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The American inventor Thomas Edison said, “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration”. You develop your creativity by hard work…and also by allowing room to receive and harness inspiration, when it comes.

Here are five steps to help you develop your creative thinking.

1 Change your way of doing things. Read more widely; pick up a magazine on a subject that you don’t normally look at or read a novel by an author unfamiliar to you. Take up a new hobby – you don’t have to be the best in the world; just enjoy it. It’ll help you develop your personality.

case study The music market in around 2001 was in a mess: CDs were expensive and were difficult to transport; MP3 players were poor quality and short on memory; and it was difficult to get hold of MP3 files legally and easily. The creative combination of Apple’s iPod and iTunes solved all these problems and also gave the company 75% dominance of the digital music market in both hardware and software.

2 Be open to fresh ideas. A new thought or solution to a problem may suddenly occur to you, especially when you are not thinking directly about the problem. Evaluate the insight that has come to you, and test it to see if it is useful and worth pursuing. For more on thinking creatively, see Secret 3.4.

3 Prepare. If you are giving a presentation, there is no substitute for working hard on research to make sure you have all the relevant facts. Perhaps you don’t know where to start? A mind map may help you (see Secret 1.6).

4 Analyse the facts. Think them through and examine them from different angles. Challenge assumptions and distinguish between facts and opinions. Explore weaknesses and find gaps in an argument. Think through the reasons why something has developed as it has. Uncover the background causes of an event. Analyse all data critically.

5 Put the facts together (synthesize them). Evaluate different options. Think of new ways of putting things together. For example, you may think of developing better systems at work: a combination of logic and creativity will help you do this.

Give yourself space to be imaginative and come up with exciting new ideas.