Need Fresh Ideas? Go Streetcombing

Richard Stomp is a Dutch innovation consultant, as well as the founder and Chief Wow Officer of “WowIdeas”.  Richard coined the term “streetcombing” (he presented his concept at the 2008 Creativity World Forum).

The term “streetcombing” is derived from “beachcombing”; as we know, a beachcomber is someone who walks along the beach looking for objects of value or interest.  Similarly, a streetcomber  is someone who walks the streets looking for ideas.

Richard argues that people who constantly need to find fresh ideas should make it a point to go out on the street once a week and follow the streetcombing six-step process described below.

1.  First, you have to find a street. Preferably, look for an interesting street where new shops are popping up every week.  That is, look for a street that’s just starting to get hip.

2. Then you have to watch and look for something interesting.  However, you have to cultivate the right attitude.  Richard argues that you need to keep an attitude which he calls “mind like a child”: forget everything you know, and be very curious.

3. The third step is taking pictures of everything that you find  interesting.  Take lots and lots of pictures.  At this step you don’t stop to ask yourself why you’re taking a picture of a particular object or person, you just take pictures of everything that you find interesting.

4. You go home and put all of the photographs on your computer.

5. Then you look through the photographs and ask yourself: What is the concept behind this picture? Why did I take it?  What makes it interesting? This is the hardest part.

6. The last step is to take the concept you found in Step 5, apply it to your own business, and start generating ideas.

Look at the mindmap below which illustrates this six step process (if you’re reading this in a Reader, or by email, you might have to click over to the blog to see the mind map):

Streetcombing –

You’ll notice that at the bottom of the mind map there are three photographs which Richard uses to illustrate his point about generating new ideas through streetcombing.

The first photograph shows some beer crates in a balcony that have been used to build a wall. The concept to be derived from this photograph is putting objects to a different use than what they were originally intended for.

The second example is an electricity house; electricity houses are dull little buildings.  That is, they’re dull until you paint them to look like the gingerbread house in the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale.  The principle behind this photograph is adding fun to dull objects.

The third and final example consists of designer sugar.  Richard found sugar in a gourmet food shop near his office which is shaped in such a way that you can attach it to the edge of the cup.  The owners of the shop that sells this sugar added “design” to ordinary sugar cubes.  They charge a lot more for them than what you would pay at the grocery store for ordinary sugar; that’s what design does for you.  Where can you add the concept of “design” to your products or services that will allow you to charge more for them?

Conclusion

Richard explains that you can also go museum-combing, Ikea-combing, supermarket-combing, newspaper-combing, and so on.  He adds that ideas are everwhere; you just have to make a point of looking for them with the right attitude.

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photo credit: wili_hybrid

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• Mind Maps: Everything You Need to Know
• 20 Creative Thinking Techniques
• Lateral Thinking: Think Out-of-the-Box
• Creative Thinking Techniques: The “Playful” Edition

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