Author Archives: Paul Williams
Sometimes we confuse artistic ability with creativity. If I can’t paint or draw, I’m not creative. Artistic ability includes skills and talent to create fine works of art: painting, drawing, sculpting, musical composition, etc. Creativity ability is the skill and talent to use our imagination to create and solve. Continue reading
When you’re looking to innovate, take advantage of an opportunity, or solve a problem… one of your first steps should be to clearly define or “frame” that opportunity or problem. Your frame is how you narrow and pinpoint what you choose to solve. Better framing leads to better solutions. Continue reading
“Experience” isn’t one single thing… It’s a combination of qualities. This is what allows companies – when something may go wrong with one aspect – that the entire experience isn’t ruined. Continue reading
Google has just published “Think Quarterly” and the Q3 2011 is their Innovation Issue. As the cover welcome note states… “…We’ve curated big ideas from heads of industry, leading experts and our homegrown visionaries — all to help guide your own thinking. In our inaugural US issue, we focus on Innovation. Where can you break molds and shape the future? We hope this gives you inspiration, insight, and some new ideas of your own.” It is worth checking out simply to read the piece called “The Eight Pillars of Innovation” by Google’s Advertising SVP, Susan Wojcicki. The article calls out: Have a mission that matters Think big but start small Strive for continual innovation, not instant perfection Look for ideas everywhere Share everything Spark with imagination, fuel with data Be a platform Never fail to fail Thanks to Steve Rubel for pointing this out. Don’t miss an article (2,950+) – … Continue reading
One of the reasons we find brainstorming intimidating is that some people are better than others in squeezing ideas out of their heads. These people – while amazing because they seem to have magical powers and some conduit to divine inspiration – make the rest of us feel stupid and doubt our creative ability. “Why can’t I pop out ideas like that? I guess I’m just not creative?” This is what old school brainstorming was about. People sitting in a room squeezing out ideas. Sponge style. When I hear people say brainstorming is broken or doesn’t work… I know they’re referring to sponge style brainstorming. New school brainstorming is about working smarter, not harder. Spending less time creating alternatives and more time filtering. Using our brainpower as a sieve to filter and narrow ideas to the fewer, bigger, and better. For example, say we’re trying to create a new name … Continue reading
When faced with a challenge or problem, one of the best first steps in solving – even before you start thinking-up possible solutions – is to examine and restate the problem. As Morgan D. Jones writes in his book, The Thinker’s Toolkit: 14 Powerful Techniques for Problem Solving – “The aim of problem restatement is to broaden our perspective of a problem, helping us to identify the central issue and alternative solutions and increase the chance that the outcome our analysis produces will fully, not partially, resolve the problem.” “Restate or redefine the problem in as many different ways we can think of. This allows us to shift our mental gears without evaluating them.” Below I’ve provided eleven different methods to help restate a problem. The first five are found in Jones’ Thinker’s Toolkit. Suggestions Jones suggests include… (1) Paraphrase: Restate the problem using different words without losing the original … Continue reading
