We make complex things, Nature makes them work.
Creative Thinking – A Masterclass for Facilitators
It is a misunderstanding to think that the purpose of a creative thinking session is to come up with new ideas or innovative concepts. Nor is it the mere application of a creative thinking technique, however exotic it may be. What then?
Story Cubes and Stratals
One of our readers challenged us to simplify the process of applying Stratals as a creativity tool. A stratal is putting together a layer of unconnected, random statements or observations and looking at it as a whole. The purpose is to allow new ideas to materialize from evaluating the strata as a whole and not …
A Concept R&D Department
In 1968, Dick Fosberry won a gold medal in high jumping at the Summer Olympics. Instead of diving with his belly over the bar and landing on his feet, he did it reverse, jumped over the bar with his back and landed on his back. Nearly two thousand years since the Olympics in Athens, mankind …
Build resilience like a forest
What if your organisation could function the way a forest does? A forest shares information and nutrients so perhaps an organization could learn from the forest and function more like it. The data management company, America Learns, decided to skip its year-end sales push and just like some animals in the forest they went into …
Why We Fail To Produce Ideas
Excerpt from 7 Sins That Kill Creativity in America by Michael Michalko We are taught to be critical, judgmental, negative and reproductive thinkers. In our “culture of helplessness,” we take pride in dissecting the ideas and thoughts of others and demonstrating their flaws. The more negative we can be, the more intelligent we appear to …
Thought Stores – Thinkibility Nibble
Imagine, there would be stores that keep thoughts in stock and sell them. Make a mindmap where the branches reflect the various aspects of running a store. For instance: Explore: Make a connection between aspects of running a store and selling Thoughts to customers as items in a store. What did you learn about Thoughts? …
Disrupt Facebook!
A business model is a plan for the successful operation of a business, identifying sources of revenue, the intended customer base, products, and details of financing. It tells the story around the kind of value the company wants to create. Facebook that has been rather negative in the news lately. It might be because Facebook has an almost …
Creativity: State of Mind or Skill Set?
Recently we came across this post by Dave Pollard that was originally published on the blog How To Save the World under the title How to Be Creative: an excellent overview about creativity as a result of a specific mental state or creativity as a set of skills that can be learned When I was …
There Is No Need For Inventiveness
There is no need for inventiveness - the quality of being inventive; creativity - because everything is already invented. Thus, leave your creative thinking to some geniuses that have a special talent for it. And the Internet, that information highway, will do the rest. The great and marvellous innovation that you need will appear on your screen …
How to Hack Assumptions
In many books about innovation, it is stated that "You just have to be willing to challenge the assumptions of your industry, ask fresh questions, and --get this -- embrace your humanness." Daniel H. Pink Such calls are completely inadequate. Moreover, it suggests that the detection of assumptions is simple. On the contrary, the nature …
Solving Creative Challenges
In 1968, Dick Fosberry won a gold medal in high jumping at the Summer Olympics. Instead of diving with his belly over the bar and landing on his feet, he did it reverse, jumped over the bar with his back and landed on his back. Nearly two thousand years since the Olympics in Athens, mankind invented …
Creativity and Schools – Thinkibility Nibble
"We are born creative geniuses and the 'education' system dumbs us down, according to NASA scientists" headlined a post about a NASA test for creativity for spotting creative geniuses was applied to young children. Children between 4 and 5 scored a full 98%. When the children 5 years later were tested again, only 30% of …
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Light Lightbulbs
To be creative and innovative is to be open to the idea your own ideas limited by your own experiences. You need to light several lightbulbs filled with possibilities to create something new. A simple way of looking at it is: if you do not explore lots of possibilities and light several lightbulbs, ideas cannot …
Brilliant Ideas, Dumb Ideas – Thinkibility Nibble
Brilliant ideas.............. Dumb ideas................
More-of-the-Same or a Breaktrough Innovation?
In a recent post What’s (not) an Innovation? we mentioned that an innovation consists of a new combination of a function - the innovation has the purpose of satisfying a need a principle - there is a mechanism or idea how to deliver that function a market - the innovation has a value that can …
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How to Become a Creative Genius
In an earlier post we republished Michael Michalko's The Difference between the way the average person thinks and a creative genius thinks" As Michael Michalko noticed that an average person focusses his attention on a specific information and excluding all else. In contrast, a creative genius sees the whole but would move from one detail …
Thinking in Images
Most people think in words. When asked to imagine a traffic accident they come up with not very detailed descriptions, in comparison with people who are thinking in pictures. It became even worse if the words are becoming more and more abstract. Words as society, market, law, inflation etc. stay for them just words; they …
What Big Data, what information dominance?
A new adage is blowing around in the world of innovation. According to Wikipedia, The term "big data" often refers simply to the use of predictive analytics, user behavior analytics, or certain other advanced data analytics methods that extract value from data, and seldom to a particular size of data set. Analysis of data sets can find …
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Thinking outside the Sea Map
In 17th and 18th centuries England, France, and Spain contested the Dutch domination of world trade and the control over the seas and trade routes. After initial English successes, the war ended in a decisive Dutch victory. In 1667 Lieutenant-Admiral Michiel de Ruyter sailed up to the river Thames and attacked the British Royal navy …