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PO Box 1251, Brighton Rd LPO, Elwood,

VIC, Australia 3184

Inventium http://www.inventium.com.au/

Back in 2006, Inventium’s founder, Dr Amantha Imber was working as a

consumer psychologist in a big advertising agency. The agency had put

her through a lot of creative thinking training which she loved.

However, when she started getting deeper into researching the field,

she realised that all these training companies had done was rip off

Edward de Bono techniques from the 70s and re-package them as their

own. She thought that, ironically, this was pretty uncreative.

p. +61 3 9018 7455

f. +61 3 9528 4787

m. +61 (0) 412 6565 38 e. info@inventium .com .au

PO Box 1251, Brighton Rd LPO, Elwood,

VIC, Australia 3184

Amantha had always been a bit of a science geek and kept reading the

jargon-filled academic journals long after leaving university. She noticed

that there were hundreds, if not thousands, of studies being conducted

around the world that looked at what variables increased a person’s

ability to think more creatively and a company’s ability to innovate.

However, she realised that there was a great divide between this great

research that was being done in the world of academia, and what was

actually getting used in the ‘real world’.

So in 2007, she had the idea of starting a company that applied the

science of psychology and neurology to boosting creativity and

innovation - something that had never been done before. Since

Inventium opened its doors, Amantha and her team, have helped

literally thousands of people across Australia, the United States, the UK,

Europe, Africa and New Zealand improve their ability to generate great

ideas.

Get happy to get creative

p. +61 3 9018 7455

f. +61 3 9528 4787

m. +61 (0) 412 6565 38 e. info@inventium .com .au

PO Box 1251, Brighton Rd LPO, Elwood,

VIC, Australia 3184

Get happy to get creative

Our emotional state has a big impact on our

ability to think creatively. Researchers at

Pennsylvania State University conducted a

study which examined the impact of happy

and sad moods on idea generation. To put

them into the required mood, participants

were first asked to describe a recent life

event that made them feel happy or sad.

Following the mood manipulation,

participants were asked to write down as

many things they could think of that could

fly. On average, participants in the happy

group came up with almost 50% more ideas

than the sad group.

The happiness hypothesis was also explored

by Teresa Amabile at Harvard University.

Amabile asked several hundred people to

keep a work diary that detailed their daily

activities, moods and other workplace

events. An analysis of these diary entries

showed that people were more likely to

come up with breakthrough ideas when

they were feeling happy, even if this

happiness was experienced the day before

the idea was generated.

When we are happy, the level of a brain

chemical called dopamine increases. In the

frontal lobe, dopamine controls the flow of

information to other parts of the brain.

When people feel happy, thoughts or

images of one concept – such as ‘thick’ –

activate thoughts or images of many other

concepts – such as ‘paint’, ‘stupid’ or ‘make-

up’. Opening up connections between

concepts that are only remotely associated

with one another increases our ability for

divergent thinking. In contrast, when

people feel sad, they become more detail-

oriented with their thinking which means

that they often will not see the greater

possibilities. In other words, they get

focused on the trees to the exclusion of the

forest.

So if you are feeling a bit flat, chances are

you are probably not performing at your

peak creativity. The common image of the

‘tortured genius’ has fed the popular belief

that the majority of creative geniuses were

depressed and emotionally unbalanced.

However, studies have shown that people

are actually more creative when they are

happy.

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m. +61 (0) 412 6565 38 e. info@inventium .com .au

PO Box 1251, Brighton Rd LPO, Elwood,

VIC, Australia 3184

Warm Up Your Brain To

Improve Creative Thinking

For those of us who exercise regularly,

doing a big workout without a warm-up

seems silly. Our risk of injury increases

dramatically and it also makes it hard for us

to perform at our best. Similarly, it is critical

to warm up your brain before engaging it in

a creative-thinking workout. This is to

combat the fact that in general, most idea-

generation and problem-solving meetings

are scheduled immediately after a strategy

or finance meeting, in which your brain was

most likely in analytical or linear gear.

Most of us can appreciate how difficult it is

to come from a meeting that requires

analytical, rational thinking into a meeting

that requires us to think laterally (that is,

thinking outside of our usual frame of

reference). When your brain has been in

linear thinking mode, coming up with

creative solutions is very difficult. The brain

naturally wants to jump to logical solutions,

given the mode it is in, and finding lateral

and creative solutions becomes

unnecessarily difficult.

Scientific research suggests that warming

up the creative-thinking parts of your brain

will help you perform more effectively and

efficiently at creative tasks. These exercises

will make it easier to jump from a finance

meeting to an idea-generation meeting.

Warming up this part of your brain only

takes a few minutes to shift your brain into

an open-minded and lateral-thinking mode.

There are many ways to warm up you brain

to this type of thinking. One is an Inventium

tool called Fat Chance. Fat Chance was

designed with the specific purpose of

warming up the creative-thinking parts of

people’s brains. The tool can be used before

30-minute idea-generation and problem-

solving workshops or one-day blue-sky

thinking workshops in which brains need to

think laterally for an entire day.

Fat Chance requires no materials or stimuli

other than one thing: an impossible

challenge. For example, cure cancer by

tomorrow lunchtime. There are two key

elements to creating an impossible

challenge. The first is to pick a goal or an

objective that is almost impossible to

achieve with technology as we know it

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PO Box 1251, Brighton Rd LPO, Elwood,

VIC, Australia 3184

today. The second is to add an incredibly

tight time frame. The tighter the better. For

example, Raise Paris Hilton’s IQ by 100

points by the end of the week. Give birth to

an alien by dinner tonight. Marry Brad Pitt

by noon tomorrow.

After you have developed an impossible

challenge, the next step is to divide the

participants into pairs or groups of three.

This gives everyone a good chance to

participate. Once groups are assigned,

instruct people to generate at least three

solutions to the problem in five minutes.

Encourage those who are finding it difficult

and remind them that the solutions do not

have to be logical or rational – in fact, those

solutions won’t actually solve the problem.

After these five minutes have passed, you

can feel confident that the divergent

thinking parts of people’s brains will be

sufficiently warmed up.

Why does this tool work so effectively? It all

comes back to the impossibility of the

challenge. Given that it is impossible, non-

creative thinking will not lead to a solution.

The problem can only be solved through

taking a leap and thinking very creatively

and laterally. For example, in relation to the

Paris Hilton problem, some solutions might

include bribing the instructor for the

answers, making the IQ test about fashion

rather than general knowledge, or finding

another person named Paris Hilton who

happens to be very smart. Despite the

‘craziness’ of these problems and answers,

groups have then gone on to generate

innovative solutions to real life problems

they were facing.

Eyeing off creativity

In general, the left side of our brain directs

our logical and rule-based decisions; similar

perhaps to a stern headmaster. On the

other hand, the right side tends to be more

inventive and intuitive. Research out of

New Jersey has gone a step further and

found a way to maximise both the left and

right brain hemispheres, leading to highly

practical and highly creative ideas.

The researchers got their participants to

complete a standard creativity test then

split the participants into two groups. One

group was instructed to follow a target that

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f. +61 3 9528 4787

m. +61 (0) 412 6565 38 e. info@inventium .com .au

PO Box 1251, Brighton Rd LPO, Elwood,

VIC, Australia 3184

moved from left to right for 30 seconds,

while the second group looked straight

ahead for the same time.

The participants then completed the same

creative idea generation test. Keeping in

mind that the participants shared

comparable creativity before being split

into groups, the participants who followed

the moving target were much more creative

than those who stared at the wall.

The researchers concluded that moving

your eyes from side-to-side increases the

communication between the left and right

side of the brain, thus resulting in more

useful and creative ideas.

So if your brain is still recovering from the

weekend and you need a kick start, get

those eyes dancing from side-to-side and

feel your brain sing.