PREFACE

In my previous book — How to Get Ideas — I use James Webb Young’s definition of an idea as “nothing more nor less than a new combination of old elements.”

That definition, it seems to me, is a liberating one, for it says that ideas aren’t some arcane things that only brilliant people come up with. Rather, ordinary people create ideas every day simply by combining things they already know about.

I also outline a five-step procedure for solving problems and getting ideas, a proven procedure that takes the mystery and anxiety out of the idea-generating process — (1) define the problem, (2) gather the information, (3) search for the idea, (4) forget about it, and (5) put the idea into action.

But I caution readers that if they want to get the ideas they are capable of getting, they have to first condition their minds by getting more inputs, by visualizing their goals, by trusting their child-like natures, by rethinking their thinking, by screwing up their courage, by learning how to combine, and, perhaps most important, by having fun and by becoming idea-prone.xii

As with so much in life, these mind-conditioning techniques are mostly things that we all have to do for ourselves.

But if you own or run a business, if you are a manager or a coordinator or a director or a supervisor or a department head, if you coach or teach or consult — indeed, if you hold any kind of leadership position anywhere — you can use your position to help bring out the creativity in the people you work with. How? Simply by helping them do those two most important mind-conditioning things — have fun and become idea-prone.

So that’s what this book is about — not what my previous book was about, i.e., how you can get ideas; nor is it about how you can better lead or direct or manage or supervise the people you work with. Rather, Ideaship is about how you can help those people become great employees by unleashing their creativity.

Why is all this important?

It’s hard to overstate the importance of creativity in the workplace, of having employees who bubble with ideas and solutions to problems. Indeed, Nathan Mhyrvold, former chief technology officer at Microsoft, says that a great employee is worth 1,000 times more than an average one. The reason? Because of the quality of her ideas.

That’s because new ideas are the wheels of progress. They drive the economy, they build businesses, they create jobs.xiii

And great employees? Well, great employees come up with great ideas.

And why is this book unique?

The creative department of an advertising agency is unlike any other organization in the world because it is set up with only one purpose in mind — to create a barrage of workable ideas on a variety of problems for a variety of companies in a variety of fields.

Ideaship limns the lessons learned in such a department, lessons on how to create an idea-friendly environment and help people become idea-prone.

It then reveals a number of personal, organizational, and strategic things you can do to help unleash people’s creativity and thereby get ideas flowing — as never before — in your workplace.