Lately, I’ve been trying to learn new ways to inspire creativity by reading books by leading innovation experts and it hit me like a sack full of Rubik’s Cubes: No wonder the greatest product ideas and the most amazing businesses are cooked up in home offices and garage laboratories.
Some traits that stir the creativity pot just come natural for home bizzers.
Take sleep deprivation for example. Some creativity experts believe a lack of sleep draws on a survival instinct that opens up unused portions of your mind. Artists and musicians often go weeks without sleep trying to use this device to catch the tail of the illusive creativity dragon. Hey, Beethoven: Get a full-time job, a part-time business, a spouse, a few kids, and a menagerie of pets and wait till you see how many symphonies you can crank out!
Another exercise to inspire innovation is to take random items and match them together. You know, take a rubber substitute… randomly match it with a kid’s toy… and, bingo, you got a million-dollar invention called Silly Putty. So, all I have to do is look at how my kids randomly arrange their bedrooms… there has to be loads of inspiration there. It’s all spread across the floor and dangling over the bedposts… but it’s there… somewhere.
Another powerful tool: Embrace paradox. Look: if you can abide a husband who works 70-hour weeks, so he has enough money to stroll around on Saturday in the hot sun while attempting… attempting the operable world here… to whack a defenseless, little white ball into a little black hole, then you should totally get the paradox thing.
Just think, big businesses pay millions of dollars and spend thousands of hours trying to learn these innovation secrets.
All they have to do is intern at your home biz for a weekend.
And we could use the help, huh?
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“Startup Stella contributes to this blog from her two-dimensional world, which you can learn more about by visiting this cartoon strip StartupNation created to share Stella’s quirky but classic entrepreneurial epiphanies with you.”
