50 Generate ideas with metaphor…

Feb 18, 2012 by John Brooker

This week, I went to pick blackberries with the children. I realise some of you assume this means I took them to a computer store to enrich their lives with the pleasure of an e-mail overdose, (makes a change from an E number overdose). In reality we picked the last of the summer’s fruit.  As we picked (and my son ate), I mused on what a great analogy blackberry picking is for idea generation.

You arrive at your site and some big juicy berries hover there, groaning “Eat me, eat me,” (my son politely obliges).  Three pickers ensure rapid removal of these “low hanging fruits.” As you pick one you notice it is part of a ripe bunch and you delightedly strip them.

You bound around several brambles, picking away. Then it gets tougher.

You gently lift prickly leaves to discover one nestling there. You duck down and look up, finding more secreted away; you peer over the top of foliage and find a tantalising bramble just out of reach, so trample down a few nearer brambles and reach them triumphantly, only to find a maggot on steroids eye-balling you with menace.

Next you walk round the tangled mass of vegetation to look from different angles and spy more which have appeared as if by magic. Gradually you find the numbers dwindling but there is always one more you can see, so you “reeeeaaaach” for it. You tease it off its stalk but it slips from your fingertips as a large bramble snags you from behind, two snag your sleeves and you are stuck fast, having to wriggle out of your jacket and wishing you had worn leather.

So

Sit back in your chair and think about blackberry picking. How this might it be an analogy for idea generation?

Here are a few thoughts I had whilst picking:

• You have to make a point of seeking ideas
• There are always obvious ideas, probably evident to your competitors too. You have to get beyond these
• More people bring a greater wealth of knowledge, more potential ideas and more fun, but they aren’t always essential
• Explore ideas, don’t only generate more and more – breadth is important but depth is too
• When ideas are drying up, don’t settle for those you have until you have tried some techniques to generate more
•  Use techniques to take different perspectives and to spark ideas where none seems apparent
• Record all ideas before they slip away
• Give everyone time to think
• Know when to give up, but not too soon (it’s an art not a science)
• Wear leather when generating ideas… hmm, maybe not, but otherwise blackberry picking is a very rich analogy. What else did you think of?

Action

Put a little more effort into your idea generation this week and enjoy it.

To Close

We brought back a couple of pounds (a kilogram) in blackberries and presented them to my wife who told me how much money we had saved by picking them fresh.

I considered the blackberry juice staining my shirt and jeans, the nettle stings on the children’s legs and my rapidly swelling little finger (victim of an unknown predator). “Perhaps” I thought, “it would be less expensive to pick up a packet at Tesco’s.” But then, I never got inspiration for an article pushing a trolley down a crowded aisle.

May your ideas swell like rain drenched blackberries

John Brooker _I Facilitate, Innovate, Transform.

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