This is an individual (rather than a group) technique, useful for both problem solving and idea generation.  It involves introducing a completely random element into thinking about a problem or challenge in order to stimulate your mind to find new patterns and connections. This is a very quick, simple and popular technique.

The whole point about creative techniques is that they open your mind up to think in a new way. So if you repeatedly use the same technique, you are defeating the object. That's not to say that it will never work, but it will be less effective because your mind will simply get stuck in a new rut.

Random stimulation is one of the techniques people are most frequently guilty of using too often. But the reason for this is that it's very simple, quick and effective. If you haven't used it before, or haven't used it recently, it is a valuable technique to try. It works well when you feel your thinking about a particular problem or chal­lenge is too rigid, and you want a fresh approach.

Take a random word, generally a noun, and think about it. Then relate these thoughts back to your problem, or the product or service you want to develop. It doesn't always work, but then it takes so little time it doesn't matter if it takes a few goes to get a result. It works surprisingly often.

The important thing is to pick a genuinely random word. Don't look for one that you think is going to be productive for the subject in question. Make sure that you arrive at the word by chance. And don't give up on it too quickly. Spend a good five minutes or so thinking about it, and noting down your thoughts, before you decide to try another word or another technique. If you try again with another word, give yourself a break. It can work well to try a fresh word each day until your problem is resolved. If you know that you have to wait a whole day before trying again, it can deter you from giving up too easily on the first word you find.

Choosing a word: The key to random stimulation is choosing a suitable random word. The best words to use are nouns which are simple and which sum­mon up a visual image. You also want words that make you think of lots of other images. For example, the word water might make you think of the bath, or washing up, or the sea, or drinks. You can simply open a dictionary or a newspaper and point with your eyes closed, bear these points in mind – the words should be simple, visual, and stimulate other images.

Write your own list of 60 words. Number these and, when you want to use one, look at the second hand of your watch. What-ever number of seconds it points to is the reference number for the word on your list.

Example: Suppose you are looking for ways to reduce your travelling time between meetings. You select a word at random — let's say it's octopus. Think about an octopus for a while:

	it has eight legs;
	it lives in the sea;
	it swims;
	it changes color according to its emotions;
	you can eat it; and
	it has three hearts.

After thinking about the word octopus for a while, go back to your original problem with travelling time, and think about the two things together. Can you see any connection? Does the word octopus give you any ideas? How about these?

An octopus has eight legs. If you could be in eight places at once, you would solve a lot of your problems. How about tele­conferencing? Or rescheduling your time so that you arrange appointments and meetings geographically — all your meetings at the office on a Monday, in the city center on a Tuesday, to the north and west of town on a Wednesday and so on.

What about the fact that an octopus has three hearts? What if you had three locations you worked at, and encouraged as many people as possible to meet you at the one nearest to them. Pick three places that you have to visit from time to time anyway — your office and two other company sites for example.

Or, thinking about eating octopus, meet people for business lunches. That way you can use the lunchtime you save to travel in, and you still get to eat.

The same word might have given you a completely different set of ideas, but this is an example of how random stimulation can lead you to look at your problem or challenge in a completely new way.

One excellent, real life example of random stimulation is the development of distortion-free glass. Alastair Pilkington, of Pilkington Brothers, had spent years trying to find a way of producing glass without distortions. The production method at the time involved passing molten glass through rollers, which created distortions that had to be polished, and the thinking of the time was that the only way to improve the result was to develop better grinding and polishing techniques.

But one evening, Alastair Pilkington was doing the washing up at home. He was daydreaming and watching a bar of Ivory soap floating in the water. He imagined glass floating like the soap, and a sudden realization came to him. He invented a concept called float glass, whereby the glass is made in an oven in which it floats on molten tin. It cools and hardens before the tin, and can then be passed on to the toughening stage of the process without ever going through the rollers which caused the imperfections. The whole grinding and polishing part of the process is redundant, and the glass is distortion-free.

Creativity requires spending time "doing nothing" - workaholism guarantees its death

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