Well, I have a pretty large personal library with over 3 dozen books on innovation. It’s amazing how everyone reads about the same thing and everyone has almost the same advice, especially when it comes to the ‘art of brainstorming’. Still, due to all the new social norms being taught in college these days, where every question that is asked of a professor, no matter how stupid, is answered; “Big question”, and then followed by the foul foul English; “Okay then …” followed by a regurgitated response: He’s causing the same nonsense in the brainstorming sessions.

The only possibility today for a brainstorming session that comes up with a brilliant original solution would be to have someone in the group who is already a creative genius who can speak up, defend their concept against politically correct and status quo biases, and personally persuade the group to give in to your idea. Still, this type of person is a true ‘thought leader’ and a legitimate thought leader hardly needs a brainstorming group or any group for that matter in the first place.

Brainstorming no longer works for innovation, and today you can get even more creativity out of a YouTube cat video. Corporate R&D departments are not producing much either considering the huge sums of money they spend on the innovative process. Those who predict the future in order to see through the looking glass are not much better using their methodologies.

Innovation for the future and predicting the future

Let’s take Futurists of the World Future Society (WFS) as an interesting case study. The WFS has seminars to teach you to think like a futurist, symposia with a special emphasis on trend projections and innovation. Isn’t it interesting how all the WFS members are always on the same page and how their predictions are almost always wrong (90% of the time)? Why is this? Perhaps it is because when you teach people to think in a certain way, they lose the creative edge or the ability to do high-level original thinking, as you are confining their thought process to logical thinking. G (Left Brain Thinking) When students wanting to focus on innovation they need to be left and right brain thinkers.

How are we going to return to an America robust in its original thinking and brimming with new ideas, a nation that is so innovative that we cannot even stop the rapid changes in our society and civilization? How can we guide the world into the future if we can’t even innovate out of plastic bags? Consider all of this and think about it.