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Brain Boosters for Business Advantage: Ticklers, Grab Bags, Blue Skies, and Other Bionic Ideas

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Teams who have to create on-demand inevitably find themselves in need of new techniques for getting their mental juices flowing. As the pressure builds, efforts to be "creative" often result in long, unprofitable sessions of mutual angst and long lists of second-rate, derivative ideas. Brain Boosters for Business Advantage: Ticklers, Grab Bags, Blue Skies, and Other Bionic Ideas is creativity guru Arthur VanGundy's playful collection of genuinely fun exercises for massaging the mind. Each of the 101 activities is clearly described and illustrated, with a facilitator's insight into group creative process, and a scholar's devotion to accrediting original sources. Exercises are for both individual and group mindbending, but most are extremely suitable for team brainstorming. VanGundy isn't afraid to let us know which activities are his favorites. Among his favorites, one of mine is called "Balloon, Balloon, Balloon." It has just the right amount of zaniness and physical activity to loosen up mind and body. First, people are asked to write "silly, nonsensical phrases" on slips of paper. Some examples: "worm lips on parade, "rhubarb ink javelins," "rotating cat lemons," and "vibrating elephants in your ear." Next, the slips of paper are rolled up and put into balloons of different colors. Participants tap the balloons around the room for a few minutes, collect one balloon of each color, pop the balloons and use the combined nonsense to create new ideas. For example: "Pen holders built into a chair's arms (from "arms" and "rhubarb ink javelins.") and "A built-in stereo radio in the top of the seat back (from "back" and "vibrating elephants in your ear")." VanGundy is careful to guide the reader through the collection, recommending his favorites, indicating which of his Boosters would be best for which purpose: strategic problems, product and process problems, advertising/marketing problems, and people/human resource problems. He introduces the collection with some hard-earned wisdom about the nature of creativity and group under pressure. His chapter on Creativity Principles is comprehensive, succinct, and worth committing to memory. His one basic rule: "defer all judgment when generating ideas."

I'm the author of "Thinkertoys (A Handbook of Business Creativity)," ThinkPak (A Brainstorming Card Deck," and "Cracking Creativity (The Secrets of Creative Genius)," and, as such, I, generally read most everything that hits the market. Without hestitation, Andy Van Gundy's book ranks as one of the best. It's an excellent collection of techniques. Perhaps, one of the best on the market.

Mr. VanGundy has written a book which is very helpful if you are looking for a book which is brief, precise and before you start to use any of the systems it is very accessable to look for the right kind of system in any given situation. I simply love the "professor" approach, as the creativeness is at the end all up to you!

Arthur Van Gundy was one of the better known names in the field of creativity. In this work he features "brain boosters", or idea generation exercises to stimulate individual and group ideas. Some exercises have been featured elsewhere, and Van Gundy gives their creators their due. For example, he draws a lot on the work of Doug Hall. The exercises are divided into those that use material related to the problem and those that don't as well as between exercises that encourage outward, joint group involvement as opposed to those which use individual thinking which is later exposed to the group. Based on my reading of other creativity works, it appears that virtually all of these exercises should yield some results because they all encourage the breaking of prior thinking patterns, a key step in coming up with creative ideas. I was surprised by how lame and mundane some of the resulting ideas are, although that is often likely when a first round of idea generation is attempted. I suppose I was expected to be wowed by the examples. A book like this should be used as a resource of exercises but not as a way to understand the theory behind creativity. Or as someone commented to me at a bookstore, without reading some of Edward De Bono's works on lateral thinking (which explains the how and why of creativity) the exercises are only gimmicks.