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2 • Idea Fluency

The term idea fluency simply means that a person has the ability to think up quantities of ideas against a given problem. The value of fluency lies in the fact that the more ideas you have for solving a problem, the greater will be the chances that you will find a really new idea, or at least an idea that is better than anything now in existence.

This, in a way, is just common sense. The human mind, even an ambitious one, is apt to be lazy at times. When it works out one solution to a problem, it is tempted to slip into neutral. That particular problem is "solved." But the best that can be said, ordi­narily, is that one solution has been found. It is not necessarily the best solution, or even the "right" one. If you can think of two ways in which the problem might possibly be solved, then the chances are that one of them will be better than the other. If you start out with ten or twenty or a hundred possible ideas, you may easily find that your biggest problem is how to pick the best one.

In the strict sense of the word, fluency means that a person not only produces a quantity of ideas, but he also produces them rapidly. You probably know someone among your acquaintances who does this at the drop of a question: you mention some prob­lem you have, and he immediately begins to throw out ideas— all kinds of ideas. Not all of them are good, of course, but at least he is turning his imagination loose to think up possibilities. And this is the key to developing your own fluency: you learn to shift your mental gears into "free-wheeling"—you give your own mind the freedom it needs to produce a chain reaction of thoughts on your problem. In Chapter 8, you'll get some specific tips and devices that should help you improve your own ability to be fluent in ideas.

Related terms include business debt management and small business valuation.