I’m done reading it and I don’t have room on my bookshelf. It’s definitely worth a read, especially if you are in a management situation and you want to expand you tool chest to include some more motivational and thinking-out-of-the-box methods.

I’ll give it to the first person to claim it by the end of October, 2007. Just post a comment to claim it, and agree to pay the shipping cost. If not claimed, it goes to my Ebay queue.

Challenge Assumptions

Two people are stacking cans for a display in a grocery store. They stack 250 cans in 1 hour. How many cans could four people stack in an hour?

The obvious answer is 500. Twice the manpower in the same amount of time will yield twice the stacked cans. However, this answer is very rigid and does not take into account many real life components of such a question. It rests on many assumptions. If we look just beyond our assumption horizon we might ask:

Will the four people get in each other’s way and thus reduce their rate of stacking?
Will the four people adapt a system of cooperation and speed up their rate?
Does the store even have 500 cans of this product?
Do four people doing the work of two increase the chance of knocking down the display?
Will there be twice as many stacks or will the stack have twice as many cans?
Does the store even have room in the aisles for four people to effectively work?
What if one of the employees is really clumsy?

This list could easily be grown into dozens if not hundreds of similar questions. The reason these questions arise is because each one challenges one or more assumptions we took with us when answering the original question. We may have assumed all four employees have equal strength and hand-eye coordination. We may have assumed that the store has twice the workspace to allow twice as many employees to work. And yet, most of these questions do not occur to us immediately because we focus first on finding the one true solution.

We have trained our whole lives to find the “right” solution, the sole truth, the mathematically sound proof. Since an early age we have practiced using linear problem solving to find solutions: The ones where everyone in the class reaches the same solution! Challenge yourself to look beyond your assumptions, to sidestep your initial pull to the obvious answer.

Think Again

Since many of us have become so accustomed to stay on the comfortable side of our assumption horizon, we don’t take the time to find alternative solutions. It can be a little scary to go outside of our comfort zones, and challenging the way we think is no different. I firmly believe that challenging the way you think will lead you to amazing discoveries. You may come up with a great way to improve your life or decide that the second or third solution to a problem is more beneficial or rewarding. You may even find that “thinking again” is a fun and playful way to think!

Consider the Nine Dots Puzzle that has been used in countless book and websites as an example of “thinking outside the box.”

Instructions: Connect the dots by drawing four straight, continuous lines, and never lifting the pencil from the paper. The solution is linked below, but try to figure this one out first. Challenge your assumptions. Draw the dots on a piece of paper so you have another perspective on it. Nine Dots Solution.

Do not read on until you find a solution or give up. Give yourself a real chance to figure this out - it’s worth it!

As you can see, the dots create the illusory assumption that the outside dots are somehow a boundary, which we cannot go beyond. Only when we break out of this “box” can we see how this can be done.

Let’s take the challenge even further. How about solving the puzzle with three lines? What about one continuous line? What assumptions are you making that prevent you from doing it? What if the dots are not the “mathematical” entities we call “points,” which have no area? What if each of the dots was a foot in diameter and the paper was the size of a small apartment? Then we could draw a huge zig-zag with three lines and easily hit all the “dots.” What if the paper is on a sphere? This would allow one continuous line wrapped around the sphere to go through all nine dots. Hey, we could draw that on an egg and use it as a logo!

This exercise is not meant to make anyone feel bad. If you did not come up with any of the solutions above, don’t despair! I certainly didn’t get it the first time I saw it, but once I did it has a huge Aha! moment for me. Use the examples to open up your perception of problems and challenge yourself to think again when faced with a problem. With a little practice you’ll never return to one-stop problem solving.

Lateral Math

Even the most linear of academic disciplines, mathematics, can be bent beyond the assumption horizon. I’d like to share an example from my own life. This memory came to me while writing this article and I had never realized the significance of it until now.

I remember challenging my math teachers when I was in the ninth grade. I don’t remember the details of the problem, but I do remember it was a word problem. There was not much room for debate within the formulas he was testing us on, but boy did I find some ambiguity in his wording! I carefully read his seemingly simple questions, I realized that there were at least two ways to interpret the problem, and thus at least two answers. What I did was submit multiple answers to two of the questions in the homework and waited with excitement for his reaction. His response was largely positive although there was still a hint of treating it like a novelty (the rest of the class had clearly understood the linear path he intended us to travel). I was ecstatic and proud of myself. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was practicing lateral thinking in a math class. I wish I could remember his name. I’d like to thank him now.

While reading about brainstorming techniques in books and online, I’ve become fascinated with lateral thinking. I’ve definitely trained myself to think in very linear ways with such pursuits as chess, philosophy, website tinkering and even cooking! Without thinking about it much, I’ve systematically removed just about all creative outlets from my life. I think many adults have been “trained” to reject creativity and replace it with a uncompromising quest for the next promotion, the pay raise, the 60+ hour work week etc.

I want my creativity back!

My recent focus on sharing my ideas with this site and pursuing creativity and innovation is a recognition of my long lost creativity. It is an inevitable overspill of creativity. In stead of chasing the next rational pursuit of that one thing that will make me happy, I will try to re- integrate aspects of my personality that will allow happiness to flourish. I hope you will too!

I’ve been searching for brainstorming tools online to practice non-linear thinking. What I envisioned finding was a virtual whiteboard where I could create idea maps and doodle for inspiration. I am happy to say that I found two good online whiteboards!

Imagination Cubed This whiteboard was created by GE. It’s a fun little board that does not require any kind of login, and you can invite a couple of people by email or IM to collaborate. I found it fairly intuitive to use, but the tool selection seemed a little clumsy. I believe this application runs with flash, so you may need to download a browser plugin to use it.

Skrbl This whiteboard is very similar concept, and has many more features. It does require a login to create a new board, but also allows you to create multiple boards to share with friends or colleagues. It even allows password protection of board for you top-secret types.

Check out the Random Egg Brainstorming Board! (hosted by skrbl)

Just a few days after starting Random Egg I found Why Not?, an idea site with a similar concept. At Why Not?, ideas are submitted and voted on by users. The site has been around for a long time so it has quite a collection of ideas - over 3500 listed ideas! All ideas are also open for comment by other users. The organization of the site is a little overwhelming with a full 32 categories, exactly what I was trying to avoid at the Idea Nest. The site was set up by Barry Nalebuff, the Author of Why Not?: How to Use Everyday Ingenuity to Solve Problems Big And Small, and Ian Ayres.

I’ve also been checking out WhataGreatIdea.com, the creation of What a Great Idea 2.0 author Chic Thompson. The site is a great introduction to the material in his book. My favorite thing on the site is an interview with the legendary Dr. Yoshiro Nakamatsu, inventor of the floppy disc, compact disc and the digital watch, just to name a few!

Stay tuned for a review of What a Great Idea 2.0!

I found a great site a few days ago while looking around for a good patent research site: Google Patents! The site lets you search over seven million patents and the entries include original diagrams, artwork and other documents. This is a very handy tool if you are interested in pursuing a patent or if you are just a little bored and want to check out some bizarre entries like this one for a OUIJA board!?

So, it’s been just over a week since I launched Random Egg. I hatched it as a way to share my various ideas from silly inventions to large scale social and environmental solutions. I set up the site to allow users to submit their own ideas, and encourage anyone with even a spark of an idea to post it on the main area of the site.

So far I’ve had a couple hundred visitors and a couple of new users, and two of them have posted ideas. OK, so one of them was my wife, but still, one ligitimate new user who posted an idea! Thank you James Dunn.

The main area of the site was launched using Pligg, an open-source clone of the popular Digg.com. This platform is perfect for posting ideas and encouraging feedback in the form of votes and comments.

However, not long after it was up and running did I crave another outlet for this project. As the flood of stimuli from starting the site continued to move over me, I started exploring the web for other idea sites, and I looked for books on the subject. I found plenty of the former and am well into a great book by Chic Thompson.

This blog will serve as an additional outlet, and I’ll be posting about the pursuit and methodology of ideas and creativity. Here I will post links to sites about ideas and creativity. I’ll write about interesting finds and I might even attempt a book review or two!

I will of course continue to post my ideas to the front page of RandomEgg.com as they come to me. I hope you join me in growing this site.