An idea signals the beginning of the entire innovation process. It is important to induce changes that are necessary for an organization’s improvement. Without ideas, nothing navigates an innovation strategy, and no value for either the company or the market can be generated.
However, it’s a numbers game. Innovation can be seen as focused on things new to the company, which is why these ideas don’t have to be ground-breaking.
Rival businesses can make it hard for organizations to come up with high-quality ideas, but a systematic and methodological idea generation process can kickstart a whole new level of innovation which can boost a company’s success.
In this article, we will talk about idea generation methods other than brainstorming. We will go through a series of techniques that businesses can utilize for the production and collection of ideas.
Coming up with new ideas is crucial for any business But everyone knows that brainstorming sessions don’t always generate the most innovative concepts When you’re stuck in a creative rut, it’s time to shake things up with these idea generation techniques.
As a solopreneur running my blog, I’m constantly looking for ways to develop fresh, unique content that will grab my readers’ attention. While brainstorming is great for getting the ball rolling, I often reach a point where I’m just spinning my wheels. The same tired concepts keep coming up, and I struggle to think outside the box.
That’s when I turn to other ideation methods to stimulate my creativity. Using a mix of logical, analytical, and downright wacky techniques, I break through mental blocks and uncover exciting new topic ideas I would never have thought of otherwise.
In this post I’ll share my favorite techniques to spark innovative thinking along with tips to implement them successfully. While brainstorming isn’t going away, expanding your ideation toolbox can lead to the next viral blog post or million-dollar business idea. Let’s dive in!
Reverse Brainstorming
If you feel like you’ve exhausted all possible ideas around a topic try flipping the script with reverse brainstorming. Instead of asking “How can we do this?” ask “How can we not do this?”
For example, if you’re developing content ideas for a productivity blog, traditional brainstorming questions might be:
- How can we write an engaging post on time management?
- What tips can we provide for prioritizing tasks?
Reverse brainstorming questions could be:
- How can we write a post on wasting time and procrastinating?
- What are some techniques for ineffective prioritization?
Thinking about the opposite of your goal shakes up your perspective. It also gives you insight into pain points your audience struggles with that you can address in your content.
Brainwriting
Brainwriting removes verbal communication from the equation to spark new connections and ideas. Participants write down their ideas individually on paper or post-it notes, then pass them around to others to build on.
I like to start with a central topic written at the top of a paper. Then I’ll jot down 5-10 ideas related to that topic and anything else that pops into my head. After a few minutes, I’ll pass my paper to a colleague and receive theirs in return.
Reviewing someone else’s raw thoughts in writing inspires totally new ideas I wouldn’t have come up with solo. Brainwriting promotes piggybacking off each other’s concepts without the influence of face-to-face conversations.
Brain Netting
Brain netting uses word associations and connections to expand ideation in new directions. Start with your central topic and come up with words, phrases, and concepts related to it. Write each one on a separate note and arrange them spatially on a board.
Look for ways to connect the dots and draw lines between related items. Group some notes or circle ones that spark ideas. Let your mind wander freely, adding new thoughts as they pop up. Step back periodically to see the big picture and identify potential angles to pursue.
Brain netting externalizes your thinking and lets you visualize relationships. You might be surprised where following associative links can lead when mapped visually.
Forced Relationships
Sometimes the most innovative ideas spring from two unrelated concepts smashed together. Forced relationships deliberately seek connections between random inputs.
Start by coming up with topic A you want to ideate around. Next, randomly select an unrelated topic B. Finally, look for ways topic A and topic B could work together in surprising ways.
For example, say you run a yoga studio (topic A). Randomly pull a toy store (topic B) out of a hat. Some forced relationship concepts could be:
- Holding yoga classes at the toy store for parents shopping with kids
- Offering yoga-themed toys like poseable action figures in your studio
- Developing yoga classes based around childhood games like Simon Says orFreeze Tag
Don’t overthink it. The strangeness of the combination stretches your creativity into unexpected places.
Rolestorming
Brainstorming usually taps perspectives within your current team. Rolestorming expands ideation by adopting other roles and viewpoints.
First, define a topic and outcome you want to generate ideas around. Next, pick a variety of roles outside your normal experience like a customer, investor, competitor, regulator, or critic. Finally, brainstorm and discuss ideas from each role’s perspective.
Approaching a challenge from new angles exposes more possibilities and insights. Rolestorming gives you fresh takes by forcing you to think and talk like someone else. Vary the types of roles to expand your thinking in different directions.
Storyboarding
Turning an idea into a storyboard forces you to think through step-by-step specifics. Visually laying out key elements of a concept in panels sparks additional branch-off ideas.
Start with the high concept for your idea. Next, break it down into critical stages and milestones and sketch them out as a sequence. Finally, dive deeper on each phase by asking questions and adding details.
I like to print out blank storyboard templates before a session. This provides a structured way to visualize ideas as they progress. The hands-on, tactile nature of sketching stimulates new directions.
Five Whys
Asking “Why?” five times in a row drives analytical thinking to get to root causes and uncover alternative approaches.
Start with your initial idea or solution to a problem. Ask why it works or is the best approach, and write down the answer. Repeat asking why and answering four more times, continually probing deeper.
The final round of “Whys?” often reveals fresh insights, problems, or solutions. Five whys can be used individually or with a group, making for an intense back-and-forth exchange.
Six Thinking Hats
Developed by Edward de Bono, Six Thinking Hats assigns participants different perspectives to think through an idea from multiple angles. Each hat color represents a mode of thinking:
- White – Facts, figures, information
- Red – Emotions, feelings, intuition
- Black – Critical thinking, judgment
- Yellow – Optimism, positivity
- Green – Creativity, new concepts
- Blue – Organization, process
When ideating, have team members “put on” different hats to broaden input. For example, one member assumes the red hat and gives emotive feedback, while another dons the black hat to play devil’s advocate.
I gather a set of actual colored hats and switch them on and off for solo sessions. The physical act of switching hats shifts me into different thinking modes.
Mix It Up
Ideation requires pulling from your full creative toolkit. While brainstorming has its place, employing other techniques expands your idea repertoire.
Rotate through different individual and group ideation methods. Return to basics like brainstorming between more unorthodox sessions to reset.
Keep exploring new ways to stimulate those innovative neurons. Avoid relying on any single technique too much—variety keeps your thinking fresh, nimble, and outside the box.
Why is idea generation important for business?
Idea generation involves making, initiating, and disseminating theoretical, palpable, and perceptible ideas.
It is a fraction of the idea management funnel that centers upon the creation of optimal solutions based on a specific market’s actual problems, including the development of opportunities based on their needs.
With this, ideas get to shape the advancement of a business, thereby fostering progress. New ideas can lead companies to stand out instead of just thriving in the competition.
Ideas allow organizations to explore new opportunities and create positive experiences via innovative products and services — an event that helps companies remain significant, all by making a difference.
What are some idea generation techniques aside from brainstorming?
Most of the time, the first thing that comes to mind when talking about idea generation is brainstorming. Brainstorming sessions, however, are not only time-consuming but are often ineffective.
Predominantly, this traditional method only involves a limited number of people (who are usually composed of the same team every session), hence decreasing the range of different perspectives that could have been used to generate a supreme idea.
For this reason, we compiled here other idea generation techniques that you can do aside from brainstorming:
Mind mapping involves linking different information or ideas together. It helps people gain a better understanding of a subject’s intricacy.
In mind maps, thoughts are written down and connections are established between them. Lines and curves are drawn to illustrate its association, and a chain of relationships is made.
This technique is also used in problem-solving, note-taking, and project planning.
In making mind maps, a problem, a word, or a phrase is written in the middle, and everything that comes to mind, or is related to it (particularly potential solutions, causes, effects, etc.), is positioned around its corners, surrounding the keywords in the middle.
This structure allows participants to understand the idea as a whole, identify blind spots, and incorporate their insights and opinions from time to time.
To perform this task more efficiently, mind mapping software solutions are used. With it, the entire process becomes conveniently digitized. The entire process is done faster, and communication over concepts is a lot easier to manage.
Furthermore, additional features like collaborative tools make integration with other applications possible. This allows teams to share their inputs, as its bonus features make sharing diagrams easier through documents and presentations.
Creating a storyboard is another way of creatively introducing data and information. Words, quotes, pictures, and other necessary information are obtained from either the participants or by doing research.
The information gathered is then visually manipulated into a specific order or format in an effort to identify if connections among these pieces of information can be made to narrate a story or communicate a general idea.
As the story is further refined and modified to achieve its purpose, the final story illustrates how an organization’s ideas work alongside each other to solve a particular problem or accomplish innovation.
A story is then formed to see how these ideas work alongside each other — an effort made to identify if connections among this information can be made possible.
Boards, a live collaboration tool by Accept Mission, intends to make storyboarding hassle-free. People can join the storyboarding session online and collaborate live.
Its key features include:
- Drag and drop to classify items (ideas, problems, and solutions)
- Adding likes and comments
- Availability on ‘touch’ devices like tablets, iPads, and even large smart screens
- Retainment of content even after the collaboration session
- Full integration with other Accept Mission tools for follow-up and execution of ideas
- Creation of new boards in just seconds, inviting colleagues instantly, and collaborating real-time
With this, organizations will be able to foster people engagement by:
- Facilitating a system to inspire, add, and share ideas instantly
- Building a deeper analysis to solve and categorize all types of challenges
- Developing and enhancing strategies, obtaining important insights, and receiving feedback
The SCAMPER technique involves seven actions to implement critical thinking by refining existing concepts, ideas, and processes in solving problems to come up with favorable solutions.
These seven actions help organizations spark thoughts and generate ideas through different approaches that encourage people to think about ways of creating new products, concepts, ideas, and processes by improving existing ones.
The mnemonic does not really define the order of actions to follow. Your team is not restricted to work in a sequential manner while working hard between each of these thinking techniques.
SCAMPER stands for:
- Substitute: The substitution method includes replacing a fragment of your product, concept, or process with a specific alternative to acquire a greater end result.
- Combine: This method examines ideas that can be integrated for a more impactful and effective solution.
- Adapt: Adaptation refers to the evaluation of current processes to identify which parts are in need of improvements and extensive attention.
- Modify: To modify an idea means to thoroughly analyze problems and opportunities to achieve progress in every aspect of the business, especially in innovating products and services.
- Put to another use: This technique centers around utilizing ideas and existing solutions in other areas other than its current purpose, including a review of its possible benefits, once implemented on other parts of the business.
- Eliminate: Elimination refers to the removal of one or more parts of a concept to see if it gives a better outcome.
- Reverse: To reverse means to backpedal on interchangeable components of an idea, a concept, or a process.
An idea challenge focuses on giving out time-limited challenges that respond to a problem or an opportunity by generating creative solutions and other innovative ways around a specific theme.
It enables companies to devise questions and problems to collect insights from a particular set of participants. However, before setting it up, it is important to clearly understand the results to expect, and what to do with the information obtained.
The things to consider when organizing an idea challenge are the following:
This method is an open innovation tactic that will enable you to gather ideas from a large group of people. Fortunately, organizing an innovation challenge is easier than you think even if there are some aspects that make it a bit hard to manage.
From the name of the technique itself, role-playing takes on scenarios through various perspectives. It includes acting out situations that are observed during the research phase of the innovation process.
It works for both team-based and user-end idea generation processes.
Just like other role plays, people play the persona of a likely user or any other person whose experience relates to the session’s objectives (a service provider, a client, or anybody from the upper management).
It aims to perceive how a certain persona may think, feel, and react towards a certain idea.
In comparison to other idea generation methods, role-playing enables natural, realistic, and unconstrained responses. It creates numerous scenarios that can withdraw diverse ideas from different participants.
Moreover, role-playing also stimulates creativity, especially in terms of problem-solving.
Reverse thinking is a method that strives to come up with ideas that aren’t normally done. It provides unconventional solutions that avoid and identify possible mistakes pertaining to the implementation of ideas collected via research.
With this kind of approach, knowing and understanding the DONTs in every situation is just as essential as knowing the DOs.
Reverse thinking also entertains the opposite of logical responses when solving problems. It may seem confusing at first but the production of ideas for the negative side of things might surprisingly come in handy at some point.
Brainwriting is an excellent way to encourage creativity, share new ideas, and generate innovative solutions.
In brainwriting, those who are too shy or reluctant to speak are given the chance to air out their insights. Participants are asked to write their ideas on solving specific problems or handling opportunities on sheets of paper for a few minutes.
Somebody else reads whatever is on that paper and incorporates ideas of their own. This activity continues for a specific amount of time until the sheets are collected and are posted for discussion.
This procedure gives an equal opportunity for everybody to share their insights on the things that matter most. It creates a vast domain of ideas from a careful formulation and addition of thoughts from every single person who participated in the activity.
Once again, Boards from Accept Mission can make the whole process easier. It is a tool that’s designed to connect different departments together to effectively collaborate on ideas and solutions.
The thinking hats technique makes use of six different personas that participants are ought to live in a role play.
These roles are:
- Optimism
- Emotion
- Creativity
- Management
- The Problem
- The Devil’s Advocate
It’s still like role-play, but with clear and definite scopes for each person to act and tackle. These roles come up with ways in which groups can approach innovation and react to ideas in a cohesive and comprehensive manner.
Although these roles establish boundaries on how participants may take on situations, it pushes everybody in the room to think harder at the same time.
Analogical thinking solves problems by thinking laterally.
As analogy by itself means comparing two things by their known similarities, this technique focuses on applying information gathered from previous problems in dealing with present circumstances with the same context.
It utilizes ideas, concepts, and processes that are pre-validated, which might make it a little unideal for companies because of how common and unchallenging it is to do.
Social listening includes the feedback of customers in generating innovative ideas. It taps into a company’s communication lines with its users, seeking out their opinions with regards to their products and services.
This technique is utilized by brands to track, analyze, and respond to conversations about their business on social media.
It is a vital part of audience research that involves monitoring keywords, rival companies, and other related information on various media channels.
As social media monitoring focuses on metrics, social listening zeroes in on applying data obtained from the feedback, feelings, and opinions of a specific target market.
Elon Musk: Idea Generation
What are idea generation techniques?
Idea generation techniques can be helpful in many problem-solving, product development or innovation-based work processes. A common form of idea generation is brainstorming. While brainstorming is a good method for listing various solutions to problems or beginning the creative process, you can consider using other techniques in some situations.
What are alternative brainstorming techniques?
Here’s a list of 18 alternative brainstorming techniques: 1. Reverse brainstorming While the process of brainstorming is the generation of ideas to identify problem-solving methods, reverse brainstorming starts with thinking about the causes of that problem.
How can a group of people stimulate idea generation?
There are various tools and techniques that can be used with a group of people to stimulate idea generation – including these. The “Yes, And” technique is a classic improvisation technique, and one that can stop convergent thinking in its tracks before it has a chance to get going.
What is a brainstorming process?
This process involves engendering a huge number of solutions for a specific problem (idea) with emphasis being on the number of ideas. In the course of brainstorming, there is no assessment of ideas. So, people can speak out their ideas freely without fear of criticism. Even bizarre/strange ideas are accepted with open hands.
