21 Days to a Big Idea

Have you ever sat in a meeting where ideas felt trapped by corporate routines—where brilliant thoughts flickered but vanished before they were heard? In Idea Stormers, Bryan W. Mattimore argues that creativity is not just a personal gift; it is a structured, trainable process that organizations can harness through deliberate design. He contends that breakthroughs arise when leaders learn to facilitate group ideation—turning collective brainstorming into disciplined innovation. Unlike the myth of inspiration as random lightning, Mattimore shows that creativity has architecture: mind-sets, techniques, and behaviors that make new ideas inevitable.

Mattimore's mission in this book is to transform you into what he calls a facilitating leader—someone who doesn't merely brainstorm but deliberately orchestrates creativity across teams. Through vivid case studies—from Ben & Jerry’s rebellious ice cream naming sessions to IBM’s organizational transformation—he reveals how managers can systematically evoke imagination. Drawing on thirty years of consulting experience across giants like Unilever, Pepsi, and LVMH, he built a roadmap that replaces one-off creativity with sustainable ideation enterprises.

Why Creativity Needs Leadership

Mattimore opens with the paradox of innovation: organizations crave originality yet instinctively defend the status quo. Leaders, therefore, must balance discipline with freedom—creating spaces where curiosity thrives but outcomes remain practical. His concept of the facilitating leader answers this challenge: a manager who shapes processes that unleash the creative potential of others. Rather than being an inventor, you become an architect of group creativity.

This focus on facilitation distinguishes Mattimore from classic creativity theorists like Edward de Bono (Lateral Thinking) or Clayton Christensen (The Innovator’s Dilemma). While those thinkers center on cognitive insight or market disruption, Mattimore’s approach is operational—how to run sessions, guide teams, and combine imagination with structure.

The Map of the Creative Mind

The book begins by charting seven core creative mind-sets—habits like curiosity, openness, embracing ambiguity, and principle transfer. Combined, they form a mental operating system for ideation. Mattimore links these to psychological and artistic traditions, from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s paradox-loving intelligence to Edison’s relentless questioning. He adds an eighth ‘meta’ mind-set—the “AND” principle—which challenges binary thinking. Instead of asking “either/or,” you ask “what if both?” For Colombian flower exporters struggling against cheap competition, he helped them reimagine “flowers AND sports,” “flowers AND religion,” or “flowers AND food,” birthing hundreds of new value-adding ideas. The AND mindset teaches that creative synthesis beats singular reasoning.

From Brainstorming to Brainwalking

Mattimore revives brainstorming with modern techniques that fix its flaws. His signature innovation, “brainwalking,” turns the static talking format into kinetic collaboration. Participants literally walk to idea stations, rotate between groups, and publicly build on posted concepts. The result is energetic, democratic, and highly productive—eliminating dominance by loud voices and tapping introvert insights.

Group creativity, he emphasizes, is a delicate balance of psychology: people must feel safe enough to share “crazy” idea intuitions without fear of judgment. The facilitator’s role, therefore, is part coach, part choreographer, and part empath. Laughter, movement, and play are not distractions; they are catalysts for deeper insight.

Innovation as Iterative Learning

Going beyond idea generation, Mattimore outlines the innovation arc: moving ideas from concept to market through processes like iterative insight mining, idea fishing, and opportunity area creation. He illustrates this with Unilever’s Mentadent toothpaste—an innovation born from questioning assumptions about packaging and consumer value. The product’s success stemmed not from wild invention but from disciplined rethinking of everything considered “normal.”

This iterative cycle—generate, test, refine—anchors the entire book. Innovation isn’t a sprint; it’s a creative marathon that rewards persistence, curiosity, and constructive imperfection. As Edison believed, failure is education disguised as experimentation.

Why It Matters

Ultimately, Idea Stormers offers a bridge between imagination and implementation. In a world drowning in data but starved for originality, Mattimore gives managers a tangible system to reawaken organizational creativity. His thesis is democratic and hopeful: everyone, from the CEO to the shop-floor worker, can innovate when given the right questions, prompts, and trust. Creativity, he argues, is not random genius—it’s a replicable, learnable art that transforms culture, accelerates growth, and makes work profoundly more human.

Mattimore identifies seven core creative mind-sets that act as mental engines for innovation. They’re not discrete skills but overlapping attitudes that expand your capacity for imaginative connections and problem-solving. By practicing them consciously, you train your mind to move from conscious competence to unconscious mastery—until creativity becomes your default operating state.

1. Curiosity: The Engine of Discovery

Everything begins with curiosity—the childlike “why?” that breaks complacency. Like Edison writing “Everything” as his area of interest in Pasteur’s guestbook, curiosity gathers raw material for creation. You learn to interrogate assumptions instead of accepting them. Without curiosity, ideation starves; with it, even ordinary subjects become portals to novelty.

2. Openness and Ambiguity

Creative openness means suspending judgment and embracing conflicting ideas without anxiety. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s quote about holding contradictions epitomizes this mindset. Where analytical thinkers seek closure, innovators tolerate messiness. Ambiguity becomes a playground rather than a problem.

3. Principle Finding and Transfer

This mind-set underpins analogical creativity—learning from other fields and adapting ideas across boundaries. Ford borrowed assembly methods from slaughterhouses; Whitney’s cotton gin borrowed from cats catching chickens. You look for underlying principles rather than surface forms and transfer them into new contexts (Mattimore calls this “inductive creativity”).

4. Searching for Integrity

Integrity is the moment everything fits—the aesthetic click of coherence. Einstein called his elegant equations “beautiful.” This is where insight crystallizes: disparate fragments fuse into a seamless whole. Facilitation aims to help teams reach this intellectual harmony through synthesis.

5. Knowingness and Creative Persistence

Knowingness is faith that an answer exists. Henry Ford’s maxim “Whether you think you can or can’t, you’re right” captures it. Persistence flows from conviction. Innovators like Edison, who took a year to invent the lightbulb despite promising it in a week, embody creative grit—the refusal to surrender before insight arrives.

6. World Creating

The most daring mind-set is world creation—the imaginative capacity of novelists, designers, and dreamers to invent entire realities. Think of Rowling’s Hogwarts or Dalí’s surreal landscapes. In corporate contexts, world creation fuels visioning—designing brand ecosystems, not just products. This is creative storytelling applied to business strategy.

7. The Meta-Mindset: “AND” Thinking

Finally, Mattimore’s meta-mindset of “AND” thinking rejects binary frames. Instead of trade-offs (“Either innovation or efficiency”), you pair opposites (“Efficiency AND innovation”). This synthesis sparks true originality—like merging flowers with sports or finance with entertainment. The AND principle reflects systems thinking: complexity is not an obstacle, it’s the fertile ground for invention.

Mattimore’s second pillar distinguishes between casual brainstorming and professional ideation. Traditional brainstorming, born from Alex Osborne at BBDO, was revolutionary in the 1930s—but flawed. People stopped too soon, chased one big idea, and silenced others through criticism. Mattimore modernizes this with structured, inclusive approaches that unlock deeper creativity.

Brainwriting and Brainwalking

His signature technique, brainwalking, transforms static discussion into movement. Instead of passing papers (“brainwriting”), participants rotate among flip-chart stations, adding and building ideas publicly. This physical energy democratizes contribution, combining introvert reflection with extrovert spontaneity. Teams form mini-pairs, turning creative collaboration into idea “volleyball.”

Psychology of Safety and Play

A core insight is psychological safety. People must feel free to share “idea intuitions”—those incomplete, even silly thoughts that later spark brilliance. Facilitators cultivate laughter, warmth, and nonjudgment. Humor, he stresses, isn’t frivolous—it lubricates cognition. When participants laugh, their neural filters relax, allowing surprising associations to connect.

Focused vs. Random Ideation

Mattimore classifies ideation into two major types: random (prompted by unrelated stimuli) and focused (guided by targeted cues). Random methods free imagination but waste time; focused techniques—like “questioning assumptions,” “picture prompts,” or “wishing”—keep creativity strategically relevant. This distinction helps you design sessions that align imagination with business goals.

The difference between brainstorming and ideation systems lies not in quantity but direction. Ideation channels creativity toward outcomes—whether a new toothpaste, brand name, or corporate culture. Where brainstorming is chaos, ideation is choreography: a structured dance between intuition and logic.

Mattimore’s “super seven” are his most proven creative techniques—responsible for billions in client revenues. Each technique can be used alone or in combination, and all share core traits: simplicity, adaptability, and inclusiveness. They work across disciplines—from marketing to R&D—because they democratize creative input.

• Questioning Assumptions: Replace “truths” with challenges. Mentadent toothpaste emerged when Unilever questioned packaging norms, pricing rules, and endorsement habits—creating a dual-chamber peroxide toothpaste that redefined the market.
• Opportunity Redefinition: Turn rigid goals into thousands of combinations. For Catholic Knights Insurance, redefining “sell more life insurance to Catholics” through variant word combinations produced a 52% sales jump.
• Wishing: Start by wishing for the impossible. Mattimore once wished for ad agency jobs during a recession and created “Jogging for Jobs,” generating massive publicity. The technique pushes beyond limits into creative realism.
• Triggered Brainwalking: Combine movement with prompts (target wishes, benefit words, category reframes). This blends divergent stimuli for a “creative punch.”
• Semantic Intuition: Merge random word categories to name ideas before defining them. For detergent promotions, pairing “photo department,” “gift with purchase,” and “clean clothes” birthed engaging campaign concepts.
• Picture Prompts: Use visuals to reveal deeper emotions. One manager solving “delegation anxiety” saw a painting of two men exchanging letters—sparking cooperative delegation models.
• Worst Idea: Generate absurd ideas—then reverse or mine them. Bankers joking about rounding down deposits inspired Bank of America’s “Keep the Change” savings program.

Through these seven tools, Mattimore shows that creativity doesn’t rely on inspiration—it relies on structured provocation. Each method channels contradiction into invention, proving that even “bad ideas” can yield multimillion-dollar insights.

Ideation is fun—but innovation is hard labor. Mattimore’s clients often tell him, “We don’t need more ideas. We need market successes.” He responds that execution is creativity—the act of turning fragments into viable consumer propositions. To do that, he proposes three process tools: idea fishing, opportunity area platforms, and iterative insight mining.

Idea Fishing

Organizations should fish for ideas in sixteen distinct ponds: consumer insights, suppliers, employees, crowdsourcing, internal research, licensing, acquisitions, cross-company R&D collaborations, trade shows, analogues, new business models, and more. Each pond generates stimuli and partnership opportunities often hidden in plain sight (similar to IDEO’s ethnographic design approach). For example, when Unilever mined call center data, it uncovered product improvement ideas directly from dissatisfied users.

Opportunity Platforms

After idea fishing, group discoveries into “opportunity platforms”—clusters of related insights that point to new product categories. For beverages, platforms might include health drinks, night-time drinks, energy formulations, or packaging innovations. These platforms help focus innovation investment and prioritize consumer testing.

Iterative Insight Mining

Finally, success depends on relentless refinement. Innovation is circular, not linear: prototype, test, learn, and reinvent until the product sings. Mentadent’s toothbrush, redesigned through consumer observation and ergonomic prototypes, exemplified this “get-it-right” persistence. The methodology aligns with Lean Startup principles: hypothesis testing, iteration, and user feedback as creativity in motion.

In short, you don’t need more ideas—you need smarter mining. Innovation is not luck but stewardship: nurturing ideas through disciplined experimentation until the market says, “Yes.”

The human side of innovation, Mattimore insists, rests on facilitation. Creativity fails without leaders who ignite it safely. A facilitating leader knows who to invite, how to design environments, and how to balance freedom with focus. Leadership, here, means orchestrating—not dominating—the creative process.

Selecting the Right People

Invite three kinds of participants: stakeholders (those executing ideas), creatives (the imaginative souls in every company), and wild cards (outsiders or cross-functional voices). Diverse perspectives multiply innovation—just as inviting dessert chefs helped Godiva invent new confections or Mensa members helped Winnebago find new product extensions.

Designing Creative Environments

Physical space affects mental freedom. A windowless office breeds conformity, while SoHo streets or the Culinary Institute spark sensory thinking. Mattimore recommends off-sites and immersive settings that match session themes. Movement, visual stimulation, and novelty fuel idea fluency and emotional engagement.

Facilitator Techniques

Great facilitators, he writes, don’t just record ideas—they cultivate them in real time. They repeat ideas aloud, ask leading questions, headline ramblers, and name concepts to crystallize meaning. Authenticity counts: laughter and vulnerability encourage risk-taking. A facilitator should contribute ideas indirectly through questions, guiding groups toward discovery without ego.

Ultimately, facilitation is empathy turned into design. When leaders lose the “I” and empower collective curiosity, meetings transform from obligation to art. In Mattimore’s experience, ideation mastery feels like Zen improvisation—a “dance of ideas” where intuition meets collaboration.

Mattimore concludes with an ambitious vision: a Total Innovation Enterprise (TIE)—a company where creativity is cultural, not episodic. Every department, from HR to accounting, becomes a generator of ideas. His ten TIE principles outline how organizations nurture innovation as a shared habit, echoing Peter Senge’s concept of the “learning organization.”

• Recognize unrealized innovative capability in everyone.
• See that opportunities for innovation exist everywhere, not just in R&D.
• Embrace human creative potential at all organizational levels.
• Liberate creativity through inspired vision rather than slogans or mandates.
• View ideas as the lifeblood of growth; nurture and welcome them.
• Accept that implementation is difficult and messy—commit to persistence.
• Use ideation to drive cultural and attitudinal change—not gimmicks.
• Celebrate teamwork as creative synergy, where collective energy exceeds individual genius.
• Identify “pockets of passion” that incubate innovation and scale them.
• Seek outside partners—suppliers, customers, or even competitors—for idea cross-pollination.

For Mattimore, these principles summarize decades of applied creativity: innovation isn’t a department—it’s a lifestyle. The leader’s job is to create conditions for participation, commitment, and joy.

His final encouragement mirrors his daughter’s mantra, spoken with a toy wand: “I have a magic wand, and I am not afraid to use it.” That image captures the book’s ethos perfectly. Creative leadership is courage—the willingness to look foolish in pursuit of transformation. When you’re not afraid to use your wand, the impossible becomes inevitable.