I love working with leaders, managers and business owner to generate big, new ideas.
In the ideas blitz process the start phase asks each person in a small group to generate 9 ideas in 2 minutes.
This fast-paced thinking helps people to ignore their often critical internal voice.
But idea generation is not enough.
We also need to enhance then connect ideas to make bigger, better solutions.
But many people believe that somehow great ideas just magically appear.
The simple fact is that ideas are ever born perfect.
As Ed Catmull – the president of Pixar and Disney Animation observes;
‘Early on — all our movies suck.
Pixar films are not good at first, and our job is to make them so — to go, as i say from suck to not suck.’
This captures brilliantly the notion that great ideas need to be polished, protected and nourished.
The second step in the Ideas Blitz process is Enhance.
In this step you cannot judge, criticise or evaluate someone else’s ideas.
You have to find at least one way to make their idea bigger.
And their role (i.e. your partner) is to add something to all of your ideas.
In this way the ideas become bigger and my idea becomes our idea.
The third step is Connect
In the 5 steps Ideas Blitz process the 3rd step is connect.
As the name implies it is where you try and connect ideas to make a better solution.
I call it the fruit salad step.
You can combine an apple, banana, strawberries etc to create a fruit salad.
This can be a deliberate process or sone at random.
The important point is this.
The idea generation step is always the start of a creative process.
With Ideas Blitz the final 2 steps are evaluate and action.