Today started with a little competition between us. We tried to build the highest tower and later turn it into a bridge. The bridge had to be strong enough to hold a phone and wide enough to fit a notebook through. We found out that 3 minutes is plenty of time to get attached to a block of bricks, our own little babies. We didn’t want them to be crushed with a phone.
So putting it into practice – whenever you or your team has an idea, it is best to show the prototypes of each stage of the development to your client or supervisor. That way they can give their insight and also get emotionally invested. Meaning that when the initial idea lacks something, it can be fixed and adjusted to everyone’s needs and not get thrown away completely.
We continued our day with Jones’ Go-Carts challenge. It consisted of three stages:
- building vehicles;
- brainstorming new ideas to keep children mobile;
- coming up with any ideas that would “float our boat”.
We managed to create 16 products: 10 vehicles, 2 structures and, 4 new business ideas. For both of us, the hardest one was the second stage. We both very much enjoyed the first task.
The goal was to explore a different kind of imagination in each stage of the challenge. The first one was descriptive imagination, where there is possible to base our product around given description or a word. The second one was creative imagination, where the keyword is fantasy. Which means having a new approach to an already existing idea. The last stage was challenging imagination, where we take something that exists, destroy it and make something completely new and innovative.
We are all different, so we have different styles of creativity. We have our own strengths and weaknesses. But here is the great news – you can improve yourself in all of those categories.
Firstly, if you want to improve your descriptive creativity start describing things near you (a pencil, a chair, an old lady across the street in a nice summer dress drinking a cup of coffee).
Secondly, if you need help at creative imagination, you need to find something specific to focus on and start creating around it. For example, if you have a handicraft boutique that specializes in jewelry making then you could focus on a theme like a sea life, origami, Star Wars, etc.
Lastly, if you have difficulties with challenging imagination you need to get out of your comfort zone. Take a new road to home, try new foods or say hello to a stranger and have a chat.
Definitely came out of our boxes today and learned something valuable, which we can start using right away in our everyday life and so can everybody else.
See you laters, all you players!
Ciao!
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