The best way to have a good idea

The best way to have a good idea is to have a bunch of ideas

I want to take it for this article and write about the need of having more and new ideas in the world of design as in the businesses. People often associate design with creativity, but not that much with management and direction of small and medium-sized businesses when in both, creativity is very necessary.

Some call it creativity to generate new ideas, but for me, creativity has more to do with creating new associations between ideas and concepts already known.

In these times it is challenging to create something really new and behind a very good idea, usually, there is a lot of work, observation, and a lot of research behind it.

There are several techniques to generate numerous ideas and polish them, many ideas that do not have to be great, but thanks to the quantity, to the association and evaluation of them, you can find one that can be the great idea you need.

I want to mention three techniques that are well known and used by many, but also misused by others. The goal is to use them to find more ideas. And beyond that, they can also serve to find different solutions to the problems that arise in the life of the entrepreneur.

Let’s begin with the first technique:

Brainstorming

It is the simplest of the three that I will mention. This technique is about writing freely all the ideas or concepts related to the topic you are working on. No matter how crazy the ideas seem and without judging them.
From all these ideas, one can come to the idea that can help you.

If you want to read more about this subject, I have another post about brainstorming.

The second technique that I will write, is Mind Mapping.

Mind Mapping

Similar to brainstorming, you can write freely several concepts or elements of a subject. But unlike brainstorming, Mind Mapping is done in an orderly and hierarchical way.

The main idea is written to the center and starting from there, related concepts are branched out. Each one of these branches can also have its own branches, being possible to extend as much as you can or want.

It is useful during the creation of new ideas because not only breaks down deeply the subject but also you can find new relationships that were not seen previously.

There is one post in my blog where you can read more about Mind Mapping.

Six Thinking Hats

This is the third technique I want to talk about. Edward De Bono developed this system and is based on the fact that when we approach a problem, we adopt different ways of thinking without realizing this.

We can be critical, emotional, positive, creative, etc. And if we make these ways of thinking aware, adapt, and change them in a planned way, we can improve the way we solve a matter.

The Hats are an analogy to the fact that we can take off and put on different hats and each hat is a way of thinking, every time we wear one of the hats we take the role of thinking that corresponds to that hat.

To facilitate its implementation to each thinking model, each hat has a color assigned in the following way.

Blue Hat: It is the hat of control and moderation. Take the rule of the session and sets the shifts to the other hats.

White Hat: The neutral thinking, only talks about hard and cold information and data and reports it to all in the session, without evaluations, interpretations, or judgments

Red Hat: It’s the hat of emotions. It’s time to express the fears, intuition, tastes, etc.

Black Hat: This is the pessimistic hat, looks everything black, criticizes everything. The goal is to attack to find the weaknesses, not to attack by the sheer fact of doing it.

Yellow Hat: This is the opposite of the black hat. It takes a completely optimistic attitude, it tries to find how things could work.

Green Hat: This is the hat of creativity, to find the solutions and relationships between the ideas that emerged during the sessions.

The technique of the hats is useful to develop several ideas keeping the roles of each hat, and after the session, you can find ideas that can lead to the solution of a problem.

This method deserves its own post, you can read more in this post about the Six Thinking Hats.

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