Battle of the Brainstorms: Should You Be All Business or Be Creative by Wency Leung ...................................................................................................

People can build their innovative muscles through open-ended, tactile activities, such as playing with building blocks or Play-Doh, Alexander Hiam says. The author of Business Innovation for Dummies adds that working with your hands helps stimulate the whole brain, which may benefit engineers at BP.

"They might not be able to cap a gushing oil well with Play-Doh, but they might be able to play with it and model some alternative types of caps, one of which might seem like a better design and can be built out of cement or steel."

Mr. Hiam says business executives and government leaders often make the mistake of bringing in small groups of experts to tackle problems, aiming to keep the process efficient. They then tend to set a deadline for the group to come up with ideas. As a result, solutions tend to be conservative, whereas spurring real innovation requires a free-for-all of ideas, he says.

"Anything that closes or tightens things up... such as the number of people involved, the number of options to look at, the time given, will hurt creativity. There might be plenty of wrong ways to inspire innovation but the right way is 'anything that works'."