Ideation: Become an Idea Champion

Discover how dopamine sparks creative thinking and ideation, and how exercise, sleep, protein-rich foods, and meditation naturally boost dopamine to enhance focus, motivation, and happiness.

Explore divergent thinking as a method to generate multiple distinct ideas and alternative solutions through spontaneous, free flowing thought, boosting collaboration and problem solving.

Learn how to run effective brainstorming to generate many ideas quickly in groups, with clear problem statements, no criticism, ground rules, a facilitator, and systematic idea recording and evaluation.

Practice imaginary brainstorming to redefine problems by crafting a clear subject–verb–object statement, then substitute elements, generate ideas, and extend them to your real challenge.

Practice the reverse brainstorming technique by thinking from the opposite side to identify root causes and prevent problems, using examples like exam cheating to illustrate prevention strategies.

Apply attribute listing to break down problems into attributes, evaluate each attribute's value, and modify attributes to create new value, with examples from pens, iPhone 7, and call centers.

Explore biomimetics and biomimicry by treating nature as a design database, emulating natural models to develop engineering solutions inspired by birds, frogs, and other systems.

Engage in brainwriting 6-3-5, a six-participant, three-ideas-in-five-minutes exercise facilitated by a moderator to generate about 108 ideas in 30 minutes for innovation, business, or writing.

Challenge assumptions to spark crazy ideas and innovations. List the assumptions, ask what-if questions, and answer from a new perspective.

Explore the Osborn checklist, a nine-question ideation tool by Alex Osborn that helps you adapt, modify, substitute, magnify, minimize, rearrange, reverse, combine, and explore other uses to develop new solutions.

Discover how mind mapping visually structures information, engages both brain hemispheres, and helps you analyze, synthesize, and recall ideas with central topics, subtopics, colors, and concise labels.

Explore excursion techniques using imagination and analogies to turn images into associations and innovative solutions, guided by a facilitator through a structured worksheet.

Learn the lotus blossom technique to generate 48 ideas from a central problem using a 3x3 matrix of eight related blossoms, a structured mind map style for innovative solutions.

Discover new inspiration from more inspiration dot com, a dynamic database of innovative products across sectors. Examine product overviews and blend ideas to enhance your own offerings.

Apply the SCAMPER method to generate new ideas by substituting, combining, adapting, modifying, putting to another use, eliminating, and reversing existing products, illustrated with a nuts-and-bolts example.

Learn how personal analogy stimulates creative thinking by comparing unrelated situations to reveal new insights and similarities, and apply three steps to define problems and generate ideas.

Use random input as a trigger to generate ideas with a lateral thinking tool; define the problem, then link random words to solutions like awareness and branding to boost revenue.

Explore systematic inventive thinking and its five tools—subtraction, multiplication, division, unification, and attribute dependency change—through examples such as Walkman, multi-blade razors, laptop to tablet, cooler boxes, and waterproof phones.

Use the wish process to broaden thinking and spark new ideas by writing I wish statements about products and services, like coffee flavors, low-cost clothing, or free transportation.

Convergent thinking narrows focus and evaluates ideas against predetermined criteria to find the single best answer, often after divergent thinking.

apply pcp, a convergent thinking tool using places, concerns, and potentials, to reduce a large idea pool to 3–4 and outline three pointers per idea for action.

Explore the COCD Box, a 2 to 2 matrix rating originality and feasibility, with blue, red, yellow, and colorless boxes, to categorize brainstormed ideas and guide Cebu City Box outcomes.

Use an enhancement checklist to refine an idea for implementation, addressing shaping, tailoring, strengthening, testing through prototyping, and assessing consequences against current solutions.

Apply force field analysis to map supporting and opposing forces on an idea, using a center-line diagram to plot magnitudes and decide how to sway or neutralize them.

Use the hundred dollars test to let team members allocate real money to ideas, revealing true support and guiding decisions toward profit and business sustainability.

An idea advocate is assigned to a development-stage project to provide ongoing support and enthusiasm, present 3-6 shortlisted ideas to decision makers, and ensure standing among advocates through elimination rounds.

Use negative selection to narrow long lists by quickly marking ideas as no or maybe, while keeping creative options and rechecking problem goals and costs. Repeat until a manageable shortlist.

Apply the simple three-part test to rate an idea from 0 to 10 on new, useful, and feasible, and identify solutions that are novel and implementable.

Apply the pink filter after narrowing ideas to a manageable number, evaluating positives, intriguing aspects, negatives, and concerning factors with the PNC filter.

Explore De Bono's six thinking hats to guide idea generation, evaluation, and collaboration. Analyze data, emotions, risks, benefits, creativity, and process control to shape and refine ideas.

Ideation in action: use the one big idea framework to solve problems with the worksheet across health, relationship, career, and finance.