Action 1

A) Do This Now: Digital Brainwriting Ideation (“How might the team impact a suggested focus area or a team choice focus area?”). There can be some typical pitfalls associated with traditional brainstorming that tend to limit idea generation and full consideration of all team member ideas. For this reason, a modified version called Brainwriting is preferred. Digital Brainwriting has the advantage of automatically capturing the ideas for further analysis. Simply open and share a google sheet with the team. Everyone begins typing their ideas simultaneously and silently. (Michalko, M. (2006). Page 216)

Action 2

A) Brutethink Ideation. This can be very helpful when you begin to think that the well has run dry and you have already thought of all the ideas possible. Randomly select an article from a newspaper, magazine, or online source as a starting point. The less related to your topic the better! Push yourself to make connections between the challenge you are trying to solve and the article insights you find. Rotate the articles found to the other team members for additional ideas. (Michanek, J. & Breiler, A. (2014). Page 146)

Action 3

A) Negative Idea Generation (What would make the situation worse?) Another way to adjust your perspective to enable additional idea generation. List out a bunch of ideas that would have a negative impact. Take a breath, and then see which ones you can flip into ideas that could prevent or minimize the negative damage. ) (Michanek, J. & Breiler, A. (2014). Page 117)

Notes

The goal here is to generate many possibilities for the top of the funnel, no matter how far-fetched. We used digital brainwriting to avoid some pitfalls of traditional verbal brainstorming. We leveraged multiple supplemental ideation techniques to re-prime the idea pump and generate additional possibilities without getting stuck in a rut.

Have an Idea Party kickoff. (Action Link above) (Ozenc, K. & Haggan, M. (2019).) 5 Rituals that Spark Creativity, 5 rituals that spark creativity at Pinterest, Flipboard, Amazon (fastcompany.com)

Prompts for subsequent rounds: Save some for later! Do not try to drive to an idea and a decision in one meeting. Spread these sessions over several days at least to allow time for ideas to incubate and your subconscious to help identify additional alternative or combined solutions. (Mochi, F. & Madjar, N. (2018).)

Suggested additional prompts:

-How might we make the solution more scalable?

-How might we gather research or feedback to revise our solution?

-How might we design the demo solution to make the initial timeline?

Did you skip this video above? Adam Grant: The surprising habits of original thinkers | TED Talk 15 min