More Creativity Practice
(A continuation of the page Creativity
Practice)
One of the most creative and interesting creative problem
solving techniques is combining concepts to get new ideas. It
is a great way to invent new products and services. It is also
a good exercise for tapping into the power of your subconscious
mind, and good creativity practice in general.
The process is simple. You just randomly choose two different
things, processes, ideas, or words, and see what connections
you can find between them that lead to a new idea. For example,
combining the concepts of "subliminal affirmations"
and "television show" could lead to an idea for a cable
channel that flashes helpful subliminal affirmations on the screen
while you watch regular programming.
Most connections will not be that direct, so you have to work
with the ideas and let them wander. For example, thinking about
poker and advertising may not immediately lead to a good idea,
so you ask things like, what is poker played with? Cards. Put
advertising on playing cards? Now that might be a great idea.
Advertisers pay for the ads there, and you give away the playing
cards with 52 paid ads on them - one on the face of each. Since
they may be used for years, this could be valuable advertising.
Now, here are some random pairs of words or concepts to work
with until you find at least one interesting new idea for each:
Headphones - Cats
Table - Car
Free Trade - Martian Psychology
Road - Water
Coins - Business Cards
Creativity Practice - Radio
Love Poems - Lawn Care
Visualization
Spend some time exercising your ability to visualize things.
I have creatively solved problems through creative visualization
despite being relatively weak in this ability. My creative breakthroughs
came because I purposefully chose to visualize things, even though
I'm not that good at it. By the way, in case you didn't know
it, Einstein's visualizing of himself riding a beam of light
helped him develop his theory of relativity. Obviously regular
visualization can be good practice for our brains and minds.
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