Ray Buschmann Background

Ray Buschmann is an Australian, born in Sydney and joined the energy industry in 1977, with the past 15 years in various international senior management positions in Thailand, South Africa, Singapore, Dallas Texas, and San Ramon California USA. He has travelled extensively throughout the world (95 countries and six continents at last count – he says there are no plans currently for Antarctica, but that may be a new nomadic escapade goal!), sharing his experience and encouraging applied creativity. He rates himself very fortunate that he has had such a culturally diverse working background as well as “hands-on” exposure to an array of functional corporate areas, including brand and marketing, sales, technology, country and strategic management. During the past four years, in a corporate Manager Global Innovative Solutions role, he was exposed to various aspects of applied creativity, regularly met with key personnel involved in this developing discipline, and worked cooperatively with many non-competing companies, mutually sharing techniques and developing ingenuity tools.  

In early 2008, Ray took on an even more focused path, as the Principal of his own company: “Solving The Impossible Pty Ltd, and continues as a leading global figure and sought after practical “hands on” practitioner, in the exciting and expanding area of Idea Management, especially the creative “Front End” idea generation, enrichment, selection and concept development arena. His unique and transformational approach using creativity and ingenuity techniques to help “solve the impossible”, is characterized by capturing practical insights beyond his business world, and he continues to work closely with idea management colleagues in various industries, countries, learning institutions, consultancies, and with innovation authors, to share and continually learn best practices.

He also helps  colleagues around the world to develop a dynamic creative outlook through his much acclaimed “Thinking Differently” hands on workshop that has been held in Capetown, Karachi, Ghent, Bogota, Rio de Janeiro, Cairo, Moscow, Sydney, Miami, and Richmond California to name a few. A recent addition to his scope has been to use creativity in association with early Alzheimer’s disease patients, children’s education transformation, art imagination, and indigenous creativity exchanges.       

He is the author of a paper: “Ideas Galore – What Do We Do Now?”, and his unique approach to idea management has been used as a case study in the MBA course, “Management of Innovation” at the Università Cattolica, Piancenza Italy. He has been referenced in “Fortune” magazine, featured in “The Future of Innovation – Practice & Possibility Among the Most Effective Large Corporations”, ILO Institute USA, and “Finance Week”, South Africa.

He is currently writing his first book, and producing a Compact Disk to help further share his knowledge.

This year, Ray and his wife Angie, celebrated their 37th wedding anniversary, and the arrival of their first grand-child, Jay. They have three children, Guy, Lana and Nicole.