Releasing Your Own *Creativity
- Focus on a specific target
- Don't evaluate your ideas until you have thought of a large number of alterrnatives
- Avoid rigid, set patterns of doing things
- Consider what the best possible outcome would be, temporarily ignore usual constraints on what can be done
- Approach problems/challenges with a child's curiosity; ask questions: How could this be better?
- Be open and receptive to your own ideas and those of others
- Spend time with creative people
- Read about unfamiliar topics; expose yourself to a wide range of different people and experiences
- Don't accept your first "right" ideas, think of as many as possible
- Relax; allow time for incubation
- Look for new relationships to ideas, not "right" or "wrong" answers
- Take risks; forget about "failure."
- Recognize and avoid unwarranted assumptions
- Visualize yourself being successful at whatever you are trying to create
- Break larger problems into sub-problems and work on them at a time
- Set aside some time to practice creative thinking every day
- Be flexible and persistent; keep trying different ideas until you find one that works
Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm
- Winston Churchill

*Excerpts from a creative workshop in 2001 - 2002, organised by the Organisation & Systems Review Branch (OSRB) on its drive to spearhead innovation in MOE.