An eLearning course from Oliver Becker – Your tourism consultant

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Learning unit 1

What are ideas and how do they come about?

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Brief description:

This chapter sheds light on the idea itself and dispels some misconceptions about the success of brainstorms. It explains why you should take time for ideas. We also give you an initial impulse for creative work.

Outline:

In this learning unit you can expect:

  1. What is an idea?
  2. What ideas do you need?
  3. How do you come up with ideas?

Input scenario:

You know the debacle: whenever you want to come up with a brilliant idea quickly, you can’t think of anything. However, you never really have the time or a procedure at hand to come up with ideas. A few hours later – perhaps on a walk – you come up with a great idea and your idea begins to mature.

How did this come about?

Video:

Summary:

Are flashes of inspiration that just pop into your head like Vicky the Viking or Daniel Gyro Gearloose? Can they really be equated with ideas or is it something else? A flash of inspiration is the very first impulse for an idea to be implemented later. Such flashes of inspiration often occur when you are not frantically trying to come up with an idea. In order to turn a flash of inspiration into a feasible and realistic idea, there are a few aspects to consider:

  1. First of all, you need time, which you should actively take. Thomas Alva Edison once said: “We now know 1000 ways not to build a light bulb!“. By this he meant that ideas need to mature – they can almost never be implemented immediately and then crowned with success. The first tip is therefore particularly important: consciously take time out to find and develop ideas.

  2. Of course, you need other components in addition to time. One of these is creativity. What is creativity and what do you need to be creative? First of all, specialist knowledge and expertise. Edward de Bono, one of the leading “idea scientists”, once remarked in this regard: “Where there is nothing, there can be nothing!” Creative skills are also required. This means that you have to be able to recognize problems and link areas of knowledge, master associative thinking and have the ability to abstract (the ability to recognize patterns). The last essential component of creativity is having the motivation to engage with the world of ideas.

  3. Transpiration is the third component mentioned above. Of course, finding ideas and realizing them means a lot of work. It is also exhausting. However, the reward of a successful idea at the end of the process is far more valuable than moaning from the effort. To prevent the work from getting out of hand, you can make use of some tools and techniques that you will learn about in later chapters. In particular, tools from quality management can give us a good structure for work planning.

The essential building block for an idea is recognizing problems! Edison once remarked: ” I find out what the world needs. And then I invent it! “. I have to be able and have the opportunity to discover problems and describe them well. Only when I have fully understood the problem can I start developing ideas. Accordingly, the idea is an equation consisting of the initial question (in relation to the recognized problem) plus inspiration and essentially supplemented by perspiration.
Inspiration does not just happen. It requires a pleasant setting or space in which you can concentrate fully on the process of generating ideas. This is not possible in a meeting, in the hallway or while working on complex processes. Many people have completely different requirements for a place of inspiration.

So where or when do you find ideas? In most cases, when we perform so-called contemplative activities. Contemplative means activities that we know inside out and virtually in our sleep. If you think about when or where you get the best ideas or impulses for ideas, you will quickly come up with special places and activities, such as getting up in the morning or going to bed in the evening. “In the shower” and “sitting on the toilet” are frequently mentioned answers. “In nature while hiking”, “jogging” or other sporting activities are also often mentioned. Then there are boring meetings or mowing the lawn, for example. Sometimes participants also say: “driving a car”. Be careful, driving a car is only contemplative when waiting at traffic lights!

But who can actually provide the impetus for new ideas? On the one hand, of course, your own colleagues and employees. On the other hand, customers, because they are experienced and may have already experienced ideas from competitors. And don’t forget your suppliers. They could also have one or two interesting ideas for you.

The components of creativity:

Further links:

  • What is creativity? A guide to understanding the most important skills of our time: Click here
  • Brainstorming – 20 tips for more creativity: Click here

Initial scenario:

We have now taken the very first step on the journey of ideas and have laid the foundations. The second chapter contains content on the topic of “Tools for thinking spaces”, thinking in the right direction and an explanation of the so-called Edison principle.