How to come up with great ideas

Andrew Gibson reveals how he comes up with his best ideas 

CREDIT: This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared on Management Today

I don’t believe in waiting for ideas. The world has too many gurus and too few moments of genuine inspiration. I just don’t buy it.

Yes, unforeseen connections might come to you in moments of soft focus, but I find that collision of headspace and topic almost never align, and when faced with things like timelines, or quarterly reporting or shifting needs, going for a bike ride or seeking out a big pile of ironing don’t feel like credible options.

So, instead, I do my level best to explore every option systematically and methodically.

If I haven’t lost you already, let me tell you about a book called The Checklist Manifesto. In it, Atul Gawande talks about how something as simple as making a checklist of all the tools you need for surgery can save thousands of lives. I don’t profess to save lives, but I do believe in checklists – so here’s mine:

• Can I solve this tactically, or is it a strategic question?

• Is this about my competition or is there another enemy here?

• Can I lean into a preconception, or do I have to break one?

• Do I need to put pressure on people, or can I release some they already have?

• How do people already connect with this brand – do I have to create a new connection?

• Is this about urgency or relevance?

• What would my competition least want me to do?

Seven questions that are by no means exhaustive but I guarantee that if you go through each of them, and think about both sides, at the very least you’ll generate some options to explore – even better if the question isn’t immediately applicable to those questions.

Where can a checklist like this lead you? Running a Channel 4 partnership with Eve Sleep or

creating a Carling promotion called ‘Brighton or Barbados?’ where people bought a bank holiday getaway but didn’t know where they were going to until the week before.

So, there it is; seven simple questions that might just save you a whole lot of cycling and/or noise of various colours.