I’ve always enjoyed brainstorming. In school, it was hanging out in the honors lounge throwing out crazy ideas and having everyone build on top of that until we had something huge. I enjoyed the creativity and the energy that came from thinking outside of the box. Sometimes it felt as if we were using science to take the fiction out of science fiction, but mostly we were exploring the dreams and aspirations that were dancing in our brains freshly loaded with education. As I entered the corporate world, brainstorming was different and at first seemed pointless. I’d throw an idea up on the white board then a bunch of people would explain to me why it wouldn’t work. I thought everyone just had a bad attitude, I thought they had lost their sense of dreaming.

But I learned how to turn that energy around and use it, and it really turned me around as well. I learned to write up on the board each of the reasons they threw at me for things not working, all of the obstacles. Then when we had a good list of 6 or 8, I would go one by one and ask everyone how we could get around the obstacle, remove the obstacle, or just avoid it all together. It was amazing what would happen once a tangible obstacle was put in front of this group of engineers. Their creativity and innovation cells started generating new ideas, and before long we not only had a big idea, we had an excellent plan of how to get it implemented.