Brainstorming Techniques: How To Generate Innovative Ideas and Create Solutions To Problems: Look at the Extremes of Practicality, Step Out Of Your Shoes

BRAINSTORMING: Techniques To Develop Solutions

Make brainstorming a religion. The buzz of a good brainstormer can infect a team with optimism and sense of opportunity.

Tom Kelley
IDEO

Look at the Extremes of Practicality

By Think Tools

Whoppers: Spend five-minutes brainstorming huge, unfeasible, impractical solutions (ideas that are too outrageous or "impossible" to be actually implemented).

Snaps: Spend five-minutes brainstorming very easy, small, doable solutions (ideas that could be implemented "in a snap").

Conclusions: Discuss, prioritize, and develop the ideas with the most potential. Chose the best Snap ideas, the ones than would have the most impact and be the easiest to implement. Also choose the best Whopper ideas that can be transformed into more practical and doable actions.

Step Out Of Your Shoes

By Think Tools

→ Creative Problem Solving: Switching Perceptions

Stepping out of your everyday shoes (and thinking mode) and into the shoes of others may help you surface new insights to a problem.

Select a perspective and brainstorm ideas from that perspective for five-minutes before moving on to another perspective.

Attitudes: Optimist; Pessimist; Inventor; Researcher; Hip Shooter.
Stakeholders: Employer; Shareholder; Employee; Client; Supplier; Competitor.
Family: Grandfather; Mother; Small Child... More