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| How to think
for great ideas |
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Then he wrapped it around indisputable high quality and low cost.
All
Hayek's new product lacked now was a name. 'We were working with an American
advertising company,' Hayek says. 'We had the craziest names in the world and
none pleased me. Finally, we went for lunch and this woman wrote on the blackboard
"Swiss watch" and "second watch'" Then she wrote
"Swatch". It helped that we were not very strong in English. We didn't know
that "swatch" in English meant a cleaning towel. If we had known, we
wouldn't have started the company with such a name!'" Problem defined.
Vision set. And the two linked by new mixtures of old elements.
3. Gather all the
facts
Since a
great idea is a new combination of old elements, then the next step is to gather all
the facts you can. Unless you know a big array of facts on any situation or
problem, you're unlikely to hit on the perfect new solution.
Facts can be specific: those
directly concerned with your job, industry or problem. And they can be general:
the facts you gather from a thousand different sources. You will only be a great
ideas-producer if you're a voracious seeker of information. A questioner. A reader. A
challenger. And a storer of information, in notebooks and dendrites.
There is no substitute for personalized,
purposeful homework. What comes out must have gone in. The key is to somehow link
information filed in, say, "brain-cell number 369,124" on "dendrite
2,614", with another stored on "cell number 9,378,532" - or wherever.
Here your brain's patterning ability creates both
problems and opportunities. Each one of us uses our brain for every waking minute to take
action in a pre-patterned way - from walking to running, from reading to watching
television, from driving a car to stopping at red lights. Your brain tends to store
information in narrow channels, on associated "branches" for easy and quick
retrieval, so we normally come up with the same answers.
4. Break the pattern
To solve problems creatively,
however, you've got to open up new pathways, find new crossover points, discover new
linkages. You've got to break the pattern.
And the easiest way to do that is to start
with questions that redirect your mind. What would happen to your problem if you
doubled it, halved
Contents Page Preface
Introduction
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