Or so the story goes. Ideas have a way of intruding when you're in the shower or driving your car, but never when you're staring at the computer screen or a blank sheet of paper as the clock clicks closer to your deadline. Wherever it happens, as soon as you get that big idea, you realize it was right there in front of you all the time.

So why go to your computer for ideas? Why pay for software that claims to enhance your creative output when, in the end, all ideas come from your head? Let me suggest two good reasons: 1. Creativity software can be a powerful and plentiful source of ideas.

People who use it work faster and more efficiently, if they use it right. 2. If your competition isn't placing an order right now, it's because they already have it. Of course, creativity software is just a tool. It can't make you more creative, but it can make you a more productive creative person.

Although enough creativity software applications exist to fill a computer store, I've selected two--IdeaFisher and Inspiration--that I believe are the best.

Inspiration

Inspiration is a software program that facilitates mindmapping, a thinking process developed in the '70s that takes superb advantage of the way your brain works. Instead of listing your ideas from top to bottom, mindmapping and Inspiration work from the center out.

You can do this on paper by starting with a central idea and adding your thoughts, connecting them like spokes from an axle. Playfully link ideas, expand others and explore any associations that strike you. Your mindmap should grow like a web.

But Inspiration has advantages over paper. The structure encourages you to build on ideas by recording everything you add and keeping your mindmap legible. You build your mindmap as a series of interconnected boxes. Starting with one box, you type in associations and Inspiration creates more boxes that branch out from the first. If you run out of ideas from that branch or something else pops into your head as you are brainstorming, you can click on another box and start a new branch. Inspiration lets you shoot out ideas as fast as they come to you without worrying about where one train of thought starts and another takes off. You won't run out of room for your thoughts, either. If you change your mind, you can move, duplicate and delete thoughts at will. And when it's all over, you can save, export or print your mindmaps.

The mindmap I created in Inspiration to get some of my thoughts down for this article appears above.* With two keystrokes, Inspiration converted this free-flowing mindmap to an organized, hierarchical outline. Inspiration allows you to pour out ideas, converting your natural thought processes into a linear outline when you're finished.

IdeaFisher

Marsh Fisher, IdeaFisher's developer, worked for more than 10 years developing IdeaFisher, many of them spent sorting thousands of words into hundreds of boxes to create the associative categories on which the program is based. The result is a monstrous database of concepts associated in all sorts of ways. Using IdeaFisher is like brainstorming with someone who never runs out of ideas and refuses to shut up.

IdeaFisher is like a supermarket loaded with ideas about what to eat, most of which you wouldn't think of if you weren't in that environment. As you walk through the supermarket, each item makes you think of something you might have for dinner, generating a lot of ideas in a short period of time. The more ideas you generate, the more likely a really good one will be among them.

IdeaFisher creates mental associations starting from a word or concept. A word-association generator seems like a natural tool for writers, but what about designers? As a designer, the problems you set out to solve are usually expressed in words.

Imagine, for example, that you are creating a logo that needs to express stability. IdeaFisher has 235 entries under the word "stability." Chances are that among those 235, certain words or phrases will conjure stronger images than "stability" itself, suggesting numerous concepts for the logo.

IdeaFisher also lets you compare two concepts for common meanings. Let's say your client wants the logo to say "stability" and "innovation." I can't think of two concepts more alien to each other, but IdeaFisher quickly offered "perpetual-motion machine," "not-invented-here syndrome" and "marriage."

For this article, I compared "creativity" and "computer." IdeaFisher produced 53 associations, among them "design," "designer," "robotic animal," "Silicon Valley," "special effects," "modernize," "plan" and, under the category "People/animals," "gremlin" and "monster."

IdeaFisher also includes a feature called the QBank. If you feel lost at the beginning of a project, IdeaFisher provides several lists of questions to point you in the right direction. The same goes for the middle of a project, when you've collected too many ideas and don't know quite what to do with them. Your clients can also use these questions to narrow down exactly what they want. With the help of QBank, you and your clients should spend less time wandering around in the dark.

Brainlining

Your computer can also connect you to a world of creative people. "Brainlining" is my name for brainstorming online. Wherever people come together to bounce ideas off each other, they generate more and better ideas.

Computer networks make brainlining possible, and the concept has taken off. Major online services are growing at tremendous rates, and the Internet is leaving them in the dust of its own explosive growth. There are no limits to the ways you can brainline. On different systems, the idea exchanges are called threads, messages, conferences or articles. In each case, you post a message. Depending on where you post it, all sorts of people see it. And in the right places, bunches of creative, interesting people offer their feedback.

For several years, I ran an online space for the purpose of brainlining called Right Brains Online. It was host a stimulating mix of members from around the world. Most of us were marketers, but we drew members from a wide range of backgrounds. We exchanged ideas without busy signals, phone tag, appointments or travel. One of our members, Robert Trost in Holland, has organized some of us into what he calls the Global Think Tank (GTT). His method of brainlining involves giving a problem to one member of the GTT who adds ideas and passes the file around to other members, collecting a rich assortment of input from around the world. (For another "pass-the-file" online creativity project, see the sidebar, "Pass It On.")*

Access to Ideas

Your computer can't make you more creative any more than QuarkXPress can make you a better designer. But creativity software and brainlining allow you to out-produce people who don't use them by speeding up the idea process. The more I look, the more ways I find to come up with ideas. Computer software is just one more. As long as you keep your thinking original, you'll never have to worry about the computer taking your place as a source of creative ideas.

Who to Contact

Inspiration

IdeaFisher

Innovation Tools

Peter Lloyd promotes creative thinking through live presentations and his website GoCreate.

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