invention

Based solely on the fact that Stefan Sagmeister dropped his name in a sentence to this effect: he helps me get ideas – I picked up “Creativity Workout: 62 Exercises to Unlock Your Most Creative Ideas,” by Edward “master of creative thinking” De Bono. It’s basically a book of exercises to help you generate ideas, whether you’re looking for business solutions or a little kick in the pants in a creative project. All the exercises are based on tables of random words that you select randomly, the idea being that in order to think outside the box you need to approach your problem from the outside as well. De Bono posits that totally unrelated words will shed new light and lead to active ways of thinking and creative solutions.
When I read through his introduction and discovered that this was the concept for the entire book, I was pretty let down. It seemed so hokey, like problem solving tricks your fourth grade teacher might use in class. But no matter how much I cringed at De Bono’s self help speak, I just kept thinking: Sagmeister. Sagmeister does this stuff, so who was I to turn my nose up at it without even trying it out?