WebWise Solutions

The average American adult will generate about 4 different solutions to a given problem before giving up or moving on; the average child thinks of 60. See why this could be standing between you and a killer website, in this ongoing series.

I have had a long-time fascination with creativity, idea generation, and how to harness it in your business. Over the years I have presented Creativity Training to writers in various companies, and have seen the liberating power of re-claiming your ability to think creatively again.

"Re-claiming" is the operative word here. The average American adult will generate about 4 different solutions to a given problem before giving up or moving on; the average child thinks of 60. Yet a fundamental principle of idea cultivation is that quantity begets quality. And the very best ideas come at the end of a very long list.

Somewhere along the line adults have traded in their ability to generate lots of ideas, for their ability to find the "right" answer, as defined first by their schoolteachers, and now by their managers. At some point, we all turned into Dilbert (aieeee).

The good news is: it's not irreversible. You actually can learn (surprisingly quickly) how to recognize the ways you are limiting your own creativity, and overcome them.

I have found that the principles of creativity training have direct application in the world of web communities. Over the next few weeks, I will be covering the key principles I have found to be most beneficial in the web community work that I do.

I hope you'll join me each week, as we explore topics such as encouraging innovation in your web community; using forums to support idea generation; allowing your readers to challenge your sacred cows; helping your users tell you what they want, even if they don't know it exactly; and much more. We'll do some exercises that have been proven to work at jolting you out of your suppressing habits, and we'll help each other find relevant ways to apply this learning in the communities we operate.

I'll also be providing references and links you can follow to learn more about this fascinating subject.

Please feel free to comment on these articles, so I can see where you want to go in this series. As we'll quickly learn, two heads are definitely better than one.

Cool Quote
"Innovation requires a fresh way of looking at things, an understanding of people, and an entrepreneurial willingness to take risks and to work hard. An idea doesn’t become an innovation until it is widely adopted and incorporated into people’s daily lives. Most people resist change, so a key part of innovating is convincing other people that your idea is a good one — by enlisting their help, and, in doing so, by helping them see the usefulness of the idea."
— Art Fry (Inventor of 3M post-it notes)

Cool Resource

Check out Creative Think.com. This is Roger von Oech's site. He was one of the founding fathers of applying creativity in the business setting. His landmark book, A Whack on the Side of the Head, was enormously influential on me. If you go to his site and click the "Give me Another Creative Whack" button, you can cycle through tons of stimulating ideas.

Enjoy!