http://www.inventium.com.au/ Back in 2006, Inventium’s founder, Dr Amantha Imber was working as a consumer psychologist in a big advertising agency. The agency had put her through a lot of creative thinking training which she loved. However, when she started getting deeper into researching the field, she realised that all these training companies had done was rip off Edward de Bono techniques from the 70s and re-package them as their own. She thought that, ironically, this was pretty uncreative.

1. p. +61 3 9018 7455
f. +61 3 9528 4787
m. +61 (0) 412 6565 38
e. info@inventium .com .au
PO Box 1251, Brighton Rd LPO, Elwood,
VIC, Australia 3184
Inventium
http://www.inventium.com.au/
Back in 2006, Inventium’s founder, Dr Amantha Imber was working as a
consumer psychologist in a big advertising agency. The agency had put
her through a lot of creative thinking training which she loved.
However, when she started getting deeper into researching the field,
she realised that all these training companies had done was rip off
Edward de Bono techniques from the 70s and re-package them as their
own. She thought that, ironically, this was pretty uncreative.

2. p. +61 3 9018 7455
f. +61 3 9528 4787
m. +61 (0) 412 6565 38
e. info@inventium .com .au
PO Box 1251, Brighton Rd LPO, Elwood,
VIC, Australia 3184
Amantha had always been a bit of a science geek and kept reading the
jargon-filled academic journals long after leaving university. She noticed
that there were hundreds, if not thousands, of studies being conducted
around the world that looked at what variables increased a person’s
ability to think more creatively and a company’s ability to innovate.
However, she realised that there was a great divide between this great
research that was being done in the world of academia, and what was
actually getting used in the ‘real world’.
So in 2007, she had the idea of starting a company that applied the
science of psychology and neurology to boosting creativity and
innovation - something that had never been done before. Since
Inventium opened its doors, Amantha and her team, have helped
literally thousands of people across Australia, the United States, the UK,
Europe, Africa and New Zealand improve their ability to generate great
ideas.

3. p. +61 3 9018 7455
f. +61 3 9528 4787
m. +61 (0) 412 6565 38
e. info@inventium .com .au
PO Box 1251, Brighton Rd LPO, Elwood,
VIC, Australia 3184
Five ways to inspire
innovation
Ok, so you have identified the need to
innovate within your business or
organisation, but where on earth do you
start? Or perhaps you already have started,
but you have hit a plateau and need to
ramp things up again? Whatever the case,
here are five simple ways you can inspire
your team – and yourself – to innovate.
First of all, make it challenging. No one ever
came up with a great idea from being given
a really simple task. Easy and
straightforward tasks do not breed
creativity. Likewise, when people are
stressed and tearing their hair out, it is not
likely to will come up with any great ideas.
Make sure that both you and your team feel
significantly challenged by the problems
and projects you are working on. When
humans feel challenged they naturally like
to solve these challenges, and when an easy
answer does not immediately present itself,
that is our moment for our creativity to
shine.
Second of all, give people a sense of
progress. Research employee motivation
and engagement and learn how these
impact on innovation and performance. A
recent study revealed that the majority of
managers wrongly believe 'recognition for
good work' (either public or private) to be
the most important factor. However, the
most important factor was revealed to be
'progress'. The study revealed that making
progress was most frequently associated
with high motivation, positive emotions and
innovation, more so than any other
workday event. Managers should therefore
ensure that they are provide goals that
enable progress to be made and
acknowledged. As individuals, we should
also set ourselves small goals that we can
work and progress towards.
Thirdly, provide autonomy. As a manager, it
is incredibly tempting to tell people how to
get from A to B, however, this temptation
must be resisted as it completely kills
innovation. If you simply tell people how to
solve problems, they will lack the
motivation to come up with better solutions
themselves. Instead, ensure people are

4. p. +61 3 9018 7455
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PO Box 1251, Brighton Rd LPO, Elwood,
VIC, Australia 3184
clear on the problem that has to be solved,
and give them the room to explore how
they can get from A to B. When people have
autonomy and flexibility, they come up with
significantly more innovative solutions.
Fourth, you must encourage assumption
crushing. Think about whenever you are
faced with a problem to solve, there is
always a bunch of assumptions sitting in the
back of your head. These relate to things
you automatically assume to be true about
the problem, however, the bad thing about
these assumptions is that they effectively
put up a fence in our brain that limits
thinking from moving beyond that point.
Inspire people to come up with more
innovative solutions to problems by
identifying and then crushing the
assumptions they have by asking
themselves, “What if the opposite was
true?” By asking this question of every
assumption they make, they will get to
some very inventive solutions.
Finally, provide clear problems and
opportunities for people to solve. This
might sound a bit obvious, but few
organisations do this well in regards to
innovation. Asking people to submit any old
idea into a suggestion box will result in a
stack of ideas that are completely off
strategy. To ensure time spent on
innovation and idea generation is as
productive and efficient as possible, make
sure you spend time defining the key
problems and opportunities that you want
your team to innovate around. This means
that the ideas you receive will complement
the overall business strategy.
How to overcome
“Team-think”
Most of us have been a victim of groupthink
at some stage in our working lives. If you
have been sitting with the same team for
the past year, you’ve probably also become
a victim of ‘team-think’.
This happens a lot in companies that deal
with similar problems for their various
clients. I work with several advertising and
media agencies and often the key issue for
many of their clients is generating
awareness for their products. When the

5. p. +61 3 9018 7455
f. +61 3 9528 4787
m. +61 (0) 412 6565 38
e. info@inventium .com .au
PO Box 1251, Brighton Rd LPO, Elwood,
VIC, Australia 3184
agency tries to generate ideas on how to do
this, the strategies tend to revolve around
the same few media channels, such as TV,
print and outdoor campaigns, or creating a
viral video and posting it on YouTube.
Research suggests that teams which have
been together for a while develop a set of
entrenched assumptions, ways of doing
things and set patterns of behaviour. The
good news is there is a cure: introducing a
new member to the team. Studies show
that when a new member joins a team,
existing assumptions, attitudes and
behaviours are far less likely to be
activated. The new person triggers new
thoughts and behaviours.
While it can be tempting to leave
harmonious teams alone, rotating
employees around to different teams
regularly, say every 6–8 months, can
considerably enhance creativity.
When I run idea-generation sessions for
clients, I almost always insist they invite
people who do not work for their company.
I encourage them to include as diverse a
mix of people as possible. For example, in
one workshop for a national postal services
organisation, we had the artistic director of
a circus troupe, a creative director from an
advertising agency, an 18-year-old
university student and a TV host. Needless
to say, the ideas generated in the workshop
were wonderfully varied.
So, rather than try to think creatively on
your own, try to partner up with someone
you don’t normally work with. Use them as
a springboard for fleshing out your ideas
and let them go in directions you wouldn’t
if you were working on your own. Most
importantly, listen to their input and be
open to going in directions you would not
normally.
Creativity loves
boundaries
Letting your mind wander wherever it
needs to, starting with a blank canvas and
being free of rules are all considered
conducive to creativity? However, the latest
psychological research has shown the
complete opposite.

6. p. +61 3 9018 7455
f. +61 3 9528 4787
m. +61 (0) 412 6565 38
e. info@inventium .com .au
PO Box 1251, Brighton Rd LPO, Elwood,
VIC, Australia 3184
In one study, a group of adults was asked to
make a construction using Lego. One group
was given no constraints; they were told
that they could build whatever they liked.
The other group had several constraints
placed upon them; they were told that their
construction must contain no right-angled
joints and they could only use one kind of
brick.
The constructions built by the ‘constraints’
group were judged to be significantly more
creative and lateral than those in the ‘free
expression’ group.
So why does this happen? When completing
tasks, we typically draw on what we know
rather than seeking new ideas and opinions.
Often, information retrieval becomes
automated in our brains because it is useful
and saves us having to come up with new
solutions every time we face a problem. In
other words, when we are assigned a task
to complete, our brains switch into
autopilot if it is a familiar problem.
However, this autopilot mode dramatically
impairs performance when we have to think
of completely novel ideas. Constraining the
way we think forces us to search for new
and creative ways of completing the task or
solving the problem. In a paradoxical way,
putting constraints on our tasks lifts the
constraints on our thought processing.
Here are a couple of tips to help apply these
findings:
- Try to avoid taking on tasks that are
open-ended and overly broad. If you find
yourself in this situation, challenge yourself
to apply a constraint to the task to make
yourself perform more creatively.
- Whenever you feel yourself going into
autopilot, ask your boss to apply a
constraint to the task (or do it yourself).