact, it’s so simple and effective that all you need to do is to just get started.

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The List of 100 is a powerful technique you can use to generate ideas, clarify your thoughts, uncover hidden problems or get solutions to any specific questions you’re interested in.

The technique is very simple in principle: state your issue or question in the top of a blank sheet of paper and come up with a list of one hundred answers or solutions about it. “100 Ways to Generate Income”, “100 Ways to be More Creative” or “100 Ways to Improve my Relationships” are some examples.

“One hundred entries? Isn’t that way too many?”

Bear with me: it’s exactly this exaggeration that makes the technique powerful.

When starting your list you may believe that there’s no way to get it done. But then, at some point during the exercise, you will naturally have your subconscious mind naturally engaged in the process. That’s when you will uncover many new and surprising answers, and ideas will start flowing again. Making a List of 100 is a beautifully articulated cooperation between the conscious and subconscious minds tackling one single problem.

Unlike the related Idea Quota tool — whose primary goal is to acquire the habit of coming up with ideas — the goal of a List of 100 is to take your mind by surprise. While both techniques are based on the concept of getting good ideas from lots of ideas, the ideas generated by each method are usually different in kind. With the Idea Quota you tend to have more elaborate ideas, because you have time to incubate them throughout the day (often without being aware of it). With a List of 100 you tend to get more unexpected ideas, because you catch your subconscious off guard, not giving it any time for its behind-the-scenes editing.

Ground Rules

There are only two simple principles to keep in mind when making Lists of 100:

1. Do it at one sitting

This is the one crucial element for the technique to work. If you end up doing your hundred entries, though over many sessions, you’ll defeat the point of the technique. Before starting your list, make yourself comfortable and try to block all potential interruptions.

2. Eliminate distractions

Just like most brainstorming techniques, you should strive to eliminate all activities unrelated to idea generation during the brainstorming session. Just focus on getting the ideas out of your head as quickly as possible following these rules:

• Don’t judge or evaluate ideas; you’ll review them later.
• Don’t write complete words or sentences if that slows you down.
• Don’t stop to wonder how far in the list you are; number the lines from 1 to 100 in advance or use numbered lists if you’re using a word processor.
• Don’t worry too much about repeating entries; duplicates can shed light on your patterns of thought.

The Dynamics of Making Lists of 100

To understand why creating a List of 100 works, consider what happens during the process of making one. There are three distinct phases you will usually go through when making your list:

1. First 30 entries or so: where you escape circular thinking

The first items are the easiest to come up with. In this first phase, your conscious mind is still in charge and you’ll most probably just dump ideas you’re already familiar with.

2. Next 40 entries: where patterns emerge

In this phase you’ll start noticing recurring themes and patterns of thought. Phase two is usually the hardest one, as you may find it difficult to let go of the ideas you had in the first phase in order to come up with new, distinct ones.

Bear in mind that it’s exactly this struggle that enables you to get to the third and most fruitful phase, hence the importance of not giving up at this point.

3. Last 30 entries: where the gems are

At this point you will already have exhausted most “logical” answers, allowing your subconscious mind to express itself more freely. Don’t be surprised if you get at least one or two really nonsensical or seemingly illogical entries. You may feel tempted to not write them down (”How on earth did I think that?”). Write them down anyway: these wacky entries may sound far from profound, but it’s exactly those items you’re after.

Also, after coming up with so many entries, it’s not rare to experience a shift in perspective: items that you first felt as being awkward will seem to better fit now than when you started the list. Moreover, your whole attitude towards the problem can change as you develop your entries: you may even come to the conclusion that you should be dealing with a different list topic altogether.

Applications of Lists of 100

Although I have known a variation of the List of 100 technique for several years (thanks to Michael Gelb’s How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci), it was only recently that I realized the technique’s full potential by reading Kathleen Adams’s Journal to the Self: 22 Paths to Personal Growth. This is an excellent book that has many great journaling techniques — and the List of 100 has its own chapter.

The List of 100 technique can be used for a lot more than solving specific problems; it is a general-purpose personal development tool that can help increase your self-knowledge, motivate yourself, and much more. To illustrate its myriad of uses, find below a List of 100 Lists of 100. The list was mostly taken from Journal to the Self, and slightly adapted with some of my own ideas.

100 Things to Write a List of 100 About

1. 100 Things I’m Grateful For
2. 100 Ways I Could Nurture Myself
3. 100 Ways I Sabotage Myself
4. 100 Things I’m Good At
5. 100 Things I Like About Myself
6. 100 Questions I Want Answers
7. 100 Ways To Improve My Life
8. 100 Things I’ve Accomplished In My Life
9. 100 Things I’m Feeling Stressed About
10. 100 Things I’d Do If I Had Time
11. 100 Things I Need Or Want To Do
12. 100 Things I Want To Accomplish In The Next X Months
13. 100 Things To Do Before I Die
14. 100 Things That Are Going Right
15. 100 Things That Are Going Wrong
16. 100 Reasons I Want To Stay Married/Committed
17. 100 Reasons I Don’t Want To Stay Married/Committed
18. 100 Things I Want In A Partner/Relationship
19. 100 Things I Have To Offer To A Partner/Relationship
20. 100 Fears I Am Having Right Now
21. 100 Things That Once Scared Me But Don’t Anymore
22. 100 Reasons To Save Money
23. 100 Things I Miss
24. 100 Sacrifices I Have Made
25. 100 Marketing Ideas For My Business
26. 100 Ways I Can Make Money
27. 100 Ways To Make A Difference
28. 100 Jobs/Careers I’d Like To Have
29. 100 Fears About Being A Multimillionaire
30. 100 Things I Believe In
31. 100 Achievements (Qualities) I Am Proud Of
32. 100 Things I Value In Life
33. 100 Ways I Help Others
34. 100 Things That Turn Me On
35. 100 Things That Turn Me Off
36. 100 Judgments I Make
37. 100 Things I Find Hard To Share
38. 100 Things I’m Disappointed About
39. 100 Things I’m Angry About
40. 100 Things I’m Sad About
41. 100 Things [Peoples, Places] I Love
42. 100 Things To Do When I’m Depressed
43. 100 Things To Do When I’m Alone
44. 100 Rules I Have Broken
45. 100 Skills I Have
46. 100 Feelings I Am Having Right Now
47. 100 Childhood Memories
48. 100 Things My Parents Used To Say To Me
49. 100 Ways In Which I’m Generous
50. 100 Ways To Be More Productive
51. 100 Things I Hate
52. 100 Things I Want
53. 100 Places I’d Like To Visit
54. 100 Things I’d Like Someone To Tell Me
55. 100 Things I’d Like To Hear
56. 100 Things I’d Like To Tell My Child
57. 100 Things I Want My Child To Know About Me
58. 100 Reasons To Have A Baby
59. 100 Reasons Not To Have A Baby
60. 100 Adjectives Describing Myself
61. 100 Decisions Other Have Made For Me
62. 100 Decisions I Made That Turned Out Well
63. 100 Things I’d Do If I Had Six Months To Live
64. 100 Expectations Other Have Of Me
65. 100 Expectations I Have Of Myself
66. 100 Judgments I Haven’t Released
67. 100 Ways To Be More Creative
68. 100 Things I Could Carry In My Pocket
69. 100 Things I’d Save If My House Were On Fire
70. 100 Things I Want To Tell My Mother [Father]
71. 100 Things I’d Never Tell My Mother [Father]
72. 100 Financial Fears
73. 100 Excuses I Make For Myself
74. 100 Things I Need/Want To Control
75. 100 Fears I Have About Giving Up Control
76. 100 Answered Prayers
77. 100 People I’d Like To Meet
78. 100 Reasons Why I Get Jealous
79. 100 People I Admire
80. 100 Tasks I’ve Been Procrastinating
81. 100 Memories From My Past
82. 100 Things That Nourish Me
83. 100 Things I Haven’t Finished
84. 100 Things I’m Glad I’ve Done
85. 100 Things I’ll Never Do Again
86. 100 Ways To Generate Income
87. 100 Principles To Live By
88. 100 People I Want To Forgive
89. 100 People I Want To Forgive Me
90. 100 Things To Forgive Myself For
91. 100 Mistakes I Have Made
92. 100 Lessons I Have Learned
93. 100 Ways To Be Healthier
94. 100 Things That Make Me Cry
95. 100 Things That Make Me Laugh
96. 100 Things I’d Delegate
97. 100 Thing I Want For My Birthday
98. 100 Possessions I’m Tired Of Owning
99. 100 Responsibilities That I’d Like To Avoid
100. 100 Things To Write A List Of 100 About

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The first step to have great ideas is to adopt an attitude of having lots of ideas. Going further, there are some strategies we can use to dramatically increase the amount of ideas we generate. The Idea Quota is one of the simplest and most effective of them.

The Idea Quota

I first learned about the Idea Quota through Michael Michalko’s excellent book Thinkertoys. Putting it simply, using an Idea Quota means committing to have a predetermined number of ideas during the day.

The point of committing to a quota is that it forces you to actively pursue new ideas. Instead of just waiting and hoping for ideas, you give your mind a specific challenge to work on — activating your creativity and directing it to a tangible goal.

Although you can use quotas without specifying a central theme for your ideas, the technique works best when you direct it to very specific needs, such as:

• a challenge you’re working on, either in your personal life or at work;
• an improvement you want to make in your life or business;
• finding answers to specific questions you have, either practical or more abstract.

Pump Some (Mental) Iron

Just like in a physical workout, to grow your creativity muscles you have to constantly push your limits, even if just a little bit. Every time you do that, you expand your comfort zone and make it increasingly easier to have plenty of ideas.

Thomas Edison, still the individual with the most awarded patents to date, had ambitious targets for himself: he had an “invention quota” of nothing less than a minor invention every ten days and a major invention every six months.

Even if you don’t plan to be the next light bulb genius, the point is: make sure your quota is challenging. Edison firmly believed that he could never have gone so far without giving himself very aggressive targets. The lesson he gave us is that your expectations matter a lot: if you expect to have just a few ideas, you will settle the moment you reach that amount.

How to Make the Idea Quota Work for You

1. Pay Attention to Your Problem Statement

Be extremely careful when defining your challenge: just by changing the way you state the problem, you will be able to greatly increase your idea output.

For example, when you define your challenge as “How to get a promotion”, what you may really mean is “How to earn more money” — or something entirely different, depending on your situation. By digging for your underlying motivations you avoid being distracted by situations that may be just transitory. By expanding your alternatives, you make the whole idea generation process much easier and more productive — but you also need to be careful not to make the problem too vague. Finding the sweet spot between not being too strict and not being too broad may not be easy, but it’s well worth the effort.

2. Honor Your Quota

Once you agree on a quota, commit to it. This is essential for the technique to work, as it shows you’re serious about getting that amount of ideas.

One general advice, especially valid to help you reac your quota, is to be prepared to write down ideas anywhere and at any time. By doing this, you won’t miss any ideas and will have a big head start against your daily goal. If you don’t reach your quota by taking notes throughout the day, then sit down at an appropriate time with the specific purpose of brainstorming ideas. Granted, when your creativity is low, this can be hard – but just like in a physical workout, it’s only by persisting that one can reap the greatest benefits.

3. Keep Ideas Flowing

When listing ideas, it’s important not to judge or evaluate them. The point of the technique is to come up with as many ideas as you can, so try to focus on the sole goal of reaching the quota you defined, leaving any form of analysis for later.

When in doubt about an idea, don’t get distracted by it — just write it down and move on. Two common examples of such distractions are: suspecting an idea is a duplicate of a previous one or believing the idea is completely unrelated to the subject at hand. Sure, don’t count those ideas for the quota if you prefer, but do write them down, as they may trigger other valid ideas.

4. Don’t Limit Yourself to the Quota

Sometimes, you’ll be right in the middle of a stream of ideas when you reach your quota. When that happens, don’t stop because you reached your quota. Always remember that the ultimate goal here is to have as many ideas as you can — the quota is just a guideline to help you reach that goal and should never be used to limit yourself in that regard.

Another common thought to avoid is that you should hold your ideas for tomorrow’s quota, instead of “using them up” in an already-filled quota. This only shows fear of running out of ideas, and it’s a strategy that always backfires later. Be aware that it is only by adopting a belief based on the abundance of ideas that you’ll be able to unleash your creativity’s full potential.

5. Have Fun!

To be fully creative, you have to have fun. Use your imagination to find out your own ways to make the Idea Quota always enjoyable. Here are a few suggestions:

• Work with many simultaneous challenges. Cycle them daily, or randomly draw them from a “Challenge Box”;
• Create some little incentives and rewards. Have them only after you reach your quota;
• Partner with someone and collaborate on a shared quota or compete against each other.

Test Drive It

Although it may be impractical to be in “Idea Quota mode” all the time, I recommend you try it for at least a week for a specific problem or improvement you want to make. Don’t forget to be aggressive on the quota you set for yourself and you may be surprised about how many ideas you’re capable of having.

If you try it, please share your experiences in the comments section below. Did you struggle? Did you invent any new fun ways to do it? Did you combine it with a different technique of yours?

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What’s the secret creative geniuses share to come up with their remarkable ideas?

Even though idea generation may look like a somewhat mysterious and random process, there is a practical, simple lesson we can all apply to increase our chances of having great ideas.

Connections, Connections, Connections

Everybody wants to have great ideas, but have you ever wondered what an idea is?

If you haven’t, take a few moments to think about it. The answer is probably simpler than you initially thought: ideas are connections.

Any idea, no matter how trivial, is an association between previous, established ideas. These connections happen in our minds all the time – often spontaneously and below our level of awareness.

Another interesting characteristic of these connections is that you can’t predict anything about them beforehand. Many times, ideas are formed by associating two completely unrelated concepts, and in unexpected or unusual ways. To create the movable type, Gutenberg connected the idea of the wine press and the coin stamp. To create the concept of a mass-circulation newspaper, Joseph Pulitzer combined large-scale advertising with high-speed printing. Great ideas may even seem to be random at times – but that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing you can do to develop them.

Creativity and Productivity

Because of the randomness in idea generation, having great ideas is not a task that can be approached directly. The only way to increase the likelihood of having great ideas is to increase the amount of ideas that you have at your disposal to form connections. Ideas, no matter how simple, are the raw materials for higher-level ideas. The more ideas you have, the more material your mind will have to associate and generate a good one. Nobel prize-winner Linus Pauling summarized this effective strategy in single a sentence:

The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.

Being prolific, then, is the key to have great ideas. In creativity matters, there’s no tradeoff between quantity and quality: it is only through quantity that you get quality.

We should abandon the myth of the genius that only has great ideas. It seems that every piece of work created by a genius is brilliant, but that happens because only their greatest creations get any publicity at all. The truth is that they could never have generated such brilliant creations without being tremendously productive. Consider these examples:

• Einstein is famous for his theory of relativity, but he published 248 other papers.
• Bach wrote a cantata every week, even when ill or fatigued.
• Mozart produced more than 600 musical works.
• Thomas Edison held nothing less than 1093 patents. Imagine, then the amount of his non-patented work…

Another interesting fact about breakthrough ideas is that their quality is completely unrelated to the quality of other ideas by the same person. As a matter of fact, if you look at many geniuses’ most prolific periods, you’ll find a common pattern: it was exactly when they produced their masterpieces that they also produced their greatest failures.

Great innovators, then, don’t seem to care about having remarkable ideas: all they care about is having ideas – any ideas, lots and lots of them, anywhere and at anytime.

How to Have Tons of Ideas

If the best way to get quality ideas is by creating them from a vast pool of ideas, then our job is to have as many ideas as possible. Here are six tips that can help you develop an “idea abundance” mindset:

1. Expect to Have Ideas

The first step is to get rid of common beliefs such as “I’m not a creative person”. Drop any preconceived notions that ideas are reserved just for a privileged few. That’s often enough to have ideas start coming to you.

2. Welcome Dumb Ideas, or Any Ideas for That Matter

Your focus should never be on having great ideas. Always strive for quantity. Most people don’t ever try having ideas because they’re socially afraid to have their ideas labeled as “stupid” or “dumb”. Get over it: your ideas that are regarded as dumb today may be the foundation for a groundbreaking idea tomorrow. And when you eventually have such an idea, nobody will remember your less successful ones. (And on the matter of being afraid to show your ideas, keep in mind that teasing is a disguised form of shaming, of others trying to throw you off balance.)

3. Expose Yourself to New Experiences

Your senses capture the basic information that your mind uses to generate associations. The more you expose yourself to different situations, people and places, the more fuel you will give to your mind to make connections. Learn to welcome variety in your life: travel, try out new foods, read magazines you usually don’t. Just don’t be afraid of doing things differently.

4. Capture Ideas Immediately

Get in the habit of capturing all your ideas. Use a paper notebook, PDA or voice recorder. It doesn’t matter how you capture them, just make sure that you carry your idea capturing tool everywhere you go. If you don’t capture your ideas the minute they come up, it’s guaranteed you’ll forget most of them – even worse, you won’t even be aware that you had ideas in the first place. Also, each time your mind notices you’re paying attention to its ideas, it rewards you with more ideas.

5. Be Thankful for Ideas

Every time you have an idea – any idea – be thankful for it. By developing this habit, you create an additional positive reinforcement that works as a “pat on the back” of your mind, encouraging it to produce even more ideas.

6. Realize that Ideas Come in Bursts

It’s perfectly normal to go through several days and not having one single idea. But then, suddenly, ideas will come to you one after another, just like a surging river. Sometimes, the ideas will come so quickly you’ll barely have time to write them all down. Don’t worry about the natural slow times, but make sure that you take full advantage of those idea bursts when they come.

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• Einstein’s Secret to Amazing Problem Solving (and 10 Specific Ways You Can Use It)
• Creative Problem Solving with SCAMPER
• Brainwriting is Brainstorming on Steroids
• Boost Your Brainstorm Effectiveness with the Why Habit

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