Creativity is not a trait reserved for the lucky few. By immersing your people in unexpected environments, confronting ingrained orthodoxies, using analogies, and challenging your organization to overcome difficult constraints, you can dramatically boost their creative output—and your own.

Of greatest interest are ‘create constraints’ paragraph ending article (natch) and sidebar on technology with Ray Kurzweil. Imposing artificial constraints (not unrelated to scenario planning) can be an especially powerful tool given the nature of change many of us extrapolate into the future is incremental and overly biased towards recent experience. This tendency can leave us woefully unprepared for step changes in the macro environment (2008) and technology (impact of Twitter, Facebook on marketing).

Sparking creativity in teams: An executive’s guide – McKinsey Quarterly.