Your Next Big Idea: Improve Your Creativity and Problem-Solving

As Samuel Sanders notes in his introduction to Your Next Big Idea, everything starts with an idea. Indeed, in every facet of life, every successful endeavor originated as an idea in the mind of a person who, for example, spotted a problem that needed to be overcome or an opportunity that was waiting to be seized. But where do ideas come from? And, perhaps more importantly, is it possible to train yourself to come up with more and better ideas? Fortunately, Sanders is able to provide the answers to these and other questions, in addition to offering practical examples to back up his theory.

Since his college days, when he took a class that focused on generating feasible business and startup ideas, Sanders has dedicated himself to understanding the process of ideation and identifying ways of developing increasing numbers of innovative and meaningful ideas. This practice has led to him achieving great success as an entrepreneur and as a curious individual, and he has also been able to share his insights with various business leaders, celebrities, and sportspeople. Sanders believes that enhancing your idea-generation and problem-solving skills represents the key to high attainment in both your personal and your professional life, and he is keen to stress that everyone has the potential for improvement in these areas.

Written in a friendly and conversational fashion, Your Next Big Idea is intended to help everyone, wherever they happen to be on their journey toward enhanced ideation, creativity, problem-solving, and innovation. The book is divided into six sections, which walk the reader through the process of questioning and identifying problems, needs, and wants; erasing stigmas; solving problems; checking the feasibility of ideas; sharing ideas as volubly and broadly as possible; and turning ideas into reality. Taken together, the information presented in these sections, as well as the practical tasks and activities that they prompt you to engage in, serve to brain your brain in such a way as to foster creativity and deduction.

While all of the sections are insightful from a theoretical perspective, the section on erasing stigmas is particularly interesting and useful from a practical perspective, and Sanders notes that it is also the most difficult section of the book. In this context, stigmas are “rules or guidelines that we feel the need to follow, even though they may not apply to our present situation or may not be true at all.” It’s commonly the belief in stigmas that holds people back from pursuing innovation and experimentation. Among the practical exercises suggested to help readers overcome the influence of stigma is a logic puzzle (the fox, chicken, and grain that need transporting across a river), a set of problem statements, and a picture to color in – Sanders’ approach is varied and engaging.

Whether you’re interested in developing your business, enhancing your artistic inventiveness, improving your communication skills, or some other important endeavor, reading Your Next Big Idea is a great way to get your creative juice flowing (even if you don’t quite make it to one hundred meaningful ideas per week!).