1. Keep a record of all your ideas. Keep pen and paper by the bedside, makes notes on your BlackBerry or cell phone, have an ideas file on your computer - just make sure your record everything before your idea is lost into your subconscious! Start writing a few pages every morning of ideas, things you've seen that day - anything. Once you start to write ideas will start to flow to you.
2. Challenge yourself. Try new things, learn new ideas and read books about new things. Keeping your brain active and mentally "fit" allows it to process new ideas faster and more often. Try lunchtime language classes, learn a new style of dancing or take up a new hobby or craft like watercolour painting or car restoration.
3. Get into new environments. Change your surroundings, meet and talk to new people and visit new places. If you work in a city chances are there's an art gallery, museum or public gardens a short walk from your office. Stimulating your brain keeps the idea factory between your ears active and you never know where you might see a great idea that can be used in a new context - the children's toy Play Doh started out as a popular wallpaper cleaner!
4. Sleep on it. Rest and relaxation allow the subconscious to make its gentle way through the busy mindless chatter of your conscious mind. Great creators like Thomas Edison and Salvidor Dali used mid-day naps to generate new ideas and would wake themselves (Dali held a spoon in his hand over a tin plate) and record their new ideas immediately.
5. Broaden your horizons. Read, watch or listen to something you normally wouldn't. I buy a new ingredient from the supermarket every week I've never tried. Sound too hard? - there's 10,000 different goods in an average store! Read a new genre of book or watch a new genre of documentary or film, try a new recipe, buy different plants for the garden.
6. Do something you love and lose yourself in it. Remember when, as a child, you'd spend hours just colouring or playing outside with some empty boxes?
7. Experiment with "What ifs" Like "What if we did that backwards?", "What if we changed the shape/size/colour/target market?" "What if we hadn't created that product last year - would we do it now or make something different?"
8. Learn to brainstorm and do it more often. Generate ideas on paper and link them together on a brainstorming chart. Set yourself a minimum number of answers to find - like 20 or 30. You'll find even the "silly" ideas go down then and that's where the ideas can start.
9. To set up a brainstorming session have a pile of paper, marker pens and post it notes. As you come up with ideas write them all down. If you are in a group brainstorm together then break up and spend 10-15 minutes alone each writing new ideas down and get back together as a group. Use the post it noes to create flow charts or write down ideas which you can move around on the wall as they come together. Making models can be a great way to explain how a product would work or look. You don't have to get fancy - some card, masking tape and kid's modelling compound can get your idea across.
10. Make it a habit. Whatever changes you decide to make, keep them up. The more you practise creative thinking the better your mind will get and the more ideas and solutions you'll come up with so keep the momentum going - that million dollar idea could be in there somewhere!
