The Ohsome Inc Blog

Let’s face it, we’re in the business of ideas.  Which can be great when the juices are flowing, and really bad when the well is dry.  In order to keep the juices flowing on a consistent basis, it requires the ability to think of things from different points of view (and we’re not just talking about the customers’ pov, but that is a good habit to get into).

This week, we’re spilling one of our secrets for idea generation: Analogies.  This is a tactic often used in advertising but can be helpful for lots of creative professionals for anything from motivation to team management.  Case in point:

RT @jenohsome: I am to hump day as parking column is to tiny clown car. I crush you because I am strong like ox!

So give it a whirl and remember that you can use colons to represent “is to” which gives you a little bit of inside knowledge that only every sixth grader in English class knows

Creativity Test

As creative professionals, many of us assume that creativity is an inherit trait: you have it or you don’t.  Well, there’s a lot of science that argues that creativity can be learned and even honed into a finely tuned skill.  In the vein of trying to flesh out some ways to work on creativity, we stumbled across Epstein Creativity Competencies Inventory for Individuals or ECCI-i.  What this little quiz does is judge you in four main areas thought to be the main pillars of creativity: New Idea Preservation, Challenge Seeking, Skill & Knowledge Broadening, and Physical & Social Changes.

It tells you what areas you do well in (we, for instance, are rock stars at changing up our environment) and what areas you can work on (skydiving is not our thing, we obviously need to take more risks).

While I wouldn’t put all my eggs in this test, we at Ohsome inc, found it fun and pretty insightful.  Check it out for yourself and let us know your thoughts.  In the meantime, we’ll be signing up to rock crocodiles to sleep in the wild – now that’s risky.