The Hindu Business Line : All about light bulbs!

A BLANK screen stares at you. Or it is a plain daunting sheet on the table and ideas are jut not flowing? How do you turn yourself on? Wayne Lotherington has the answer in Flicking Your Creative Switch — a book about "developing brighter ideas for business". The author has "six inspiring creative-thinking tools" — eyes of experts, random word, what's hot, extremes, curly questions and exquisite corpse. In the foreword, Allan Pease, the author of Why Men Don't Listen and Women can't Read Maps observes: "Being different is what today is all about. Standing out. Getting noticed." A few flicks:

Intelligence and creativity are two different things. You can be intelligent without being particularly creative. And you can be creative without being particularly intelligent.

The light bulb has become a metaphor for an idea. In fact, in Spanish, the phrase for "I have an idea" is "se me prendio el bombillo". This literally means "my light bulb went on".

Creative thinking might be the only legal and moral way for you to get ahead of the pack. And no wonder employers are looking for more creative people. According to Dilip Mukerjea, creative people are more productive, profitable, effective, efficient and agile.

We have heard, don't be foolish, grow up, work before play, do as you're told, don't ask questions, obey the rules, be practical, and many other limiting phrases. The truth is that these all get in the way of creative thinking.

Q: How many bureaucrats does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: Two. One to assure everyone that everything possible is being done while the other screws the bulb into the water faucet. Q: How many teenage girls does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: One, but she'll be on the phone for five hours telling all her friends about it.

The `industrial roundabout' tool gets you to use the expertise of other industries to come up with creative ideas for your own. Assume you are marketing a new bra for the `first bra' market. Instead of looking to the undergarment industry for ideas, why not look at it from the point of view of some other industry?

Imagine you want to promote a product and you're looking for a creative way to draw attention to its benefit. But when you analyse the product you find the benefit is rather small or unimportant. What you need to do is exaggerate the benefits. In doing so you can make a small benefit get noticed and the communication more memorable.

Clients often worry about negative advertising. Don't be concerned. It is far better to advertise the negative in a powerful way than to advertise the positive in a weak way. Besides, if you have a product that people take for granted, they won't be interested in being reminded of its benefits. The negative ad will work if you leave people with a positive view of your brand.

Are you on, already?

Book courtesy: Wiley www.wiley.com

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