The Art of the Idea

Site Contents
About NDPC
Awards & Contests
Join NDPC
Events
Leadership
Members’ Area
Contact Us

NFPW 2002 Highlights

When It Comes to Creative Ideas, Quantity = Quality

How do you generate creativity while working to a tight deadline? “Making connections,” says Jo-Anne Ebensteiner, “is what makes you an idea maker and problem solver.”

Ebensteiner, senior vice president and creative director of Martin Williams (and daughter of NDPC member Patricia Keough-Wilson), offered a process for creativity in “The Art of the Idea.”

Ebensteiner’s creative formula follows the acronym RICE: Research, Ideas, Combine and Execute. Basically, Ebensteiner's creative steps are these:

Research: Gather not only background information about the problem you’re trying to solve, but items that stimulate all your senses: fabrics, music, modeling clay, coffee table books, items from nature. Working in a place with a view of the outdoors is important. So is fun, emphasizes Ebensteiner; it creates the enthusiasm and energy that lead to creative thought.

Ideas: In this stage, generate as many ideas as possible. The first rule is "no 'no’s'" — everything goes! Ebensteiner says you should shoot for a minimum of 40 ideas. (She also believes you should shoot naysayers with a Nerf gun, then evict them from the meeting if they persist in negative behavior. I wish someone had told me that when I worked for a large corporation.) Remember, the more ideas at this stage, the better; you can then look for the gems among them. Some steps for generating ideas:

Draw your ideas, even if you’re working with words
Take a child’s view or other new perspective
Try approaches similar to what others have done
Make something much smaller — or gigantic in scale
Search for opposites
Look away, then look again

Combine: Take a break, then come back ready for judgment. Sort your ideas. Eliminate some, build on others, categorize. Ask, “What can we make happen?” In the end, points out Ebensteiner, you just need one great idea.

Execute: Finally, you must decide where the idea is going to go. Sometimes, implementation requires more creativity than generating the idea in the first place. You must believe your approach is right and beneficial.
“The human mind once stretched to a new idea,” said Oliver Wendell Holmes, “never goes back to its original dimensions.”

– Karen M. Stensrud