One of my long time Creative tools is the AWESOME Creative Whack Pack (Resources area) created by Roger von Oech. Roger’s Whack Pack is a set of 52 playing cards with different ideas for Creativity. It gets your juices moving! The Whack Pack has been used by most every Fortune 500 company along with the book of the same name.

Here are some of the suggestions:

“Look Somewhere Else – Finding new ideas is like prospecting for gold. If you look in the same old places, you’ll find tapped out veins. But if you venture off the beaten path,you’ll improve your chances of discovering new idea lodes.”

“Get out of Your Box- Each culture, industry,and organization has its own way of looking at the world. Often the best ideas come from cutting across disciplinary boundaries and looking into other fields.”

“Find the Second Right Answer – The best way to get a good idea is to get lots of ideas. Don’t stop with the first right answer you find, look for others.”

“Use A Random Idea – Open your mind up to things that have nothing to do with the idea you’re developing.”

“Find A Pattern – Much of what is called ‘intelligence’ is our ability to recognize patterns. We recognize sequences (the order in which you put on your clothers), cycles (bird migration), processes (how to convert flour, eggs, and milk into waffles), tendencies (if I smile at the checkout-counter girl, she’ll smile at me), shapes (the stars that make up the constellation Leo), and probabilities (the likelihood of throwing a ‘seven’ at a crap table).”

Needless to say there are many more (59 to be exact) cards in the Creative Whack Pack! By the way this came out in 1989. So I have been using this tool for over 20 years!