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This week’s riff: A quick task for you: please spend the next 30 seconds creating a list of 10 white objects.

How did you do? Now, spend the next 30 seconds coming up with 10 white objects that you might find in a fridge.

If you’re like most people you will have found it easier to think of white objects that you can find in a fridge than white objects in general, which seems a bit counter intuitive. Rather than limiting your thinking, however, giving you the extra constraint of a fridge acted as a catalyst to your ideas and your creativity.

Over the past few months I’ve been working with two different clients that have been looking to grow through organic innovation. In a similar way to the fridge example, we have first been looking to identify and focus on where they have the potential to truly differentiate and lead. Once we agreed these specific areas of focus, the stream of new growth ideas shifts from a trickle to a torrent, and as the quantity of ideas grew so too did the quality.

What steps can you take to develop greater focus around the few points of difference you really want to be famous for, so that you can step change your creativity and deliver some cool innovation, with or without a fridge?

Off The Record: Money For Nothing by Dire Straits

We’ve got to move these refrigerators

We’ve got to move these colour TVs

Now that ain’t working, that’s the way you do it

You play the guitar on the MTV

© Stuart Cross 2014. All rights reserved.