Ideation: the innovation tool

"Ideation is the creative process of generating, developing, and communicating new ideas."

Ideation/ Brainstorming tips

We have been guiding six-figure brands with creative ideation for over 10 years. Here are some guiding principles.

Be Silly & Wrong

Reward participants for being brave enough to be wrong, outrageously wrong, silly, off track.

Think from the heart

What you stand for can be a compass, the north star to redirect your brainstorm.

Everything has value

Believe that the perfect solution, social media campaign or next big "thing" can be born from the most ridiculous.

Quantity over quality

Aiming for the largest number of ideas in a given time period. Marking and moving on from the "good ones".

Flesh it out later

Driving home the above point, put an asterisk * by the good ideas and MOVE ON 🙂

Praise, praise, praise

Encouragement helps every brainstorming participant feel braver. Brave enough to dream, dare, and approach challenges from their own unique perspective. Fostering this is our highest calling.

Disrupting Group Think

When the ideas stop flowing, we use these to break free and think anew:

The mystic

Randomize stimulation by flipping a book and putting your finger on a word on a random page, that word IS THE ANSWER. Treat it as holy to ignite ways of interpreting it.

Flip the script

If your goal is to market your laundry mat and the ideas stop flowing, think about how to get NO ONE to come in. How would you do that?

Maybe put grease in all the machines?

This might spawn a campaign with blacklights showing grease in the "other guys" laundry machines.

Change the problem

Your goal might be to sell more hair ties, but the brainstorm is slugging...
shifting the goal to teaching people new hair tie tricks might spawn a course or video idea that gives value first, then offers a discount code for the hair ties at the end.

Adjust the constraints

Pretending you have a million dollar budget or access to a famous celebrity could jostle free some more concepts that don't even require them.

Add an elephant

Adding a flippant requirement like a purple elephant needed to be included in the solution, could shift the scope and associations in new directions.

Change the timeline

Time plays an often unnoticed role in solution generation.

Try pretending you are 1,00 years in the past or future to see what pops up.

Some Resources:

"with great power comes great responsibility. A love for life is an essential guiding force in the creation of our next big idea"- us