In gaining acceptance, matching what you are offering to what the listener is looking for is a fool-proof way to success. This may be difficult because we have all been taught to provide solutions. It requires a mind wrenching shift from trying to provide the right solution to trying to

Why do so many new ideas fail? Or don’t even get tried? One big reason is that people don’t take the time to evaluate properly. They love ideating, but they take idea evaluation for granted and don’t take the time to do it properly. They think they are finished and

In a field experiment, 112 managers in a large international consumer goods corporation learned to apply a process of creative problem solving to their on the job problems. It was discovered that deliberately avoiding premature evaluation was the key to igniting big improvements in both idea creation and evaluation. This

Interdisciplinary teams often get stuck arguing endlessly for and against solutions that would sub-optimize individual members’ own department’s goals. By stepping back to agree on the few key facts which are blocking them, they can free themselves up to define create a unifying and energizing “How might we?” problem to

Most of us live in the world of “how”.  We dwell on solutions to problems, we argue about which of two or three ways to proceed or positions to support. We are bombarded with “sound bites” which polarize us into selecting one of two opposing opinions and deepening our belief

It all goes back to the definition of creativity – we are very firm on not having any definition of creativity. If you ask fifteen different people what animal do they think best illustrates creativity, you’re going to get 15 different answers. Playing this up further, someone likes peacocks because