How many times have you encountered a truly astonishing new idea, story or creation and thought, “Wow, I would never have imagined putting those two things together”? The random can be understood as a well of possibility—and systematic randomization is a powerful way to generate new, unexpected, deeply creative ideas from this well.

You may have heard about techniques such as free thinking, free writing, free association—all strategies that attempt to unhook the mind from what it already knows, take it out of its usual ruts and invite it to run loosely through concepts that might not ordinarily find themselves in one another’s company. Being deliberately and systematically random is a way to access and generate new ideas and think far outside of the box. But how exactly do you do this?

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