If the recipe from previous posts shows how to create ideas, consider the seven items below as the ‘utensils’ – tools, elements or influences which stimulate or improve brainstorming, either in a scheduled meeting, an informal hallway conversation, or a solo activity. Interestingly, each begins with the letter 'I'.
Intelligence is the total combination of your knowledge and information, stored conveniently in your brain. You tap this significant wealth to create or find stimuli to make ideas.
Imagination is a mental vision or picture of what might or could be. If intelligence is essentially past information, then imagination is future information. As a skill, it’s commonly known as daydreaming.
Insight refers to isolating the kernel of truth or understanding about a particular topic. It's created in two steps: through 1) observation and discovery, an intensive examination of everything associated with the need or problem, such as its history or the current perceptions of the audiences who might need or use the idea; and through 2) obsession, a thorough pre-occupation with both the topic and the problem, often when not directly engaged with the problem.
Infinity is your ability to create as many ideas as possible. By having more ideas, you’ll also yield more good ideas. (See the post on 23 February about the 90:10 Rule.)
Interaction can be described with the cliché 'Two heads are better than one.' While it’s not impossible to brainstorm alone, it’s more effective if the imaginative power of many people are leveraged at the same time. By sharing individual ideas and energy, compatible ideas from different points of view can be combined and merged into bigger and more successful ideas.
Inspiration is the flash of brilliance - the spark of AHA! - that comes when the other elements combust. Different people describe the moment of inspiration differently, but more often than not, it's usually a spontaneous and fateful event, happening when the problem-solver least expects it, during daydreaming, taking a walk or working on a different project.
Ideas are needed to make ideas. You’ve been making ideas, both good and bad, for other problems about the same length of time you’ve been on Earth. When you brainstorm ideas, you’re using ideas you've created or experienced to help solve another (entirely unrelated) problem in front of you now.
