5 Strategies to Build the Innovation Muscle
Creative potential is increased by building knowledge and freedom of the mind. Therefore, you need to continually expand your knowledge base and stretch you mind. Below are several techniques you can use to grow your capacity for innovation and creativity and in turn, become a more creative problem solver.
- Read things you don’t normally read. Exposure puts more ideas into your subconscious.
- Have diverse life experiences. These experiences will help you expand your comfort zone while also building your “idea library” outside of how things are “normally” done.
- Surround yourself with people with different cultures and worldviews. This will help you stretch yourself and help you understand that many perspectives are “correct” and what’s significant is less about the right and wrong and more about context.
- Be curious about your own perceptions. There’s a good chance you’re only seeing part of the picture.
- Incubate ideas. Innovation can be systematic. Schedule time to break from thinking about your ideas and come back once they’ve marinated for a bit.
