Creating Innovative Ideas

Mitch Ditkoff's “14 Ways to Get Breakthrough Ideas” is a very useful tool for someone working with the creative process. In this article, Ditkoff describes 14 different ways in which the reader can come up with good, innovative ideas to start a project with. He notes that these ideas must address a need and should create enough hype to “rally sustained support”. He then describes his 14 points.

Though I won't describe all of Ditkoff's methods, since you can read the article for yourself by clicking on the link above, there were three that stood out as being particularly interesting to me.

Immerse

Ditkoff says that one of the most effective ways to create a breakthrough idea is to immerse yourself in something that interests you. He says that by giving yourself time to “unplug” from the rest of the world, you can increase the likeliness that you will think of a great idea. I completely agree with this. I often find that when you disconnect yourself from distractions such as television and the internet, you give yourself time to concentrate on the things that actually interest you. As a result, you end up with a large number of ideas that you would not have had if you had not have given yourself the opportunity to truly ponder the subjects that enter your mind. I have also found that it is very useful to continue to immerse yourself in creativity and thought throughout the day. This does not mean that you have to ignore others or allow yourself to become distracted at inappropriate times, but simply that you should be open to new ideas as you complete your daily routine. Recently, I decided to try an experiment: I would carry a pad of paper with me and write down any interesting concepts that could be the premise for a movie that I thought of throughout the course of one day. By the end of the day, I had filled at least an entire page with ideas. I now carry a piece of paper with me all the time.

Fantasize

As Ditkoff says, fantasizing can be a great outlet for creativity. However, it often has negative connotations and is commonly associated with childish or perverted thoughts. Though fantasizing is generally discouraged, it is an important factor in coming up with new, innovative ideas. I agree with this as well. However, I think that calling it would be more effective to call it dreaming. Whether we remember it or not, we each go on an obscure adventure each time we sleep, when we dream. Though we cannot control these dreams, we can allow our minds to wander during our free time, which can be a very useful way to become more inventive. I think that if we set apart some time to simply “daydream” each day, we would come up with many interesting new ideas. We could then write these ideas down and expand upon them until we have a completely developed breakthrough concept.

Take A Break

In contrast to the idea of immersing yourself in a subject, taking a break can also be a very useful tool. Ditkoff explains that it is very important to step away from what you are doing when you find yourself stuck. I completely agree with this idea as well. I have always found that if I can't figure something out or am unsure of what to do next, it is best to just walk away from it for a while and do something else. This gives me the opportunity to concentrate on another subject and then come back to the original work with a fresh start. I think that taking a break allows you to get your thoughts together and see the answer to problems that you couldn't see before. If we overwhelm ourselves and rush our work, such actions will be reflected and the quality of our work will then decrease. When we encounter a problem, we enter a cycle in which our actions will only make us more and more frustrated. The only way to break this cycle is to take a break.

After reading this article, I decided to try one of these methods for myself. I decided to try the suggestions for “Make New Connections”, which ask the reader to make three lists of words – nouns, verbs, and adjectives – and then make interesting connections between them. To make this even more interesting, I decided to use an online random word generator to be more original in my word choice. I came up with the following words:

Nouns

Rain, beast, click, cocoa, color, digger, jelly, lightning, manager, radar.

Verbs

Carry, fuss, shine, flip, diffuse, receive, choose, skip, fly, refuse.

Adjectives

Witty, cardboard, misleading, slow, bare, national, unpleasant, autumn, binary, inexperienced.

Some connections that I made:

• An autumn rain machine: a device that recreates that cool autumn mist that blows through the trees in late September.

• A cardboard carrier: something that could be used to carry cardboard boxes in a compact and orderly fashion. It could also be used to store cardboard recycling.

• A fussy, unpleasant beast: a creature that lives in a cave because he complains about everything and others don't want to be around them. Could also be used to describe a person's boss at work.

• A radar receiver: something that detects radar signals and can pinpoint exactly where they are coming from.

• Color chooser: saves women a load of time in the morning.

• Rain and lightning skipper: allows you to skip through a storm and get to nice, sunny weather.

• Misleading manager: a person who is hired by an advertising agency to subtly mislead the customers.

• A jelly diffuser: instantly spreads jelly over food. Useful for toast, bagels or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

• Flying digger: a device, similar to a giant rake, that can be attached to a plane or helicopter and dragged across a field to quickly plow it.

• Binary clicker (a.k.a. key locator): a small device that is comprised of two parts: sender and receiver. The sender – about the size of a quarter – is attached to the keyring of a person's car keys, and sends out a signal. The receiver is a band worn around the wrist of the owner, which receives the sender's signals. When a driver misplaces their keys, they simply press a button on the receiver, which then emits two clicks. The first click indicates the direction of the keys and only beeps when the driver is facing that direction. The second click indicates the driver's distance from the keys, and increases in speed as the driver approaches the sender.