Here’s a surefire way to come up with better creative ideas:
Start disciplining yourself to say your bad ideas out loud.
When you’re in a brainstorming meeting, the natural thing to do is to try to get your idea perfectly formulated before you risk embarrassment by verbalizing it.  Nobody wants to expose himself to unnecessary ridicule.  And make no mistake, some ideas are better left unsaid.

But when you have an idea that you know isn’t quite there, yet it seems to be in the right zip code, here’s a phrase that can help you get it out there for further input and development:
“Not this…but something like (insert idea).”

I learned this trick from my songwriting days.   In co-writing situations, I often found myself having the right idea for a lyric, but I couldn’t figure out a great way to phrase it.  So I’d just put it out there:
“I have an idea for the next line.  Not this, but something like (insert clumsy line).”
This is where a good co-writing partner will jump in and see it from a different angle, providing a different perspective, and, over 50% of the time, refining your mediocre idea until it’s actually a feasible line.
This phrase has helped me solicit help for sermon illustrations.  I’ll tell my team: “Hey guys, I have this idea for an illustration for tithing using piggy banks.  This isn’t exactly it, but something like (describe idea).  How do you think we could make this work?”

Putting this phrase into practice has enabled some of our most celebrated ideas, like our Egg Drop, Bless Back Project, and Community Outreach strategy.

The first step to birthing a great idea is having the guts to share the bad idea out loud with at least one other person.
And the introduction: Not this, but something like…. is a great place to start.