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Let's face it. The "secret" to surviving and thriving in business largely relies on our ability to solve problems. Problems with customers, problems with suppliers, problems with employees, or sales problems...they all poses potential setbacks or opportunities. The reason that these can be like diamonds waiting to be found is because most of your competitors are grappling with the same questions also. The "winner" in the marketplace is the one who comes up with the most effective and efficient solution to these challenges.

"So what's the answer?", you say. In a word: brainstorming.

Brainstorming is popular problem solving and innovation techniques in a wide variety of disciplines, like engineering, manufacturing, sales, and resource or project management. To get results from new ideas, this process asks for a fine measure of creativity as well!

Sometimes coming up with new ideas can be a challenge. It may be difficult and/or expensive, then at other times working on the wrong type of idea, can be catastrophic as well! We even need to be creative with our new ideas and how use them, not just how we come up with them!

In many companies research and development often takes a back seat and brainstorming is just one technique you can use to ensure that this business priority does not fall by the wayside!

Novel, weird or even off-the-bat type ideas might not always be practical or *wise*, but sometimes this is where genius resides and reveals itself. Absurdity oftentimes prove to hold some creativity keys that leads us to say that in brainstorming we never criticize, we generate new ideas first, and not evaluate them! THIS IS THE FIRST AND GOLDEN RULE OF BRAINSTORMING! (initially at least!)

No matter how wild or crazy it might seem, ideas sometimes come from the strangest people and places we could possibly imagine. It can be quite a challenge, obstacle and task both personally and collectively to let go and just be creative. We are taught to be in control, not absurd and this might actually hamper our own and dynamic interaction, innovation, inspiration and brainstorming. We need to create and environment conducive to coming up with GREAT, NEW IDEAS! It is sometimes counter-intuitive, wild and crazy... and we need to learn to be OK with it!

When you develop a culture of brainstorming and provide yourself and your co-workers with the tools and time to generate ideas, you give yourself an edge that could be the difference between dominating the field or being just an "also-ran".