“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.”
-Albert Einstein

Quick question. Can you make something out of nothing? For instance, if I handed you a stack of Post It Notes™, told you to get with six of your closest friends, then gave you six days to CREATE something of value using only the Post It Notes™, what would you create? Well that is what groups of aspiring young entrepreneurs from around the globe were forced to do as part of Entrepreneurial Week sponsored by Stanford University. And the ideas that came back six days later proved that imagination is truly the gasoline of progress. To see what they came up with view the YouTube video below.

So what are the lessons learned from an exercise like this? For one, it teaches how imagination is vital to creating value from minimal resources. For instance, you may have a new sales territory with few established customers. So what!  Stop thinking the way you are thinking now. Your imagination can help you make something from nothing. Or perhaps you are a corporate executive trying to put together a plan to take market share away from your biggest competitor. If so, stop thinking like every other executive and start using your imagination. Or perhaps you are an operations manager facing exploding costs that are ruining your balance sheet. If so, it’s time to let your mind go “Post-al.”  Because the sooner you realize that your imagination is more important than your Excel spreadsheet, the sooner you can create the well-oiled company that you always dreamed of.

So here is this week’s exercise. I want you to assemble with one or more people on your team or in your company and engage in an imagination exercise. You may choose to grab some Post It Notes ™ and take 20 minutes of pure imagination time to create something of value using the notes. Or pick a business related challenge that your company can’t seem to overcome and ask everybody to come up with the wackiest ideas they can to overcome it. Then open your mind to the possibility that one of those crazy ideas might just be the solution to make you and your company famous in your industry.