By Jonathan Halls

Many ways to slice an orange
Just as there are many ways to slice an orange, you can also slice a concept or idea like creativity in many different ways.

Like slicing an orange, the way you slice or break down an idea will either make it easier or more difficult to digest.

But like an orange, it doesn’t matter whether you slice it into four pieces or peel it and then eat each individual piece, it’s still an orange.

Before I start to help you become more creative, I want to acknowledge the many thinkers who have also sliced the concept of creativity into different models.

Many of these ideas have influenced my thinking and challenged my own prejudices.

So when I share with you the 3 stage ICE model, I don’t do it to say others are wrong.

Simply, this is a process that works and is easy to follow.  It’s a model that has been developed and refined from my own experience teaching and coaching creativity.

ICE: The model

I believe there are three stages to creating an idea, concept, product, story or broadcast.

To remember them I’ve developed a pneumonic called ICE. It simply reminds us of the three stages of creativity. They are:
 

I'll explain each of these stages to you.

Imagine

The first stage of creativity is imagination. A lot of people think of creativity as being only this first stage of coming up with great ideas.

The imagine stage is about dreaming up ideas that make us go ‘wow.’

This stage is about developing ideas that are new and exciting and have never been thought of before. It’s also about looking at existing ideas from a totally new perspective.

Some people falsely believe that people are born with imagination and some aren’t. This is wrong. Anyone can dream up new ideas. 

And what is exciting about this is that you can use numerous techniques to stimulate your creativity.

Some of the resources on this look at how you can use these skills in your job, at home or in your church or community.  

We also have resources for leaders and managers who want to develop a creative culture in their teams or organization.

Dreaming is for everyone

Some people think the whole idea of dreaming and imagination belongs to people traditionally associated with the liberal arts.  Such as musicians, poets, artists, cinematographers and authors.  

Using your imagination to solve problems is important in every area of life from business to politics to relationships.

The Imagine stage of ICE Creativity is about dreaming up all sorts of ideas.  The more the better.  The more ideas you have, the better the choice for when you choose the best to put into action.
 
Critique
The second stage for creating something original and exciting is critiquing ideas. I’ve chosen not to use the word criticism because today it has come to hold negative values.

I know the verb critique is sometimes considered pretentious these days.  But it’s original meaning as used in the 19th is about weighing up an idea against a series of criteria and that’s exactly what we do at this stage.  Critiquing is not being negative and it is a process that makes no value judgment.

Funneling Process

True creativity is like a funneling process. The first stage, imagination, is all about letting go of preconceived ideas and dreaming up loads of ideas including the ridiculous.

It’s about being bizarre. It’s about being silly and childish and coming up with more ideas than you would ever need.

The 2nd stage, critiquing, is about sifting through the ideas for the nuggets of gold.

Just as a miner has a set of visual criteria to recognize gold nuggets among quartz and other minerals, creative people develop and use criteria to recognize the golden ideas that can be implemented.

There is a science to this and it’s important to develop the right criteria against which to critique ideas.

Often people find the critiquing stage easier to handle than the imaginative stage.  Perhaps this is because we are trained not to be imaginative because it upsets the apple cart and can be high risk.  But both stages are just as important.

The truly creative person must be able to switch between being imaginative and constructively critical.  

Execute

A lot of ideas fail because they have not been executed.

I’m using the word execute because to start a software programme on a computer, you have to fire off the ‘exe’ file. Exe is short for execute which simply means start and put into action.

Just as an exe file in software starts a piece of software, creative people also need to start or execute their ideas.

A lot of people are highly imaginative or very analytical but fail to create because they just don’t put their ideas into action.

Whether it is writing a business plan or just getting up and acting on a simple idea, execution is an important stage of being creative.

There are ways we can make the execute stage more efficient and we need to focus on this if we actually want to turn an idea into reality.

Creativity literature

The processes of developing your creative juices are the same whether you use them in media, art, business or manufacturing environments.

Creativity is about your frame of mind and being able to switch between different mindsets. The more developed your skills are in working within these mindsets, the more creative you will be.