LINK HERE!!
This is a link to a site that provides a list of 14 ways to think outside of the box and generate new, fresh ideas.  The suggestions supplied here are intended to shake the reader from their everyday realm of thinking and allow their creative process to prosper. Some of the ideas are actually very good, and a few of them stood out to me:

#2 Immerse
The basic principal of this suggestion is if you have an idea you think may have the possibility of turning into something greater you should allow it to, in a way, consume you.  Think of all the aspects of your idea and from every angle imaginable.  It points out how big companies like Google, 3M and W.L. Gore give their employees a significant amount of on the job time that is supposed to be dedicated to them immersing themselves in their own personal projects.  Apparently these companies see the opportunity for advanced creativity that may arise as a result of encouraging their employees to use their creative process for more personal projects that may spark their minds to think more openly and bring that to their job.  This idea really makes sense if you think about it though, the more time an individual spends working on a specific topic the more they should be able to discover and learn about it.  Logically the same can be said when it comes to learning about and exploring new ideas.  When you want to become good at something it requires lots of practice and what better way to practice something than to immerse yourself in it! I may implement this process when trying to write a script about a historical event, by surrounding myself with all the info possible concerning that time period.


#3 Tolerate Ambiguity
The basic principal of this idea is to be okay with not knowing quite what your doing and to be okay with failure.  The thought here is that, first of all, not knowing isn't necessarily a bad thing.  When you don't quite know what you are doing you are at the same time generating as many ideas as you can for what alternative could possibly allow you to be successful.  Not only does this process allow you to potentially solve what your trying to, but it also may provide you with ideas for other new things that you wouldn't have even fathomed without stumbling onto them accidentally.  Learning from failure is an important part of this principle as well.  When an idea fails to solve the problem you are working towards it doesn't necessarily mean that solution is a complete failure.  The failure could be teaching you more about the aspect you are trying to solve because you will know one more way that isn't a solution, the example that Thomas Edison failed 800 times before inventing the first successful light bulb is used with great emphasis to bring home this point. I could use this strategy to help me when attempting to find the perfect ending to story or video I create.


#5 Fantasize
This suggestion for thought is perhaps the most obvious on the entire list.  To fantasize is to sit and think, plain and simple.  In order to come up with new ideas it is necessary for you to think about them.  By fantasizing you are given the opportunity to think of ideas and solutions, regardless of whether or not they are at all realistic or even possible.  Fantasy has brought us such great ideas as unicorns, mermaids, spider-man, superman, the loch ness monster, dracula, frankenstein, zombies, harry potter, frodo baggins, gandolph, luke skywalker, darth vader, pikachu, bulbasaur, the list could go on and on for eternity.  Fantasy calls for the purest of creative ideas, ideas that are not possible anywhere but inside of the mind of the individual.  Some may be possible i suppose, and for practical purposes those would be the ones a person may follow to find their most preferred solution.  I feel as though the suggestion to fantasize to gain ideas is one you really do not need to tell people, because your just asking them to think! I could easily employ this tactic when working on an idea for a new internet short and have trouble generating practical ideas.


I actually employed idea number 5 and fantasized as a means to solve one of my own predicaments.  A friend and I have been attempting to create an internet short to put on youtube and in turn achieve internet stardom.  Out principal idea had been the concept of having a gay ghost inhabiting the dorm room and sexually harasses the inhabitants.  In fantasizing what might happen if a gay ghost were to in fact haunt a college dorm room, we were able to generate some extremely creative and unique ideas and generate our first script.  Hopefully the script will make the transition into being shot some time in the near future.