Page 215 - THE DO-IT-YOURSELF LOBOTOMY Open Your Mind to Greater Creative Thinking

CHAPTER 19

Storming the Brain

Opening one’s own mind to find truly new ideas, concepts that have
never been discovered before, can be a challenge, but the rewards are
certainly worth the effort. There has always been and always will be all
kinds of forces working against new ideas. Yet creative thinking is
increasingly called for in business today, so it simply must be done to
grease the skids of progress.
Of course, that’s what this book is all about—helping you, as an
individual, become a better creative thinker. All the chapters to this
point have been aimed at increasing your ability to come up with
great, fresh ideas when you need them, with the exception, of course,
of the previous chapter, which focused on cultivating fresh thinking
in others.
But let me tell you in no uncertain terms:

It’s one thing to be a creative thinker and it’s quite another thing
altogether to inspire an entire roomful of people to be fresh
thinkers.

This is a process most commonly referred to as brainstorming,
ideation, and groupthink. I’ll use those terms interchangeably in this
chapter, with brainstorming carrying most of the load. I want to tell
you that brainstorming is an entirely different kettle of fish, and they
just might be sharks.
The first thing I’ll point out about brainstorming is how amazingly
ill understood this process is. When we go into companies, my fellow