Want to increase your creativity by 15% Take your shoes off.... Imagine for a moment, top executives with a major fortune 500 company huddled around a board room table brainstorming new ideas for products and services. Now picture them with their shoes off and wearing comfortable white tube socks. You may think I pulling your leg but believe me, this really does happen. Studies revealed that people who wore the socks generated 13% more ideas than those who kept their shoes on. If the feet are comfortable, the brain will be comfortable. Another unorthodox but highly effective method of brainstorming is through the use of lateral thinking. Adidas for example,used lateral creative thinking to generate ideas for new basketball shoes from looking at new car designs. Generals Mills uses it to create new products as well. Here's a sample of how it works. Lets take a paper clip as an example. Everyone has to come up with as the many ways possible that it can be used for. With paper clip in hand, you look to other industries, products services or whatever and converge with it. What this does is it makes you look at something from a completely different perspective. You'll get some crazy and ridiculous uses with this exercise but you'll also may get that one amazing idea or application that sets you in motion. This is how innovation is born. It's a succession of thoughts and ideas that guide us to the end result. It could be a new product or a completely new market for an existing product. Interesting facts about the human brain -Weighs about 3 pounds -It uses 20% of our energy -It has a trillion cells -Its cells are capable of connecting with a hundred thousand other cells -It contains 100 billion neurons -There are more possible interconnections between these -neurons than there are atoms in the universe -All the worlds telephone connections would have to be recreated 1,349 times to equal the total number of possible brain connections -It can record a thousand new bits of information every second of our lives While these are amazing facts about the brain, they pale in comparison to the most alarming fact: WE USE LESS THAN 10% OF OUR BRAINS CAPACITY! MANY OF US USE JUST 1% OR LESS! How do you Use Your Whole Brain? While at a seminar recently I was intrigued by a brain power game that identifies and categorizes individuals based on selecting cards that best describe their strengths and personality traits. Each card is color coded and divided into 4 quadrants of the brain. Blue = Investigator (mathematical, technical, analytical, logical) Yellow = Creator, (creative, conceptual, synthesize, holistic, artistic) Green = Evaluator (planner, controlled, detail oriented) Red = Activator. (action oriented, talkative, musical, emotional, interpersonal) The exercise serves several valuable purposes. It identifies which areas of the brain your strengths are It lets you see where your deficiencies or weaknesses are It identifies where you should seek outside help Once your selections have defined your color quadrant, a colored dot was applied to your name badge. This lets you and everyone know where your strengths are. So, for someone like me who's technically challenged, I would be seeking out those individuals that have a green dot on their badge for help. How do you use your whole brain? Find people who are strong in the areas where you display weakness. Enlist their help in those areas. Delegate those tasks and activities that suit their strength. |
