I am most passionate about Creativity and Innovation.
How do we come up with expressions (artistic, scientific, business, military, political, etc), that completely change the perspective of a particular problem or field of study and after some tinkering with the idea ... we reach the Eureka! moment ?. "There you have it" a totally new way of looking at the problem, a great solution which appears to come out of nowhere, and turns the previous notions on their head.
Then, happily we march on, applying the solution as a template until we run into another wall.
What used to bother me was that Idea generation, seemed to be a human activity delegated to an elite of individuals (Artists, Intellectuals, Generals, Scientists, Business Managers, etc). We know the problems of the world are too many, and the number of this "elite people" are so few. Are we then, stuck ? do we have to wait for the "elite" to solve our problems? or can we come up with a method of producing the ideas we need "on demand" ? just like with any other industrial process?.
Why wait for the Eureka moment ? is the challenge of the BrainStore Switzerland team ( [...])
In this book, The Idea Machine written by Nadja Schnetzler (co-founder of BrainStore). I find that YES ! it is possible to produce IDEAS On Demand, not only it is possible, but it can be done every day, on a routine basis.
Can you imagine? creativity, the production of ideas to solve problems or to innovate, made into an industrial process?
I have been following BrainStore for a good number of years, and I had the pleasure to visit BrainStore in Switzerland a couple of years ago, and was very impressed by the real world application of this method. I was there for a whole week, observing and learning each step of the way as The Idea Machine was put into practice to solve problems for BrainStore clients.
From my notes and recollection, there is close to nothing different in the process "live" from the process described in the book. The reason for this, said Markus Mettler (Chairman and Co-founder of Brain Store), is that Brain Store approaches idea production with an Open Source mentality. It is a way of forcing his team to keep refining and innovating the Idea Production Factory.
I encourage you to get this book, read it and apply it. And if you are in the market for Ideas to get you out of the rut, contact Brain Store and do business with them. In any case, I like to think that you will be pleased with the results.