How to Come Up With Innovative Ideas to Solve a Problem
Ideas are everywhere but sometimes it seems they’re not in our own head, just everyone else’s.
Innovative ideas – sometimes also called lateral thinking or thinking outside the box or blue sky thinking – are great if you can come up with them as they can open up ways that you never thought possible.
But how can you come up with these fantastic ideas to solve that problem that’s been bugging you for longer than you care to admit?
Brainstorm with yourself
This sounds weird but every time I’ve gone through this process (which I’ve done a lot of times now), I’ve come up with some ideas that I would never normally have thought of.
Set aside some quiet time – somewhere between 15 and 30 minutes.
Apart from setting the timer on your phone (and that’s the only thing you can do with it), no electronic devices.
Grab a pen and a sheet of paper.
Set the timer and start bubbling ideas from your mind onto the paper.
Don’t edit the ideas – that comes later – just write as many as you can, no matter how outlandish they may seem.
You may get a bit of writer’s block part way through doing this process, especially if it’s the first time your mind has actually done some heavy thinking for a while. That’s fine. Don’t fret about it. Just get back to writing – even if it’s seemingly irrelevant to the problem you’re trying to sort out.
When the alarm rings, stop writing.
Take a break – at least an hour, ideally overnight.
Then come back to your list and give each item a score. I use 1 to 10 so it doesn’t over-complicate things but other people I know use A, B, C, etc.
There are no right or wrong scores but the score should be the first score that comes to mind – this is rapid fire, because the first reaction is your subconscious mind telling you the right answer. Whatever you do, don’t overthink this.
Keep going until every item has a score.
Chances are those scores will be all over the place.
What you’re looking for are the commonalities – a bunch of ideas that are similar(ish) and have similar(ish) scores.
Those are the winners!
Flip everything upside down
This is another fantastic way to come up with innovative ideas.
Again, it’s a process that is best done against the clock and away from anything electronic. There’s something “extra” in the process of physically writing things that gets deeper into our minds than typing away on something close to auto-pilot.
And, again, 15 to 30 minutes is fine for this.
Write down the exact opposite to your ideal solution.
Because humans seem inherently negative, this is a process most of us find easy.
Your worst case, nightmare, solution or outcome.
Once you’ve finished, chill somewhere and, again, leave the writing for at least an hour or let it stew overnight.
Then come back to it and flip everything possible upside down so that the negatives turn into positives. This is usually quite easy because our rational minds are good at this kind of process.
The solutions and ideas will pop out as you’re doing this – try it (choose a small problem if you’re still dubious).
Set your subconscious mind to work
Our subconscious mind is good at this kind of thing but we so often ignore it. If you’ve ever had a gut reaction or a kind-of sixth sense that something isn’t quite right, that’s your subconscious mind telling you things.
The same applies to ideas – we’re good at squashing the ideas that our subconscious mind pops into our heads, which means we don’t have as many light bulb moments as we could.
Give your subconscious a command – it doesn’t process negatives so the command has to be a positive one. It’s also best if it’s said in the first person and as though it’s already happened.
You can check out some great commands to give your subconscious on this great ideas subliminal track – there’s a list of the ones they use which you can use on yourself by saying them out loud or repeat them regularly by getting the subliminal track and playing it to yourself.
Your choice but I’d strongly recommend getting that kind of inexpensive extra help to come up with some superb ideas.
This sounds weird but every time I’ve gone through this process (which I’ve done a lot of times now), I’ve come up with some ideas that I would never normally have thought of.
