Red Thread Thinking: Weaving Together Connections for Brilliant Ideas and Profitable Innovation

2Stop Brainstorming and Take a Shower

A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.

—MARK TWAIN

A Mind of Your Own

Eleven men and women file into a conference room and take their places around a large table. Coffee cups and pastries are assembled in front of them. George, the leader, steps up to a large whiteboard and scrawls across the top “SOAP STORM SESSION 9/18/12.” “Okay, let’s begin,” he tells the group. “Let’s just start free-associating. What do we think of when we think clean laundry?” he asks. “To get the ball rolling, I’ll write a few words down,” he says and dashes off chore, piles, whites and brights, and fresh on the board. “What else?” he asks. Several people add a few more words: time-consuming, fold, bright, uncontaminated, ...