Seasoning your Creativity

Brian is a founder and director of Creativity Unleashed Limited, with experience of training in creativity in a wide range of organizations. He is author of a wide range of books from the creativity guide Instant Creativity (with Paul Birch) to a wide range of popular science titles including A Brief History of Infinity and Before the Big Bang. He has recently written more on green issues and the corporate approach to the environment in Ecologic.

Seasonal variation is natural feature of our world (and of business) – so here’s a creativity technique that makes use of this cyclical change. This is an incremental technique, ideal, for example as means of enhancing a current product or service. It works equally well with individuals or groups.

First establish your starting point, your current product (or whatever you are working on). Write it on a sheet of paper in big letters and stick it in front of you – this will make sure you aren’t clogging up valuable mental resources keeping track of what you are working on.

Now take another sheet of paper, landscape, and divide it up into four columns – Spring, Summer, Autumn (or Fall) and Winter.

Then work through each of the columns one at a time. Think of the nature of the season. For instance when doing Spring think of new growth, little baby versions emerging, temperatures rising, bright green showing through, etc. etc. Note these characteristics down in the top half of the column. Then, for each characteristic of the season, think how you could change your product to reflect that characteristic, and jot down suggestions in the column. If you are using this technique as a team, try doing this part individually then, collecting together all your ideas onto a flipchart for each season.

Finally take a trip through your seasons – look for interesting changes that can be combined or built on. You will find a surprising variety in the suggestions for change – but that’s only natural.

Seasoning your Creativity

Brian Clegg