of the Trained Brain.
In the old days Trained Brains were my support team. Today, I support them as they lead some 90 percent of all Eureka! Sessions.
Yesterday’s Trained Brains were entertaining performers. Style was more important than substance. Today’s Trained Brains are experts at discovering big ideas and developing those ideas into persuasive written concepts.
Yesterday’s Trained Brains were very imaginative. Today’s Trained Brains are also practical and more successful. Today’s Eureka! sessions result in ideas with a five times greater chance of marketplace success than those created by the average brainstorming session as practiced in most organizations.
While today’s Trained Brains are significantly more effective, they haven’t lost the spirit that is the heart of the Eureka! Way. Trained Brains laugh a lot. They’re young for their ages. They long ago stopped heeding the advice of their elders to straighten up and fly right. Their eyes are wide open with wonder.
Trained Brains don’t fit in, but they never feel left out. They avoid the beaten path and the well-worn rut as a point of pride. Somehow, they’ve been able to resist the corrosive forces of cynicism. They have a pure, simple way of seeing and an ability to extract the fresh from the mundane.
Most of all, Trained Brains have a gift for shaking it up, twisting it around, and inspiring companies to make something new happen.
While this book is cast in the first person, it’s an all-encompassing first person. It’s not just me. It’s the collective voice of the entire Eureka! Ranch team. The learning and wisdom of the full-time staff, the Trained Brains and the licensed Growth Coaches.
Friends have asked why I would give away my secrets …
My answer is, it’s the right thing to do. It’s an attitude I picked up while kicking around in juggling circles. The philosophy among jugglers is that if I can teach you a trick and you can teach me a trick in return, we’re both enriched.
Then, too, there are these sentiments from two authorities for which I have the greatest respect:
“He offered me a patent for the sole vending of them (Franklin stoves) for a term of years: but I declined it from a principle which has ever weighed with me on such occasions, that as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of the opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours.”
– Ben Franklin
“When you share ideas, you have more.”
– Kristyn Hall, my daughter, age 5
At the same time, I also respect trademarks, copyrights, and patents. Success today requires a blend of open and protected materials. That means that, by virtue of having purchased this book as opposed to shoplifting it, you are hereby granted a license to use its content to invent ideas for yourself or your company. All I ask is that you use the proper trademarks and acknowledge their daddy at the bottom of your work sheets thusly:
© 1994-2008 Doug Hall
All Rights Reserved, Used with permission
(513) 271-9911
Eureka! Ranch, 3849 Edwards Road
Cincinnati, OH 45244
If you are an author, consultant, or trainer, remember, please, that it is neither nice nor right to steal, commercialize, plagiarize, or make money off this work without first asking permission. For permission call the Eureka! Ranch at (513) 271-9911 or e-mail me at [email protected]. Or else my wicked good lawyer, Patty Hogan, will call and have a chat with you.
NOTE: To date, I’ve never said no to anyone who has properly asked permission to use or reprint portions of my books, columns, or radio show segments.
FREE HELP: The Eureka! Ranch team offers a number of free services. Visit http://www.eurekaranch.com to learn how you can get free help with thinking smarter and more creatively about your challenge.
The Future Is Bright
The rising sun that is part of the Eureka! Ranch logo is a reference to Franklin’s speech on the final day of the 1787 Constitutional Convention, as delegates were signing the document. Pointing to the carving of a partial sun at the halfway point on the horizon decorating the back of convention president George Washington’s chair, Franklin said: “I have often … in the course of the session … looked at that sun behind the President without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting. But now at length I have the happiness to know it is a rising and not a setting sun.”
So, too, do I have the happiness of knowing that the future of creativity is great. The sun is rising on a renaissance age of invention. The Internet, the global community and new technologies have made it possible for everyone—no matter who they are or where they are—to discover, develop, and sell big ideas.
Act 1
Brain Training
“When Doug meets Disney, creativity ne’er wanes; our team explodes when he jump starts our brains!”
– Ellen Guidera, Vice President, Walt Disney Company
1
INNOCENCE
“While we may not be able to control all that happens to us,
we can control what happens inside us.”
– Ben Franklin
Creativity starts with the willingness to look at the world through innocent eyes. It involves shaking ourselves from our prejudices and established thinking patterns. Copthorne MacDonald, an expert on the cultivation of wisdom (http://www.cop.com), explains how innocence helps us discover new insights:
“We find ourselves looking at the same old data, but we now see it in a dramatically different way. We experience another valid, and sometimes more significant way of understanding what is.”
Sadly, the world grinds away at our trust and our innocence. Experience teaches us to doubt, to scoff and roll our eyes. In no time at all, the world can turn a genuinely creative individual into a Real World Adult. At that point, there’s not much of the real you left—too often, just a job title on a business card, a nameplate on an office door, a number on a badge, a face in the crowd.
Think back. Remember when you were young and the world was a glittering place of limitless possibilities? Everywhere you looked, you found something new and different. Remember the magical feeling that you could do anything simply because nobody was telling you otherwise.
A child’s word is made of spirit and miracles. We sometimes think that children should follow us, listen to us, become like us. Follow a child closely for an hour. Not to teach or to discipline, but to learn, and to laugh.
– SARK,
