Thinking Tools for Idea Generation

My first major encounter with the power of a creative thinking tool was when, as Vice President, Marketing, of the Apollo Hospitals group, I was faced with the challenge of marketing a hospital. There were no models in the Indian context. How does one market illness? The first hurdle encountered was what insurance people call the “immortality complex.” Stated in simple terms the immortality complex postulates that all humans believe that they are immortal. They will never die or fall ill. It is only friends and the neighbors who will fall prey to such misfortune. It was then that we decided to use a favorite tool of mine — Turn it Upside Down (T U D). The steps followed in T U D: 1. Normal belief: A hospital is a place for sick people. 2. T U D: A hospital is a place for people who are healthy. When we looked at a hospital as a place for people who are healthy, 1. Our base of customers increased to include a vast number of healthy people who come for positive health programs. The positive health theme included the “Well Woman” program, which involved a health and beauty focus: yoga experts, beauticians, and women’s health practitioners helped create a vastly successful heart check, the diabetic check and the child health check were part of the wellness check portfolio. 2. The relationship with customers, which traditionally started on a note of pain, anxiety, and death, began on a happy note. The focus was how to remain healthy and how to face problems. The lifetime relationship, which is the bedrock of direct marketing today, started on a happy, positive note, with wellness as the key.

The Innovation Spiral

The first step in developing an environment that nurtures creativity is to separate idea generation from analysis. Most business sessions do not yield too many breakthrough ideas because managers are too busy shooting down each other’s ideas. Such meetings produce boring, safe and often useless suggestions. So create an Innovation Spiral where members will feel safe to be open, inventive, and even silly. Playfulness and fun define this positive climate and is critical to the emergence of creative ideas as the new ideas being developed should be challenging. If all the emerging ideas are ones that you feel comfortable with, then these ideas are old and the team should challenge themselves further. Here are a few self-limiting obstacles to creative thinking: * The habit of self-censorship. * A lack of respect for others. * Adopting the status quo. * Assuming limitations, instead of possibilities.

The Sixth Radiant Action For Social Bonding

No man is an island, but a part of the Main, wrote the pensive poet John Donne. Man is a social animal and needs to live in harmony with fellow human beings. Interpersonal intelligence is the ability to understand other people, to communicate effectively with them, to identify what motivates them, and to work cooperatively with them. Intrapersonal intelligence is the inward ability to understand and form an accurate model of one’s self and to operate that model effectively to live life. Professor Howard Gardner of the Harvard School of Psychology says that the two aspects of personal intelligence, interpersonal and intrapersonal, form the most important foundation for a happy, fulfilling life. For those who define success as happiness, these two elements are essential to learn and practice.

Mechanisms of Yoga

1. Yama: Our attitude towards our environment. 2. Niyama: Our attitude towards ourselves. 3. Asana: The practice of body exercises. 4. Pranayama: The practice of breathing exercises. 5. Pratyahara: The restraint of our senses. 6. Dharana: The ability to direct our minds. 7. Dhyana: The ability to develop interactions with what we seek to understand. 8. Samadhi: Complete integration with the object to be understood.

Rejuvenate the physical system

Yoga rejuvenates the physical system and restores mental equilibrium. The word ‘yoga’ is derived from the Sanskrit word yuj which means to ‘yoke’, ‘unite’ or ‘join’. It implies the joining or uniting of the individual consciousness with the universal consciousness. This chapter deals with the most popular element of yoga—asanas or body exercises. Yogasana is the science of the beauty of form. It combines effortless postures and definite stances in the projection of a healthy and striking personality. Asanas mould every part of the body to its ideal contours. Yogasanas, in conjunction with pranayama, bring harmony and balance to every part of the body, and are highly therapeutic for the body, mind and soul.

Experiential Attribute Matching

Experiencing an event is totally different from thinking about it. Adapt to the environment, live each moment fully and never be a spectator. For spectators get nothing out of life, participants get everything.

TURN IT UPSIDE DOWN (TUD)

• Step 1 Hospitals are places for the sick. How to make sure more people use the hospital? • Observations : It is difficult to market illnesses because no one believes they will fall ill. They are protected by what insurance people call the immortality complex. • Step 2 • Turn it upside down Hospital is a place where people go when they are well. • Solution Start preventive health and perfect health programme to attract people who are well. • Benefits 1. The market segment increases to cover a vast population: There are lot more people who are well than those who are ill. 2. The relationship starts on a happy note. The basis for a life time relationship is achieved.

TURN IT UPSIDE DOWN (TUD)

• Step 1 Hospitals are places for the sick. How to make sure more people use the hospital? • Observations : It is difficult to market illnesses because no one believes they will fall ill. They are protected by what insurance people call the immortality complex. • Step 2 • Turn it upside down Hospital is a place where people go when they are well. • Solution Start preventive health and perfect health programme to attract people who are well. • Benefits 1. The market segment increases to cover a vast population: There are lot more people who are well than those who are ill. 2. The relationship starts on a happy note. The basis for a life time relationship is achieved.

Wishful Thinking Technique

Applied properly, this approach can free you from unnecessary but unrecognized assumptions that you are making about the scenario of concern.

Brainwriting Technique

The distinction in brainwriting is the generation of ideas individually and recording them on a piece of paper. Brainwriting ensures that all participants have equal opportunity to share their ideas. The other advantage comes from the rotation of ideas among participants with each person expanding and improving the idea. By the time the process is completed, everyone has ownership in the idea.

Force Field Analysis

The name comes from the technique’s ability to identify forces contributing to or hindering a solution to a problem and can stimulate creative thinking in three ways: 1) To define what you are working towards (vision). 2) To identify strengths you can maximize and 3) To identify weaknesses you can minimize.

Crawford Blue Slip

This is one of the simplest, yet very effective, creativity generation techniques. It can be used to collect a large number of ideas in a short time. Because the ideas are recorded and shared without the name of the originator, people feel more comfortable about expressing ideas. There is less concern that their ideas will not be considered useful.