How to Have Creative Ideas: 62 exercises to develop the mind

Everybody wants to be creative. Creativity makes life more fun, more interesting and more full of achievement, but too many people believe that creativity is something you are born with and cannot be learned.

In How to Have Creative Ideas, Edward de Bono (the inventor of lateral and parallel thinking) has created 62 different games and exercises built around random words, to help encourage creativity and lateral thinking. For example, if the task were to come up with an idea for a new restaurant, and the random word chosen was “cloak,” ideas generated might be: a highwayman theme; a Venetian theme with gondolas; masked waiters. Or, if asked to make a connection between the two random words “desk” and “shorts,” readers might come up with: both are functional; desks have knee spaces and shorts expose the knees.

All the exercises are simple, practical and fun, and can be performed by anyone.

Dr. Edward de Bono is widely regarded as the leading authority in the direct teaching of creative thinking. He is the originator of the term “lateral thinking,” and his books have been translated into thirty-seven languages.