The Creativity Faucet encourages us to be relentlessly generative. But it doesn’t tell us what actually makes a great idea.

That’s where a second technique comes in: Relentless Juxtaposition. This is my term for repeatedly combining unrelated elements from different approaches to see if they fit together into something spectacular.

Visualize your creativity as a backed-up pipe of water. The first mile is packed with wastewater. This wastewater must be emptied before the clear water arrives.

Because your pipe only has one faucet, there's no shortcut to achieving clarity other than first emptying the wastewater.

Let's apply this to creativity: At the beginning of a creative... See more