Do you get your best ideas in the bathroom? If you answered yes, you’re in the majority, according to research conducted by thinking expert and occasional Anthill contributor Ken Wall and three colleagues.
The anecdotal research into where the best ideas come from involved thousands of participants across varying industries in South Africa, Singapore, Canada, the US and Australia.
So where do people have their best ideas? According to the research findings, the top five places are:
- Shower, bath, bathroom (57%)
- Bed (51%)
- Driving or passenger (42%)
- Walking (28%)
- Exercise, running, swimming (25%)
According to Wall, the common theme linking all these places/activities is that they all involve the person doing something other than just thinking about the problem.
“During the course of talking to thousands of people, nobody has ever said that they get their best ideas at work,” says Wall. ”Let’s face it, if you spend your life in a grey cubicle, it’s not exactly going to inspire great insight.”
In light of the research findings, Wall offers organisations some advice for creating an ideas workplace:
- Create the creative space and bring in easy chairs or bean bags
- Go for walking meetings
- Take a packed lunch and go to a park
- Have one team member act as the facilitator, using a tried and tested idea generation and evaluation method.
Photo: brain_blogger (flickr)
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View Comments
Amanda
January 28th, 2010 at 4:16 am
I’m really interested in this! Paul, can you say more about the research? Are the full research findings available somewhere? I’d like to cite them if possible. Thanks!
[Reply]
Paul Ryan Reply:
January 28th, 2010 at 9:38 am
Hey Amanda. I’ll send you what I have via email. You might want to contact Ken directly.
[Reply]
The top 5 places people have their best ideas!
April 1st, 2010 at 3:52 am
[...] I must give credit to Australian Anthill as I have taken this from their article on the topic. I found it interesting however so thought it [...]