With problem-solving, innovation, or anything else in our lives, accomplishing a result is not enough. The "experience" of how we accomplish it is equally important. The quest for a great "shopping experience" takes us to expensive malls, although we might find better and cheaper articles to buy in our backyard. The quest for a great "movie experience" takes us to the multiplexes, where we could have watched the same movie in a traditional theatre at a quarter of the price. The quest for a great "coffee experience" takes us to the cafes where we pay ten times or more for a cup of coffee as compared to the conventional joints. The quest for a great "experience" has become increasingly important and holds at least as much importance as achieving great results.

Somehow, the task of problem-solving, innovation and most of the academic or professional tasks we perform has remained untouched from this quest of "experience". We rarely think of having a great "Innovation Experience" or "Problem-Solving experience" or "Programming Experience" or "Proposal Making Experience" in the same way we would claim a great "shopping experience". The fatigue, stress, anxiety, race against the time, thinking "hard", trying "hard" and a score of other negative experiences have been accepted as normal for these tasks. However this is so, only because we havent seen any better alternative.

Does it really HAVE to be this way ?

In the words of Edward de Bono, the guru of thinking skills, "Proof may be no more than lack of imagination".

Often, we are convinced of an explanation or hypothesis simply because we cannot imagine an alternative explanation.

But, TENEX has an alternative for you. TENEX requires you to pay as much attention to the attaining of a solution as your "experience" of attaining it. By ensuring that you had a great "Innovation" or "Problem-Solving" experience, you are ensuring a smooth functioning of your Automatic Innovation Mechanism. It also creates great memories of problem-solving in the AIM's hard disk, which will enable you to develop an attitude of "raring to go" for more problem-solving or innovation.

It may be tempting to pay more attention to those TENEX techniques which create immediate results and ignore the ones that focus more on the "experience" of problem-solving. Just as a mall that provides a great shopping experience attracts a lot of customers again and again, getting your "innovation experience" aspect right will attract your Automatic Innovation Mechanism to work on more and more problems, without using any of those "fictitious" tools like Will-Power or Discipline.

Start transforming your "Innovation Experience" and get your AIM hooked onto it.