Your Next Big Idea: Improve Your Creativity and Problem-Solving In Your Next Big Idea, serial entrepreneur Samuel Sanders shares, with clarity and finesse, the process he’s used since a college class assignment to come up with more than 100 ideas a week. Overall, he aims to help readers learn to be “innovative, creative, good at solving problems, and an ace at coming up with ideas”— skills important in both personal and business arenas.
The book is appropriate for all types of readers, from employees and startup launchers to students and those between jobs. Writing in a straightforward, crisp style, Sanders takes readers from identifying problems, needs, wants and questions to implementing solutions. Along the way, he offers copious creative exercises to warm up the brain and stories that concisely illustrate the concepts.
In one exercise, Sanders challenges readers to imagine a way to make shoes more efficient; in another, he urges his audience to pretend they are aliens charged with solving highway traffic jams. To point out how old habits, societal standards, and assumptions can hold us back, he tells the story of a speaker who pulls out a $100 bill and remarks that “the first audience member on stage” can have it. Bound by closely held stigmas, attendees often hesitate to claim the free money.
Occasionally, Sanders discusses the interesting origins of real-life solutions to problems, from the wheeled suitcase to the noisy bullet train made quieter by borrowing features from three species of birds.
The author includes a short conclusion at the close of each chapter and a recap at book’s end. With his step-by-step format, readers always know where they’ve been and where they’re headed, even as he stretches their brains with his fun prose.
Your Next Big Idea ignites the imagination with a kaleidoscope of ideas and exercises. Even if you have no intention of pursuing “the next big idea,” this book is sure to give you an exciting and fresh perspective of the world around you.
Also available as an ebook.
