Stoking Your Creative Streak
Here are two articles I've written for the Public Relations Institute of Australia. The first is entitled Stoking Your Creative Streak. The second is entitled

Verifying Ideas
The final phase to finish a brainstorm - Verify - means ensuring the ideas do what you need them to do. Like most things in communications, there are three messages: 1. Re-review the central problem or critical issues. Do your best ideas help address, eliminate, minimise or neutralize the problem or issue? Can you cluster like ideas together around each probl

Amplifying Ideas
One of the important phases of bringing a brainstorm to an efficient close is "amplifying" the average, medicre and half-ideas together, to create a better idea. First, clean-up the flipchart pages. Ask the group to help bring order to the flipchart pages. Quickly review and fill in any words left out when writing the ideas down on flipcharts. Remove unneeded flipchart pages. Go through all pages, and circle or highlight the 3-5 words which encapsulate the concept behind the core ideas, good or bad. I prefer to use an entirely separate colour or a bright highlighter to vi

Wrapping Up a Brainstorm
There’s more to finishing a brainstorm than simply calling the meeting to an end. The last 15-20 minutes should be devoted to three parallel steps which collectively examines and analyses the initial ideas on the flipcharts, and finds ways to transition them into something useful and tangible. Using a bit of helpful spelling, the three phases all end in “-fy” – Clarify, Amplify an

50 Phrases That Kill Creativity
Love this: the 50 phrases that kill creativity. Go here to read Dave Dufour's all-to-familiar list.