Bright Idea Deck by Mark McElroy, Mark By, Eric Hotz (Illustrator)

• Table of Contents
• Read an Excerpt

Table of Contents

Read an Excerpt

Welcome to The Bright Idea Deck, a powerful idea processor and brainstorming tool disguised as a deck of cards. With this deck you can solve problems faster, generate new ideas more easily, and think outside the box more effectively than ever before.

• In planning sessions, executives, managers, and corporate employees can use this deck to outline ideas, pinpoint issues, identify assumptions, and run risk-free "what if" scenarios.

• Writers can use this deck to map out storylines, gain insight into characters and their motivations, generate plot twists, and shatter writer's block.

• Marketing departments and advertising agencies can use this deck to boost creativity, make intriguing associations, and prompt ideas for taglines and jingles.

• Corporate trainers and other presenters can use this deck as the basis for intriguing icebreakers, attention-getting games, and memory aids.

• Anyone can use this deck to inspire new ideas, explore options, solve personal problems, weigh the pros and cons of a situation, and build thoughtful and effective action plans.

In short, because The Bright Idea Deck makes it easier and faster to generate new ideas and answers, you can be more confident, creative, effective, and objective than ever before.

What is The Bright Idea Deck?

The Bright Idea Deck consists of seventy-eight illustrated cards. Each card amounts to a visual encyclopedia of related ideas, which suggest hundreds of possible strategies, perspectives, motivations, methods, and answers. Each card can represent or suggest:

• an approach toproblem solving;
• an action to be taken;
• a person (or type of person);
• a moment or situation from everyday life;
• information about an issue or situation;
• a factor that influences, creates, perpetuates, or could resolve your situation.


The illustrations on the cards incorporate a rich and consistent symbolism, making it possible to discover (or create) intricate relationships between any two cards in the deck. As a result, the cards you draw all seem to be about your situation, and all of them seem to relate to each other as well. (In fact, the deck's ability to reflect, analyze, and comment on your situation can seem downright spooky at times!)

Features of The Bright Idea Deck

If The Bright Idea Deck contained nothing but pictures, it would be a powerful brainstorming and creativity tool. (Marketing teams and advertising agencies often employ similar collections of easily randomized images as creativity fuel for brainstorming sessions.) In addition to the pictures, however, the deck incorporates several other features that greatly enhance the effectiveness of the cards.

Structure

The deck contains two major kinds of cards: trump cards and suit cards.

Trump Cards: Trump cards, identified by their purple border, carry more weight than other cards. When working with The Bright Idea Deck, these cards represent methods, motivations, and influences that deserve special attention.

Let's say you ask the question, "What are the two biggest factors influencing my situation?" To guide your brainstorming, you draw two cards, one of which is a trump. In this case, the trump would represent the more influential of the two factors.
Suit Cards. The other fifty-six cards in the deck are divided into four suits: red, blue, yellow, and green. These cards help you see questions and situations from four unique perspectives:

• Red cards concern actions, desires, goals, and intentions-the things you want, and the things you do (or don't do) in order to make them happen.

• Blue cards concern emotions, feelings, perceptions, intuitions, reactions, and prejudices-what you feel and why you feel it.

• Yellow cards concern decision making, logic, mathematics, strategies, responses, judgment, and reasoning-what you think and why you think it.

• Green cards concern material resources, the five senses, physical objects, and the environment-anything you can see, feel, hear, touch, or smell in the world around you


Drawing a majority of blue cards during a brainstorming session prompts participants to focus on how emotions create, complicate, or perpetuate a situation. A mixture of yellow, green, and blue might suggest an exploration of how decisions (yellow) made strictly to save money (green) could impact the feelings (blue) of the people involved.

These four suits provide unique perspectives-the four dimensions of your situation. By assuming a four-dimensional approach to solving problems, you expand your perspective and improve your chances of success.

Numbering

Trump cards are numbered from zero to twenty-one. Suit cards are numbered from one to ten. Numbering the cards makes all kinds of associations possible.

You could assign weights to the cards and pay more attention to those with higher numbers. For example, you might decide the influence represented by the Blue 8 is greater than the influence represented by the Yellow 3.  You might arrange or organize the cards according to their number values. For example, you might choose to see the cards as steps in a process, and decide that Green 2, Yellow 5, and Red 8 represent three sequential steps in that process.  If the Yellow 5, Red 5, and Blue 5 all turn up in a brainstorming spread, you might consider what themes these fives have in common.

The numbers on the cards aren't random! Within each suit, the progression of numbers from one to ten also tells a story: the story of the ten stages we all go through when confronting something new.

The ten stages are as follows:

1. Opportunity. The opportunity presents itself.

2. Duality. We debate how to deal with the opportunity.

3. Productivity. We take some initial action (or refuse to take action) with regard to the opportunity.

4. Stability. We stick with this approach for a while.

5. Instability. Eventually, though, something happens that challenges our resolve.

6. Flexibility. We collaborate with others, call on resources, or draw on our own experience in an effort to accommodate the events around us.

7. Psychology. As we deal with it, the situation begins to influence the way we think; it becomes a part of who we are.

8. Activity. Eventually, this change in perspective alters not only what we think, but what we do as well.

9. Totality. We adapt as completely as possible to the new situation.

10. Finality. This is the point at which the new situation becomes so familiar, stale, overwhelming, or unhealthy that we go off in search of a new opportunity-and so the cycle repeats itself.

The suit cards reflect this cycle of events from four different perspectives. The illustration on the Blue 4 (a young boy being lectured by his mother) is deliberately designed to suggest a stable or stagnant emotional state-in this case, monotony or restlessness.
The result? When you draw the Red 5 (which represents an instability of intention or goals), you might be prompted to reflect back on times when you knew exactly what you wanted (the stable goals represented by the Red 4) and consider what resources you need (the flexibility of the Red 6) in order to move ahead.

Approach Cards

In addition to numbered cards, each suit contains four special approach cards: Learning, Doing, Feeling, and Controlling. In addition to suggesting or highlighting certain approaches to your situation, these cards might also remind you of certain people who employ these approaches.

To discover what qualities a particular approach card represents, pair its approach with the perspective represented by its suit. For example, consider the Blue Controlling card. A Controlling approach card deals with the assumption of control, the exercise of authority, or the imposition of order. The blue suit deals with prejudices, relationships, emotions, feelings, or responses. Combine the controlling approach with the emotional perspective and-voilà!-the Blue Controlling card might represent the desire to solve a problem or control a situation by enforcing prejudices, controlling relationships, limiting feelings, or ordering and organizing perceptions and responses.

Keywords

Each card in The Bright Idea Deck is also assigned a descriptive keyword-a single word meant to capture or summarize the content of the card. The Yellow 8, for example, is a card about the point at which the decision-making process eventually commits us to one course of action while eliminating others. Thus its associated keyword is Restriction.

Some people find keywords greatly enhance their ability to associate the cards with their question or situation. If you like keywords and find them useful (if you need one, for example, to jump-start your brainstorming process), you'll appreciate the fact that this deck's keywords appear within the colored border of every card.

Other people prefer to work exclusively with the images themselves. With this approach in mind, this deck's keywords have been deliberately printed just one shade lighter than the borders on which they appear. As a result, the keywords are visible, but they are also much easier to ignore.

Remember: a keyword is intended to enhance-and never limit-your interpretation of a card. If you like keywords, use them. Should you ever feel restrained or confined by the keywords, you should ignore them entirely.

Associations

Ultimately the cards in The Bright Idea Deck mean what you want, need, or imagine them to mean. That said, the images on the cards were not selected at random. In fact, each illustration was deliberately designed to represent a very specific situation, action, influence, or concept.

The associations listed for a given card provide an over-view of the meanings assigned to each card by its designer. While it's entirely possible (and occasionally advisable!) to use the cards without an awareness of these meanings, you may find your brainstorming sessions become more productive and effective when you incorporate them into your work.

When you get stuck during brainstorming, or if you have difficulty relating a card to your situation, the associations may help you see the card or its contents in a new way. If they enhance your experience with the deck, use them! If they interfere with your creative process, they should be ignored.