From Shake That Brain by Joel Saltzman:
Most people have the ability to come up with a truly bad solution. But here’s the good news: If you can come up with truly terrible ideas, you’ve got the ability to create great solutions.
As a singer, for example, you could use your real name, Jerry Dorsey, or change it to the worst name a singer could possibly have: Engelbert Humperdinck – an outstandingly bad idea that gave Dorsey a PR hook and helped turn him into a commercial success.
Given a particular problem, question or challenge, generate a list of as many bad ideas as possible. Get your friends or coworkers involved and make it a contest. Focusing on the worst idea, here’s the challenge: How can you tweak this terrible idea into something pretty good?
