Innovation: Getting the most out of your thinking

Consider these words: Inspiration, Innovation, Ideas, Generative, Proactive, Association, Creativity. We’ve all had those “Ah Ha!” moments when we’ve worked and worked on something, and “Ah Ha!”. So, how can we have more of those times and can we have more of those times in team meetings? How can we generate and capture more great ideas?

Chris Griffiths does an excellent job of presenting a process that includes mind mapping to facilitate the generation of ideas and to organize our golden ideas in his book “Grasp The Solution: How to Find the Best Answers to Everyday Challenges.”

The thing that makes a good brainstorming exercise work is the sheer number of ideas. In other words, the fewer the ideas the more you are still in your normal paradigm of thinking. So, to break out of our daily way of thinking we need more ideas. Griffiths introduces the simple technique of setting a target number of ideas. You can imagine that if your group has set a target of 50 ideas you would soon be reaching into the stratosphere to come up with something!

Now that the ideas are flying, what to do? Option 1 – Simply capture the ideas on paper using a regular notebook paper approach. This is the linear method of taking notes, and many times this is the best method. At least you’re capturing ideas. Later you can process your notes and either create a traditional outline or now you can create a mind map (more on that in a moment). Option 2 – You can capture & organize ideas as they arrive directly to a mind map. Most of the time this leads to additional ideas!

A mind map is a simple diagram. It can take many shapes, but the most fundamental shape is to draw a circle and put the name of your idea in the center. Now, as each idea presents itself just draw a line, and with the minimum number of words possible, preferably one, write it on that line. If my main idea was planning a vacation one of my first thoughts might be about where. From this line I can draw additional lines of places I’d like to go. If one of those lines was Hawaii I would then begin asking questions about Hawaii and draw lines off of it.

Now, from innovation to execution requires strategy… and even strategies can be brainstormed!