Idea Incubator 14: The Most Creative Question
Being creative is the best and the worst way to make money. Most innovators—those on the bleeding edge—stay poor. They believe in the dream, in their ability to achieve it, but they underestimate the adaptation. By the time the idea is accepted, most creative thinkers are onto another bleeding edge idea. If you venture into obscure innovative territory, you can end up lost in the jungle.
However, if you have a really hot idea and it sparks a trend, you can hit it big. The good news is that if you capture the pulse of the situation, understand the marketplace, and use business sense, you can build a creative practice that is sustaining. Making a living as a graphic designer has allowed me to learn so much about other businesses, types of audiences, buyer behavior, and what kinds of ideas will most appeal, I would never trade such perspective. Every innovator that I have ever met (or read about) that was successful could leverage his or her advantages, make great connections, and find a way to be in the right place at the right time. Some is pure luck. But success in a creative business can be by design if studying the rocky road, getting a good map, and finding great short-cuts. More than anything, though, it starts with a good idea.
Stephanie Medlock has a horizontal perspective through her work for the University of Chicago’s Graham School. Assigned with discovering the best presenters and courses for their curriculum, Stephanie is in the business of identifying innovative thinkers. When interviewed for my book, she said:
“Break the rules that dominate your discipline to be free and combine what you know of that field with other types of information. In nearly every major scientific advance, the individual who changed an entire paradigm did not work in the discipline in which the advance was made. This meant that his or her imagination was not constrained by the rules of argument that dominated that discipline.”
— Stephanie Medlock, contributor to Women who Win at Work
To fuel the development of a breakthrough, how you feed that process will reveal the depth of your mental connections. Here is a tool to prepare the idea-generating ingredients that lead up to the single most creative question you can ask:
IDEA DEVELOPMENT CHECKLIST
Each problem has five possible viewpoints: yours, the way you think others think, the way others actually do think, the way they think you think, and finally, the way the audience thinks through evaluating the numbers of what they really do. Within those five situations, there are at least three solutions to discover for each. Contemplate these preliminary questions as they fit each of the five viewpoints. This helps to decipher reality that will befriend or murder infant ideas.
1. What do your targeted constituents care most about?
2. Who quintessentially represents your audience? How can you put yourself in that person’s shoes?
3. What other fields/solutions relate to the situation or challenge?
4. Who is in a different field that may offer parallels? How can you talk to them and share experiences?
5. What other research/homework will fill out your knowledge (do not yet seek out what competitors are doing. Only when you are solid on a few ideas should you examine competition—but make sure to do this before moving in to development!)
When Stephanie talks about cross-fertilization, I feel that is the job of the creative mind. Originality combines the familiar in new ways. Ideas are sparks of insight. What better way to gain the vocabulary of insight than through a wide range of experiences? What I love the most about graphic design is the range of businesses I encounter. Travel is another great resource. And nature—always the best source for originality. Ultimately, originality comes down to asking simply: “What If…?”
What ‘escapes’ can you use that will absorb your attention and give new input (events, exhibits, concerts, field trips, site visits, etc.)? The best escapes get you out of your office studio, or even into new e-places. Online adventures are great for a quick perspective adjustment even if they don’t contribute to a complete getaway.
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Also please visit the “Initiator Index” for overview and development progress.
When Idea Incubator concludes after Part 3, the online publication will be complete. Segments can be used in any sequence, revisiting like an old friend to remind and revise. As a companion, keep a running check on priorities, originality, and rejuvenation to create a flow for developing the best directions. But this is not the end of the process. Though it places you on your best path, you can go further.
I hope you will continue with your self-seminar into the e-book, Idea Initiator that takes the concepts defined in these first three sections, offers a segment on how to sustain creative energy through project ups and downs, and is a guide for how to synthesize the ideas you have formed into a concise and pursuable plan. Contact me to receive your free copy: please go to my website and e-mail me with your request, using the subject line “idea initiator.”
Always inspired, Liane
Tags: creative thinking, creativity, Idea Incubator, Liane Sebastian, originality, process
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November 1, 2010 at 5:51 pm
[...] is simple enough to grasp quickly. Through combining, editing, and developing, (written about in other posts) the idea is polished to express a have business case. “One of [...]