There is an argument that spending an hour a day on creativity is nonsense ? how can you possibly come up with good ideas to order like that?

Actually, this makes sense. What we're really talking about is creativity and time pressure.

There are two essential arguments, both true.

First, time pressure is helpful in that it causes the participants to identify problems and force out ideas. It gets the participants minds working at problems subconsciously, pushes them from an original state to a goal state. By forcing participants to generate ideas, you increase the size of the idea pool. And since there is a direct relationship with quantity and quality, you increase the probability of generating good ideas.

Second, incubation has a role to play. Richer ideas result when the problem is allowed to incubate at various cognitive levels, so time should be allowed for the incubation progress to take place. When solutions move from the subconscious to the conscious mind, that is called insight.

Concluding, setting aside one hour a day is a good idea ? it is a precursor to the second, incubation phase; it increases the probability that problems will be addressed, ideas will be generated and good ideas will result.

From our research at www.creativity-management.com.

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Kal Bishop, MBA