You do not need to be a creative genius to innovate effectively, and you do not need to be a comedian to win the The New Yorker cartoon caption contest. In both cases, what you need is a lot of ideas, and a technique to tip the odds a bit in your direction.
Admittedly, the odds of both are daunting. Historical evidence shows that only .2% of the some 183,000 patents granted annually by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office become successful innovations each year. In the case of The New Yorker, cartoon editor Robert Mankoff recently wrote that “So far there have been 1,449,697 entries and 254 winners. So, roughly, that puts the odds at 10,000:1.”
I beat those odds—winning the contest in February 2008 on my third attempt, using an easy, everyday technique that should be the staple of every attempt at creative, innovative thinking./quote]