An additional hindrance I've seen lately from coworkers is email. My general advice for people thinking it's a problem:
- Setup mail filters so only relevant + important mail gets thru to the Inbox.
- Unsubscribe from as many newsletters/other as you can
- Try to check email sparingly
- Try and use the phone to reply, and/or encourage others to do the same as appropriate.

Thanks for the tips Paul. I love the packaging on your company's seasonal coffees.

I came up with the idea for my business www.seminarinformation.com in the shower - kind of hard to reproduce in a working environment.

I find myself jotting down lots of ideas during meetings and seminars - other people's thoughts stimulate mine - and strangely enough usually what they are saying has nothing to do with the problem I'm trying to solve - just gets my juices going.

Mona - Thank you for your comments. Association from thoughts of others is great - whatever works!

As for the ideas you get in the shower... Many of us think best there because we aren't having to "think" about what we are doing... our body is on auto-pilot and our brains get to process of other stuff... neat ideas!

To capture your thoughts in the shower... I have heard of people using water-proof scuba diver slates, the kind diver's use to make their notes under water.

Search Google or Amazon for "dive slate" to find options.

Mario - Great email tips. You're spot-on with your thoughts.

Because we're responding to email the moment they enter our inbox, it has become an 'instant messaging' system.

We've stopped using the phone or speaking *gasp* face-to-face.

I found if you send/respond to email in chunks (morning, end-of-day, perhaps at noon as well)... Not only does the lack of interruption increase your productivity, but many of the 'problems' sent to you in the morning are resolved by the time you check back at noon or toward the end of the day.

p.s. I'm no longer with Starbucks, but will pass your nice words to the Starbucks creative team. I agree they do a great job!

I own my own business now and do everything I can to keep the environment inspiring for all involved.

I also teach design and spend a lot of time talking to students about how to break out of a creative block and stay inspired. More often than not, they'll be working for someone who doesn't quite understand the need for a "thinking" area or creative space. Your suggestions are great! Looking forward to sharing these with my students :-)

Anna... Let me recommend for you the book:

"Aha! 10 Ways to Free Your Creative Spirit and Find Your Great Ideas"

by Jordan Ayan.

He does a great job providing a tool to 'measure' your own creativity as well as suggestions - just as you said it - to break out of that creative block and stay inspired.

If you or your students have any challenges you want help me, send me a note! paul at idea-sandbox dot com

Another space that's vital for my creativity: a place to nap.

This is the bit I like, playing the devil's advocate! Its great having creative spaces, finding time to think etc but what use is creativity? Why would I wish to buy it, what problems does it solve and how do I manage it? All of these must be answered, here we are all preaching to the converted but in the big wide world companies are still reacting to being sold poor creativity courses from second rate trainers and certainly in the uk the men in suits are not listening.

The flip side, good for me but not good for uk plc is that the folks in India and Latin America are lapping it up and about to blow us out of the water. Within 20 years Mexico is set to be the worlds 5th largest economy!!

Now I've got you thinking I'll share one of my blog articles. How to generate 20 business ideas over coffee - well if you are already a little creative you might stretch to 35.

"If you think what you've always thought, you'll do what you've always done. And if you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always got."

So, step one is to think differently.

Doing so will produce great ideas. But you need step 2.

You see, an idea is simply a car without an engine.

Step 2 is to spend time generating ideas about how to implement the idea...Which is more important?

Tim - A great idea becomes innovation when it is put to action. We all can come up with ideas - but it's also making sure they work for the brand, for the product, for the customer, for the budget, for the logistics, etc... (Lots of hoops an idea has to jump thru to make it work).

I typically break the overall process into 2 main chunks... 1) Figure It Out, 2) Get It Done.

FIGURE IT OUT - is where you define your frame/objective/problem, generation solutions, and make decisions.

GET IT DONE - is where you build the plan, champion the idea, and implement.

You want to make sure you've included some of your implementation considerations in how you define the objective in the first place. If you have a limited budget or strict brand guidelines - keep that in mind as a filter to use early in your decision making process.

You may find you're team spends a bit of time taking a good idea and trying to make it work within your business constraints.

As you were stating, a car is just a shell with out the engine. An idea is just a figment until it is put to action.

Thanks for the discussion. ~ Paul