Invent a new way to make tunnels: at half the price of all existing methods in the world, and twice as fast. You have six months! That was the target a dedicated group of engineers from the Offshore Engineering Company Heerema had been given by top management. “It was the start of the most inspiring and impressive creative process I have dealt with in my career”, says Igor Byttebier, now a consultant at new shoes today.   case Heerema: new tunnels   The 6 month period After selecting the team following specific criteria we divided the 6 months into 3 periods. - We went our separate ways and brainstormed for 2 months. It ended in 512 new ideas on aspects of tunnel engineering for tunnels in soft soil. - We used all the creativity techniques from the book, and a lot more. - From these ideas we built 48 concepts, all promising. - In the last 2 months we selected and refined until we arrived at some fundamentally new methods still meeting the criteria. Results - This process resulted in 8 patents. - One of the methods has been developed and succesfully tested in a pilot-project. - A similar creativity process has been succesfully applied to a new challenge: “How to create bridges for the High Speed Train in   areas where you want minimal damage or disturbance on the surface.” This was succesfully dealt with ... in 6 weeks time. - Within Heerema creative processes are now among the standard tools for new product development, with their own internal coaches.