Speechwriters, communicators and innovative thinkers often find inspiration outside their chosen field. HP Innovation kingpin Phil McKinney has an excellent blog and podcast on the creative process required for engineers to deliver the next Killer Innovation. He quotes comedian and author Steve Allen on sources of inspiration:

Good lord, I just open my eyes and ears, and they rush in. Ideas knock you down if you don’t brace yourself. All you need is to be aware, actually aware, of everything around you - sights, sounds, even smells, such as that of perfume stolen from a passing women.

I was reminded of the serendipity of inspiration when reading the Weekend edition of the Financial Times this morning and came across a fascinating interview in the House and Home section with architect and interior designer John Stefanidis, who was born in Egypt to Alexandrian Greek parents, moved to the UK to study at Oxford University and has run a design practice in London for more than 30 years.

Stefanidis comments on the importance of color in his work, and the varied sources of inspiration he finds:

Every colour has an emotive charge. The ways colours contrast, marry, embrace and clash are like life itself. All colours are valid. There are infinite shades of colour in the spectrum, not excluding black, of which there are hundreds more. Every shade of blue is my favourite colour, as well as pink, grey, green and red.

© Nikhil Gangavane

On my first trip to India I took a paper cornet of each coloured powder lined up in conical piles outside a Hindu temple - powders made from petals or leaves and applied to the forehead by the faithful. These cornets contained the colours for the first fabrics I created and have served as inspiration ever since.

© Elena Pokrovskaya

But then so have stones, leaves, flowers, photographs, melodies, shells, magazine illustrations, paintings, scribbles on air journeys and trucks on the freeway.

© Jan Kranendonk

As McKinney, Allen and Stefanidis all show, while inspiration partly relies on serendipity, it’s our responsibility to engage the intentional processes which allow it to happen. To learn the creative disciplines which deliver on the flash of insight. To carry the paper cornets home and keep them close at hand. To nurture our sources of inspiration.

Next time you write a speech you want the audience to remember, search for a colorful phrase or provocative comment in the world beyond your desk.