Every year, I have the honour of addressing thousands of fifteen/sixteen year old students on the topics of motivation, entrepreneurship and creativity. Part of the journey requires students to generate ideas after been presented with two different unrelated product. For example, a tractor and fake tan!

One creative student came up with the idea of converting the tractor cab into a mobile spraying booth – brilliant.

Their levels of creativity appear to far exceed “adult levels” which appears to endorse research by Beth and Land (highlighted in an earlier post) which showed that the older we get, the less we have access to our creative genius.

Accepting this and mindful of the “rentacrowd” idea I aired on the Video Clinic; I believe it would be a useful exercise to invite a group of sixteen years to your company and brainstorm potential new ideas, and applications of existing ones – you will not be disappointed!

You cannot solve your problems with the thinking that created them, a common line aired by us keynote speakers – is it time to move outside your comfort zone and step into the unknown?