Planning to blog on my reading of Edward De Bono's "How To Have Creative Ideas". The book revolves around the use of random words to get you think in so many directions. I'm a big fan of "stimulants to thinking" ever since my English teacher of 9th grade, Mrs. Arcy demonstrated its power in a class. She made us take out a piece of paper and asked us to write - not a straightforward essay - but something like "a letter explaining benefits of blood donation and requesting to hold a camp". Obviously there was no pencil mark on my paper at the end of the allotted time as I considered myself to have absolutely no idea on the subject of blood donation. Then she asked us to write questions like "What", "Why", "Where", "When", "How" etc on the subjects in question. Soon the paper was covered with lots of points. It was a dramatic revelation to me -all those points were buried in my head - yet I sat there thinking of what a difficult question this was, till some questioning brought them out. So on to the first "game" in the book..I'm going to use the blog as my notebook sort of..
Task 1: New ideas to make a bank more attractive to its customers
Random word : Spinach
My thoughts: Spinach, talks about health to me. Physical health, healthy investments - having better relationship with the customers, maybe give them a free checkup with the doctor, invite them to a health seminar, most banks have an insurance division, they could do some business out of this, but it should not look like the seminar was for boosting business, people wouldn't give any credibility to the doctors then. What about healthy investment ? many young people are earning straight out of college, but not knowing well the many good investment opportunities. What about advising on very low-risk good opportunities for investment? Spinach speaks to me of good old-fashioned advice and care - building personal relationship with your customer - how nice it would be to have a friendly personal banker!
Task 2: Problem of graffiti being painted on buildings in a town
Random word: cigarette
My thoughts: Cigarette speaks of addiction, dangerous to health. Graffiti drawing is also an addiction. Need to kick the habit - by reducing the dose ?
Another idea that comes to mind is officially designated graffiti walls, competitions with prizes for drawings on the walls - would that alone fight the impulse to break the law? make it hard to break the law? not always feasible to have such strict policing...but some strict policing initially should lead the graffiti artists to "reduce the dose" and take to the "official graffiti walls" (nicotine patches). Later on the craving would lessen.
Task 3: The problem of cars going too fast on a straight stretch of road.
Random word: Fare
My thoughts: Toll booth or check post in the middle of the road? Was the offbeat idea i got other than usual ideas like speed bumps, camera etc.
Task 4: New ideas for a newspaper
Random word: Corner
My thoughts: Corner for different people ..like bloggers! hey, I'm talking about the good old columnists :) but blogs would be a good avenue to find some really good writers for the paper. A corner for the main college in town. All college students would look at the corner to see the photographs and news. Book Corner, Food Corner, Cooking Corner - all old ideas? Photography Corner, Crafts Corner? Corner based layout - change the look of the magazine - maybe old readers wont like it - so have a supplement in a contemporary dramatic format and make smaller changes to the main paper
Hmm... that's all for today...
I wanted to make a card day before yesterday..I got the random word as cocktail..somehow it made me think of a cocktail of green colors...and so, here's the card...
By the way, the book is not about having creative ideas for art or music - its about having creative ideas for business and solving problems. Still a random word is a good starting point when you know you want to do something but need a starting point.
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