Our brain uses almost 20 percent of our body’s energy. Such energy is generated from highly oxygenated blood supply in the body. Generally, people gather around a table in order to generate ideas. When we are seated, blood settles down in the lower portion of our body, away from the brain. This affects the process of idea generation. Just by standing up, we improve blood circulation to our brain by almost 15%. Improved blood circulation in the brain leads to improved oxygen levels. Improved oxygen levels lead to increased brain power. This helps generate more ideas.
When we think, our brain cells named neurons converse using the process of electrochemistry. The neurons fire through the neural pathways. When we face a tough challenge that is similar to the ones we faced earlier, neurons are fired from the same natural pathway as earlier. Hence, it is essential to break the trap and find an innovative way to arrive at a solution. That’s where idea generation plays a critical role.
As part of our planning strategy, we generate checklists to help us remember what we decided to do during the day. Checklists help us remember in case we forget something. Similarly, a set of pertinent questions can help us generate ideas. There are many ways of generating ideas. In order to generate ideas, one has to exploit all senses. Telling a story of the challenge engages the auditory senses. Creating a collage involves visual senses and generating a 3D model entails better perception.
Our thinking can get ‘accustomed’ to predictable environments, formats and settings. We may go to a particular ‘brainstorming’ session, in the same old room with the same paint, led by the same leader and possibly, nothing new will come up at the end of the session and it will be a waste of time. The anchors in such sessions can generate similar negative reaction from us, which is not desirable. Hence, it is essential to eliminate such situations.
Generating new ideas can be a very burdensome task. Putting them into practice can be much harder. Once an idea strikes you, you have to fill in all the details of what you want to achieve and how you are going to go about it. You need to be careful at this stage. Spending too much time in its analysis will stifle creativity and your initiative will lose steam.
Human brain tends to get lazy and prefers to find patterns in things. Once people find a way of doing something that works, they keep repeating it. Businesses do such things, generating procedures to perform their routine. Attention is turned on the pattern and if there is a change in the environment, it does not get noticed and they miss the problem. For this reason, new companies in the marketplace are more adept at identifying problems and finding solutions than established players.
Coming up with a new idea is usually easy. Getting it accepted and bringing it to usage is much harder. You are clear about what you want. But, you may require some assistance in getting there. If you can get yourself a high level sponsor, your job becomes easy. Otherwise, you need to publicize your idea and get feedback and make necessary adjustments. You need to be cautious about real motives of people when they give their feedback. You need to be patient and persistent in pursuing the idea that you generated.
