Cheryl Dahle (cdahle@fastcompany.com) is a Fast Company senior writer. Visit Play on the Web (www.lookatmorestuff.com), or contact Andy Stefanovich (andy@lookatmorestuff.com) or Christine Rochester (christine@lookatmorestuff.com) by email.

Sidebar: Get Creative

"Look at more stuff, and think about it harder." That's Play's advice to folks who are serious about getting more creative. Geof Hammond, a creativity coach at Play, explains the firm's approach this way: "We call what we do 'observational creativity.' We look at things, notice stuff about them, and turn those observations into new ideas." Here are tips from Play on ways to unleash your own creative genius.

Stay limber.

The crux of creativity is putting old ideas together in new ways, or giving common concepts a twist that makes them uncommon. You can get better at doing that if you practice, says Andy Stefanovich, Play's cofounder. How does the team at Play get in its practice? There's a chalkboard in one hallway that has daily random topics, such as "H2O," "city," "marathon running," or "teens." People who pass by the board then jot down related words and thoughts, which go into a file and are used in brainstorming sessions on those topics. "We get some of our best ideas from 'recreational' thinking," Stefanovich says, "like the brainstorming you do while getting to work or exercising, when your mind is not completely task-focused."

Change your perspective.

You can't come up with new ideas if you approach each problem in the same way. Play's creativity exercises are built around "forcing connections" -- making yourself connect seemingly unrelated ideas. For instance, coaches give clients lists of random quotes from kindergartners and ask them to relate those sayings to their business problem.

Worse is better.

One way to lose your fear of looking foolish and to come up with great ideas is to offer the worst possible idea you can think of, and then riff off of it. When Play was asked by the Woolmark Co. to come up with an event that would promote summer-weight wool clothing, the team started with a strange question: What's the worst way to promote wool? How about letting a bunch of sheep loose in New York City? Lousy idea, right? Well, from there the team refined it. The final iteration was to have wool-clad models walk sheep on leashes on Madison Avenue. The stunt snared more than 8 million media impressions. Not baaad.