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Creativity starts with having a method for finding ideas.
In "The Idea Hunter: How To Find The Best Ideas And Make Them Happen," management scholars Andy Boynton and Bill Fischer examine the world's most creative people and companies — with tons of best practices to be found inside.
"Habits and behaviors are more important than sheer brain power," Fischer says. "It's not the brightest who perform the best, but it's people who have figured out how to really prosper in an idea-rich society."
We've highlighted some of the best takeaways from the book, and added in a few more methods brilliant minds have used to make breakthroughs.
Aimee Groth and Jhaneel Lockhart contributed research to this article.
Get to know your competition.
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Sam Walton's curiosity is one reason Walmart's become one of the world's largest corporations.
He was constantly on the road, visiting stores and figuring out everything he could about how they worked. In "The Idea Hunter," former COO Don Soderquist recalled his second meeting with Walton:
"The next day was Saturday, and I went shopping, dressed in a pair of mangy cutoff jeans — at the Kmart near my house. I walked over into the apparel section and saw this guy talking to one of the clerks. I thought, 'Jeez, that looks like that guy I met yesterday. What the heck is he doing way out here?' I strolled up behind him, and I could hear him asking this clerk, 'Well, how frequently do you order? ... Uh-huh ... How much do you order?' ...
"He's writing everything she says down in a little blue spiral notebook. Then Sam gets down on his hands and knees and he's looking under this stack table, and he opens the sliding doors and says, 'How do you know how much you've got under here when you're placing that order?'
"Finally, I said, 'Sam Walton, is that you?' And he looked up from the floor and said, 'Oh, Don! Hi! What are you doing here?' I said, 'I'm shopping. What are you doing?' And he said, 'Oh, this is just part of the educational process. That's all.'"
In other words, get to know how your competition works, so you can top them.
Listen to your customers.
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Jim Koch, founder of the Boston Beer Company, known for Samuel Adams Boston Lager, came up with the idea for selling beer while talking to a stranger he met in a bar.
The man was drinking a Heineken. He said he liked the imported beer even though it tasted "skunky," Koch recalls.
Then, a realization dawned on Koch: There was a market for a high-end beer with a fresh taste, which could come from a domestic brewery.
"To me, ideas come from real-world stimulation," Koch said.
Take long walks.
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Big thinkers are often brisk walkers: Friedrich Nietzsche, Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, and Aristotle all made long walks a part of their idea-generating process.
Now, Stanford researchers Marily Oppezzo and Daniel L. Schwartz have confirmed the connection between steps and thoughts.
In a new study, they found that participants who went for walks saw an 81% increase in tests measuring divergent thinking, a thought process associated with creativity in which you generate lots of ideas.
"Given what we found, if you have a task that requires many ideas, going for a walk — even around an office — appears to give you a fresh perspective," Oppezzo says. "Also, if you can't do a walking meeting because it's awkward or you need to take notes, going for a walk beforehand seems to be a good prescription."
See the rest of the story at Business Insider