The chaotic notion of idea generation means you never know which bell your pinball is going to bounce off, or how many points it will rack up.

But by avoiding chaos, people reinforce a different idea: scarcity thinking. This is bad for business, and for all advocates of creative thinking.

By embracing chaos, we reinforce abundance thinking. Meaning more BECOMES more. Which leads to the single most important thought connected with creativity.

What you focus on is what you get.

Read that line again, only this time, think about its larger meaning.

Focus on bigger ideas and that’s what you’ll get. Focus on the small stuff, on remaining stuck, in debt, lacking success, etc., etc., and guess what?

You have much in common with Roy Williams (wizardacademy.com), AKA the Wizard of Ads. Roy has lots to say about non linear thinking, Broca’s area, thought particles, and thinking differently.

When we focus on what we need our ideas, thinking, and results become larger and clearer than we had ever been hoped or dreamed possible.

I will say I believe chaos plays a big role in creative thinking. I also believe linear thought (how we’ve been trained to think most of our lives) usually leads to orderly thinking and very predictable ideas. And when there’s a lot on the line in business, people often fall into even safer patterns, yet that’s usually when we need fresh thinking the most.

What I like about throwing a high quantity of ideas against a challenge, not just quantity alone, but a lot of ideas in a short amount of time, is that it usually sends the thinking into a state of chaos, often completely out of control. That’s when the surprising concepts so frequently emerge.

When running brainstorming session we use a “process” we call 100MPH Thinking™ to create chaos. Our process is frantic, constantly changing direction, always pushing for volume.

Preconceptions. Prejudices. Fear of failure. Attachment to old ideas. These and other very powerful forces work against creative thinking in business all the time. I don’t think you can bring enough firepower to the creative process. Whatever the secret weapon in your creative arsenal, I believe brining the law of large numbers to the fore acts as a chemical accelerant and gives you the best chance of breaking through to virgin thought territory.

In the notion of idea generation (and if poets write poety, lawyers practise law, and engineers and machanics take care of engineering and machines, why are creatives called creatives? I like the title
“ideaneer” FAR more) there’s a huge and I mean HUGE role to play here on the part of chaos theory.

Huh? Zing! Yes, this is a quantum leap: a tiny change that moves from one realm to another without first going through any intermediate state.

But without quantum leaps (or, more accurately quantum jumps),
I don’t think there can BE any ideas.

The creative process isn’t a science, and as such, it’s not governed by any regular notion of a set of rules. There are few things in our understanding that don’t work according to a list of “set” rules.

Two things that ARE NOT impacted by predicatble rules are ideas and chaotic systems … a chaotic system or event is anything random that may affect a larger whole in an unpredictable way: such as games of chance and weather prediction.

Does the generation of ideas work in a similar way to a chaotic system? I think it does.

I’m not a mathematician or a physicist, but as far I know (and please, someone, correct me if I’m wrong) chaos theory depends on two prime foundations:

1. sensitive dependence on initial conditions (the what, the where, the when, the how, etc., etc.,)

and;

2. rapid divergence of nearby trajectories (A.B.C. such and such a thing won’t work because of 1.2.3., which leads to something els ealong the lines of K.L.M.N.O. That then requires adding 4.5.6.,
which results in XYZ… and so on).

The more stuff that goes in, the more (potentially?) great stuff will come out. And for a cluster of ideas to generate a great final idea, surely they only have to gang together to solve that problem once, before moving on to the next idea no matter where it comes from and what influenced it.

I see chaos, like the generation process for ideas, stemming from one particle of “thought” bouncing from one place or location in thinking, perception, or awareness to another. So yes, Tom, in my opinion, large numbers rock!

Everyone is in a different place re the creative process and understanding how various aspects might work for them. The numbers game is fundamental to creative accomplishment for some many high achievers, I think it’s worth stressing. It doesn’t take any special brilliance, just a little more effort, but I feel it’s totally worth it. As Tom Edison said. “Genius is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration.”