Entries from January 2009 ↓

Begin with a circle. Write your idea (problem, issue, goal) in the circle.

Now write every related thought or idea around the circle, like moons orbiting a planet.

Don’t edit yourself. Jot down your ideas as fast as they come, in any order.

By laying out your ideas like this, you can often see common elements or links between concepts that you wouldn’t see if you had written down your ideas in a linear, list-like way.

The mind map is a good place to begin. Your ideas are all in front of you. As with any map, you first need to know where you are.

What’s Going On Here ¿
This is a way to get all your thoughts about a subject down on paper and to perceive new patterns or connections between disparate ideas.

Taken From : Secrets from The Innovation Room

See if you can ‘humanize’ the situation you face in an interesting way. Give the creative problem at hand a personality and see what happens.

Is a competitor’s brand like an unnoticed kid who wants tons of attention? How would you deal with that behavior in real life? What works when you’re dealing with your two-year-old niece? How could you apply that knowledge to your business situation?

What’s Going On Here ¿
Many business issues become so abstract that they are difficult to connect with on a visceral level. You can get a stronger grasp on a problem if you can redefine it in human terms.

If you want your product or concept to really strike a chord or make a connection with someone, then it has to have an emotional, visceral quality to it. Our left brains aren’t going to help us here.

We want to find a way to get around the filters that our logical left brains have put in place and tap into the creative energy of the right side of the brain. We can do this by using visual images rather than words to process information-both information coming in and information going out.

Information in: Pictures evoke emotional responses in us in a way that words can’t. We respond to images viscerally, not logically. Think of photojournalism: All the words in the world can’t capture the joy of a soldier kissing a girl in Times Square or the terror of a naked girl running from a napalm attack.

Information out: We’re used to communicating with words, but when we speak or write, our logical left brains are in charge. We fall into established patterns. When we have to draw, most of us aren’t as skilled-we don’t have as many barriers getting in the way.

An important element in stimulating creativity through emotional, visual means is preparing the right environment. In other words, you need a place to play.

Get out some colored paper, markers, crayons, toys-anything that’s silly, crazy, fun, and anti-’business as usual.’ Put on some Mozart or Bach. Change the lighting. Sit on the floor.

If you change what you’re doing and how you’re doing it, your thinking will change as well.

Taken From : Secrets from The Innovation Room

We need to follow the latest fashion trend. However, when it comes about price, we want to get items in the lowest price. It seems to be impossible, but we need to find the fashion items in the latest trend with the lowest budget.

To help us accomplish this mission impossible, wholesalefashionsquare.com was founded. It is a wholesale online store which offers fashion items for the website’s visitors. Because it sells the products on wholesale, visitors can get the entire product in the lowest price. The wholesale clothes are in various style choices. It also has the wholesale fashion jewelry, which comes in various styles and colors. Selling the products on wholesale does not mean you only get the product on one color. You can combine your order in various color options. Besides the various choices on style and colors, it also provides the fashion products on different size, from the common size to the plus size.

Even though the website sells the products on wholesale, but it guarantees the high quality of each item. It takes the products from some manufacturers and importers in Los Angeles. The easy order and various fashion options have made this website as the ultimate choice for fashion online shopping.

This is a perfect exercise for getting a small group or a team thinking together.

One person writes the beginning of a sentence and passes it to the next person. He or she adds a few words, then the next person adds a few more, and so on. (The sentence doesn’t need to specifically address the problem you’re working on. In fact, using a sentence that begins ‘Our brand personality is . . . ‘ would defeat the spirit of the exercise.)

During the exercise, no spoken communication is allowed-let the ideas pop out in your writing. Don’t restrain yourself, and don’t try to push the writing in any particular direction. You’ll be surprised at how quickly the group starts to think on the same wavelength.

Depending on the size of your group, you might let the page go around the circle three or four times; surprisingly enough, the writing will often come to its own natural conclusion.

What’s Going On Here ¿
Discontinuous problem solving, in which each team member contributes to the outcome, establishes a group dynamic that is conducive to effective brainstorming and idea generation.

Taken From : Secrets from The Innovation Room

Many people have a problem with personal loans but plenty of them do not know that there is a great company that can be accessed through the internet connection and help them to solve their existed problem with personal loans. If you also have the same problem in personal loan, do not hesitate to visit the afsloansonline.com and click apply to meet the expertise from the company.

If you are not ready to apply because you are not quite sure whether you are qualified to apply, all you have to do is following the pre-qualify of apply that available in the left side of the unsecured loans apply link. Do not waste your time related to unsecured personal loans to solve the existed problem.

This company also offering you the business loans to be improved. That is why, do not hesitate to apply now and find plenty advantages in joining this Company.

On the next page, make a list of 10 random items- it could be 10 things that you see while you’re sitting at your desk.

Now write as many associations as you can think of between those things and the issue at hand.

‘What does a stapler have to do with my problem?’ What are the qualities of a stapler? It binds things together, it opens up, it’s something that you can use gently or you can bang your fist on, it’s something that can hide in your drawer, it’s an object of envy (how often do staplers get ‘borrowed’ permanently?), it’s something that hasn’t changed much over the last 50 years . . . and so on and so on.

As you go through this exercise with each of the 10 objects, you may stumble upon the ‘aha!’ moment: You see your problem in a new way.

What’s Going On Here ¿
Making connections between seemingly unrelated things pushes us to think about an issue in some very unexpected ways.

Taken From : Secrets from The Innovation Room

There are plenty type of thief right now and you should be careful with all of the thieves’ type that might harm you. By visiting the creditprotector.com and enrolling in the existed LifeLock services, you would be able to avoid plenty type of thieves in your personal credit card, SIM card and even your account in the internet connection. Enrolling the LifeLock is very quick and easy. All you have to do is just make the small click in the existed button and having a special code from the LifeLock Company. If you think that enroll through online connection would be risky, you are able to call the representatives at 1-800-LIFELOCK toll free.

You will get plenty advantages right after you enroll with LifeLock such as $1 million of service guarantee (total), the fraud alert that would be placed in your credit reports, create the credit report, reduction of any junk-mail, having pre-approved in using credit card and many more. Feel free to visit this website address and read the existed LifeLock Review to understand more about this company and how it would work for you. By read the existed information, you would be more interested and trusted this company to secure your data and savings.

Do not hesitate to explore more about the LifeLock promotion Code that is offer by the LifeLock Company. You are able to search it through the available search engine and the result that would come out is more than two million, talking about LifeLock Promotion Code.

You have to do the exercises. You can’t just read them and nod your head knowingly. You have to jump in with both feet and really give each exercise your best shot. Ideas will come, but only if you direct all your energy toward creating the right conditions.

You can’t build muscle by just reading about exercising. You have to get your butt into the gym and really sweat. Think of these exercises as weight lifting for your creative muscles. We all have these muscles-but a lot of us have allowed them to get slack and loose.

Each of these exercises assumes that you have a problem, project, or assignment for which you need to generate new ideas. These exercises are goal-oriented in the sense that they can help you free your mind and gain a new perspective, even though, at first glance, the exercise may not deal directly with the issue at hand. With each of these exercises, think about the process, not the result.

Remember: Go through each of the steps. Don’t leap ahead. Don’t push to find ‘the right answer.’

These exercises ask you to change your patterns of behavior-to allow yourself to relax, to play, to loosen up, to be silly. Changing your established way of thinking is the only way to allow those flashes of inspiration to come-we’re flying kites in a storm and hoping to attract lightning.

As you’re working with markers, scissors, glue, and crayons, you may wonder, ‘Why am I doing this?’ I’ll explain as we go along, but trust me, there’s a method to this madness. If you commit fully, you will get results.

Pay attention to where the energy lies in the work you create. That is where the nugget of the idea that will solve your problem lies. Look for the energy, and even if the full idea isn’t obvious to you, keep wondering about it, dreaming about it, writing about it, working it. An idea with energy can be fully developed . . . it’s the programs without that spark of energy that are DOA.

Above all, I demand your passion.

On the following page, create a list of everything that you feel is holding you back from your creative self. This can include the enemies of innovation from the second chapter, something about the way your brain works, and any physical, environmental, or preferential constraints. Take all the time you need, and don’t continue on to the rest of the chapter until you’ve finished this exercise.

Once you have written down everything that you feel is holding you back, study the list carefully. How many of these items are manufactured excuses? How many can you eliminate by thinking in a different way?

Taken From : Secrets from The Innovation Room

Here is a website that will help you if have some problems with merchant account. This is a website that representing Chargeback Defense; a division of regency Global Solutions, Inc. This company can help you to approach a merchant account protection, association support, and chargeback management. If you have some problems with your client account and you cannot do something to fix it, you can ask their team to help you.

Some people who use merchant account for your business also ever gain termination problems or gain terminated merchant file, this website can help you. You know, some business maybe are not match with the industry norm and have some risk also for termination due and it can increase chargeback, this problems can solve through this website.

The benefit you can gain from this website is they will not take a cookie cutter approach to any merchant. As you know, each of merchant programs has specific merchant needs. One and another are not same at all. You can also read some useful information about eCommerce Consultant here. If you have difficulties to understand the programs that offered you can ask their customer service. For more information, you can visit the chargebackdefense.com now.

In many of my creativity training sessions, I invite my sensei (karate teacher) in to meet the class. He is able to teach everyone how to break a board with a well-placed karate chop and a very loud, from-the-gut yell. I have the members of the group write on their boards-they write down obstacles in their path, anything that is obstructing their progress or blocking their way. Then-CRACK-each of them breaks the board in two.

Reading about this, it might seem obvious (’Oh, yes, I get it; we’re breaking through the barriers’), but the physical rush that each participant feels is undeniable. Again, this is why reading the exercises in this book is not a substitute for actually doing them; one provides an intellectual understanding, while the other provides a visceral understanding. Board breakers say that it requires belief, energy, and focus to break the board with their bare hands after only two or three minutes of training. It is not physical force. It is, in truth, the combination of faith, energy, and focus. That’s it. Imagine what would happen if you applied that same intensity to the opportunities that are at hand for you.

After we’ve had our karate session, I ask everyone to go through the three-panel cartoon exercise, describing her thoughts before, during, and after the moment when she broke the board. It’s interesting to see how the experience changes each person, even when that person thought she knew what to expect.

I recommend that, when you try some of the exercises in this chapter, you evaluate them by doing that same three- panel cartoon exercise: What did you think before, during, and after?

Now you are ready to move on to specific exercises, to indulge in a ‘wild and crazy time.’ These exercises can open the floodgates and stimulate the flow of new ideas and concepts.

Taken From : Secrets from The Innovation Room