The brain has a unique approach to creativity. Several areas of the right hemisphere become highly active, while the visual processing area of the brain experiences diffuse, rather than focused, activity, according to a study by John Kounios, professor of psychology at Drexel University and Mark Jung-Beeman of Northwestern University, who monitored brain activity during creative problem-solving. Another recent study, by Kalina Christoff of the University of British Columbia and colleagues, found that the portion of your mind that wanders can sometimes cooperate with more focused regions of thought to help bring in fresh ideas and insights.

There are a lot of exciting new findings in brain research that suggest creativity involves complex coordination of many areas of the brain in particular, unique ways. Whereas we once might have described creativity as a sort of mental muscle that simply needed to be kept strong, now it appears that creative thought is a higher-level process involving the coordinated efforts of many mental muscles. Pumping a few ions every now and then in a brainstorming session won’t get you into peak creative shape, any more than lifting leg weights will prepare you to walk across Niagara Falls on a tightrope. So, what can we do to be in peak creative condition?

Since creativity requires complex coordination of multiple brain areas and functions, from daydreaming to connecting distant thoughts, it’s important to exercise your creative coordination through a variety of complex creative challenges. Here is a great set of exercises you can use, alone or in a team or staff meeting, to increase creative strength and coordination within the brain:[wcm_restrict]

• Think of ten ways for human beings to fly, aside from the obvious ones involving airplanes or helicopters (this exercise requires the group to think imaginatively and gets them in touch with their sense of fun and fantasy)
• Come up with ten ways to open a jar of jam whose lid is stuck (this exercise brings the group’s imagination into the practical realm and demonstrates that it can come up with useful insights)
• Design three options for “drops” in which one spy could hand off secret papers to another in a public place without any possibility of being seen or caught (this exercise engages the group in process brainstorming, which can be more difficult than product brainstorming)
• Invent a completely new kind of footwear that solves some major problem (this exercise requires people to brainstorm problems as well as solutions, which orients them toward opportunity-finding)

Exercises such as these, performed in sequence, can do a great deal to increase the power of your creative mental functions and prepare you to tackle important challenges at work. It may sometimes feel like play to do creative exercises, but as recent research into brain function shows, creative play uses the same highly-complex mental activities that you need to solve important problems or come up with new designs and inventions.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember]

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About the Author

Alex Hiam (www.alexhiam.com) is the author of more than 20 popular books on business, including Business Innovation For Dummies, Marketing For Dummies, and Marketing Kit for Dummies. A lecturer at the business school at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, he has consulted with many Fortune 500 firms and large U.S. government agencies.