Rather than waiting around for lightning to strike, take a more proactive approach. You can provoke your own imagination. One of the most effective, powerful, and fun tools we have created for such self-provocation missions is what we call “Analogous Exploration.”

A fascinating psychology study reveals a disturbing truth: the world around is ripe with potential inspiration that is far too often unrealized simply because we aren’t looking.

When we ask alumni about the most transformative tools they learned under our tutelage, they regularly mention this. Here’s a brief description of one of the most powerful tools we teach.

It is the things that never occur to us that often cause the biggest problems. There are entire schools of thought dedicated to unearthing assumptions, rooting out bias, etc. Here are two simple bias checks worth regularly revisiting.