"You're not epileptic, are you?"

That's the question I get as I enter the Chicago headquarters of the Creative Solutions Network. I answer no -- and immediately find myself in a reclining chair, with my back parallel to the floor and my legs in the air. Suddenly I'm wearing something called the Orion Brain Machine. It features headphones that emit an erratic pulse and glasses that display a kaleidoscopic light show. Oh, by the way, the chair -- called the Symmetron -- is moving.

Have I entered some postmodern torture chamber? Hardly. I'm just spending some time at the Thinkubator.

The Thinkubator is the brainchild of Gerald Haman, 39, who founded the Creative Solutions Network in 1988. An alumnus of Procter & Gamble and Arthur Andersen, Haman works with such clients as AT&T, BP Amoco, American Express, and Kraft Foods -- all of which have sent executives to the Thinkubator. What brings people from such respectable companies to such a strange place? The desperate search for creativity -- since, when it comes to enhancing creativity, few people have as many creative ideas as Haman.

"People used to believe that creativity was a gift that a lucky few were born with," he says. "In fact, all people have a degree of creativity -- they just lose it as they grow older. Schools don't foster the imagination; stodgy companies discourage people from taking risks. Here, we help people rediscover their gifts."

Rediscovering those gifts can translate into down-to-earth benefits. Haman has worked with Kraft to develop new pasta, cheese, and pizza products. He has guided Peoples Energy Corp., a Chicago-based utility, toward imagining new uses for natural gas. All told, his brainstorming sessions have generated more than 260,000 ideas over the past 10 years. (Yes, he counts. A "technographer" sits in on each session and captures every idea that emerges from it.)

How does Haman unleash such a torrent of new thinking? "If you want people to be creative," he says, "you have to put them in an environment that lets their imagination soar. Most people experience 'cubicle creativity': The size of their ideas is directly proportional to the space they have in which to think."

The Thinkubator provides wide-open intellectual spaces. It's a combination rec room and art gallery, and it's filled with fun (and in some cases bizarre) gizmos and gadgets. There's custom furniture in the shape of a light bulb, a conch shell, a bright-red pair of lips. There's an "aroma odorizer" that spills out "creativity scents." There's a sound system with a 500-CD jukebox, along with a collection of more than 5,000 CDs. There's a Wall of Wonder, which displays photos of the skylines of 30 cities. There's a team-brainstorming area that converts to a disco. Despite all of this attention to design, the Thinkubator hardly represents a triumph of style over substance. The brainstorming here is focused and systematic, and it begins well before executive groups (consisting ideally of 8 to 14 people) arrive. About a week before each session, Haman establishes what he calls a Question Bank. (It later evolves into an Idea Bank.) "The key to generating good ideas," he says, "is asking good questions."