Think Bubbles

This is a linear thinkertoy technique that explains how to map your thoughts so as to spark new ideas.

Think Bubbles is a graphic technique for organising your thoughts. It creates an actual, physical picture of the way your mind blueprints a challenge. Once you project your blurred images onto paper, the process of idea evolution can really begin.

The VP of a light bulb company wanted to increase sales. He wrote “light bulbs” in the middle of a page and connected it with a process, “lighting,” and a system, “4000 distributors.” He wrote down what came to mind, drew bubbles, and made connections.

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The key concepts featured on his initial map were:

  1. Attributes of light bulbs: lifespan, lighting, colors, and decoration.
  2. Markets: industrial, institutional and retail.
  3. 4000 distributors to reach his present market.
  4. Energy management to conserve costs.
  5. “Decoration Management” to enhance lighting quality.

The map became increasingly complex as he worked on it over time, and prompted him to think about his business in various new ways. The bubble that produced the final idea was the one containing “Energy Management.”

The idea: he created an energy management division, which bypassed the distributors and focused on industrial and institutional markets, allowing clients to cut energy costs. He put it this way: “The map led to a cascade of ideas that motivated us to act and create a whole new division.”

BLUE PRINT

When you are caught with a challenge that defies solution, map out your impressions and thoughts about it. Study the map.

All mind maps share five basic characteristics:

  1. Organization. It displays the way your mind works, complete with patterns and interrelationships, and has an amazing capacity to convey precise information, no matter how crudely drawn.
  2. Key words. Ignore all irrelevant words and phrases and concentrate only on expressing the essentials, and what “associations” these “essences” excite in your mind.
  3. Association. Make connections, links, and relationships between seemingly isolated and unconnected pieces of information. These connections open the door to more possibilities.
  4. Clustering. The map’s organization comes close to the way your mind clusters concepts, making the mapped information more accessible to the brain. Once your ideas are clustered, try to adopt the viewpoint of a critic seeing the ideas for the first time.
  5. Conscious involvement. Making the map requires you to concentrate on your challenge, which helps get information about it transferred from short-term to long-term memory. In addition, continuous conscious involvement allows you to group and regroup concepts, encouraging comparisons.