Jon Samsel

Everything starts with an idea. Think about it. Paintings, cars, songs, airplane designs, companies, buildings—and even books.

Developing an idea is where work and time come into the picture. When you go with an idea, it may carry you to unknown areas, to the heights of satisfaction or to the depths of depression when you get bogged down with it.

In the superb novel, The Fountainhead, by Ann Rand, architect Howard Roark states that “the creative artist has a unique right to the original ideas he produces and develops. Others cannot make use of this creative work without agreement and compensation. What is reflected in The Fountainhead is the truth that “everything is built upon something else in creation.” Play with a single basic idea and what happens? More ideas present themselves to you.

The act of creating means to shift qualities or elements from one thing to another. Hollywood has been doing this for decades, lifting (some say stealing) a key element from an old classic film and building a new film from or around it.

The creative process takes varying amounts of time, depending upon the desired result. A book obviously takes much longer to create than an article, short story, or song. There are exceptions to this when you consider prolific authors like Barbara Cartland, Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury. They could turn out a new book in a week and often did so.

Creative ideas may evolve into creative problems, real puzzlers for their originators. They then require much more thought and effort to work your way through the sticky areas. Thomas Edison spent ten, twenty years, and longer on some of his creative inventions.

As writers, marketers and artists, it’s imperative that we use our creativity to link unrelated concepts in a way that allows for bold new solutions to spring up. One way to start is to look at the same thing as everyone else and then think of something different.

EXERCISE #1

Imagine that you’re a contractor for a major builder. You’ve been hired to convert a dilapidated warehouse into office space. However, there is one problem. The previous owner of the building left behind 5 million unused cotton balls.

Your assignment is to think of creative things to do with the cotton balls before the new office space is completed. List a few ideas.

EXERCISE #2

Suppose for a moment that you are a development executive at an interactive media publisher. One day, the head honcho ushers you into her office and proclaims that the company is dramatically shifting its development strategy. Due to a cash crunch, the firm will now develop innovative games based solely on properties in the public domain.

Your responsibility is to come up with some test concepts for a new title based on the nursery rhyme, Jack and Jill. Harking back to your childhood, you recount the story: Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after. Jot down a few variations of the story.

EXERCISE #3

You’re a marketing assistant for a large manufacturer. You have been assigned a project that may help land you a promotion if completed to your employer’s satisfaction. Your mission is to come up with a list of unique names for the following new consumer products in development:

• A hair brush that doubles as a portable telephone
• Auto body paint that changes color every few days
• An inflatable bicycle helmet

As you focus your creative energies on the various tasks outlined above, you may find one or more of the challenges difficult to complete. Don’t give up!

Remember to use your knowledge and experience to help stimulate extraordinary ideas. Use your wackiest thoughts and your strangest solutions to help break down the mental barriers that stand in your way. Go on. Have some fun.

So how did you do with the cotton balls in Exercise #1? What creative solutions did you come up with?

Here a few examples I thought of:

• Stuff the cotton balls into the walls of the building (in place of standard insulation)
• Dip the cotton balls in caramel and market them as exotic confections
• Sell the cotton balls to an aspirin manufacturer (and pocket the cash!)
• Make fashion accessories out of them

The cotton ball exercise demonstrates on interesting point. When cotton balls are taken out of their usual context, many more uses for the items become possible. I’m not predicting that carmel-covered cotton balls will become a candy craze anytime soon. However, when we place cotton balls in the food category, our minds can suddenly find all sorts of exotic new uses for cotton. Cotton candy anyone?

How did you do with the Jack and Jill exercise? As a development executive placed in an extraordinary situation, you have been pushed off your routine path and forced to “think of something different.” When approaching the story of Jack and Jill, one might first pose a series of questions to help formulate a new approach to a familiar set of circumstances.

Questions such as:

• What caused Jack to fall down?
• Why was Jack wearing a crown?
• What caused Jill to come tumbling after?

Or perhaps alternative situations such as:

• What if Jack and Joe went up the hill?
• What if the hill was a pyramid instead of a hill?

By posing a few simple analytical questions and altering at least one key element familiar to our story, whole new creative ideas suddenly become possible. For example:

Jack and Jill climbed up a pyramid to fetch a golden amulet. Jill tripped Jack and he fell down. Jill snatched his crown, scooped up the amulet and was never seen in the city again.

With a little more tinkering, the concept could be expanded into a full-blown adventure game concept–– a Jack and Jill meets Torin’s Passage:

On a day that starts like any other, young Jack learns that the world he knows is about to change forever. A mysterious warlock, known only as Jillian, puts his parents under an evil spell and snatches his father’s magic crown, then vanishes into the vast labyrinth of the black pyramid. Knowing only the sound of the Jillian’s voice, Jack vows to find her, force her to relinquish his father’s crown, and release his parents from bondage. Thus begins an exciting adventure that will take Jack to the five inner worlds of the black pyramid––a world filled with danger and fantasy. Use your wits to help Jack solve many challenging riddles, as he discovers more about himself than he could ever have imagined.

How did you make out with exercise #3? Given the task of having to create unique names for new products in development, how did you fare? Write down your ideas next to the brilliant ideas I came up with:

A hair brush that doubles as portable telephone:

• Telebrush Magic
• Hairphone
• Your idea?

Auto body paint that changes color every few days:

• Mood Paint
• Liquid Skin
• Your idea?

An inflatable bicycle helmet:

• Airhead
• BrainSafe
• Your idea?

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 16th, 2008 at 8:48 am and is filed under Creativity, Design, User Experience. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.