Coaching practices for Creative Experimentation
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Creative Experimentation, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I sit down expecting something original to just arrive out of nowhere, and when the blank page stays blank I decide I’m not creative
- Something’s off in this piece but I can’t tell what, and every time I get frustrated I tear the whole thing down and rebuild from scratch
- Every single thing I try feels like a referendum on whether I’m any good, so I cling to the first passable version rather than risk a worse one
- I want a daily habit of just playing with wild combinations, but the second a strange idea pops up my inner critic kills it as stupid before I’ve written a single word
- Everything I let myself put down is safe and sensible
Practices that may help
- Steal, steal, then remix
Collect the best examples you can find, then combine and mutate them into something new.
Quantity Over Quality: How More Drafts Produce Better Work - Change exactly one element and observe what shifts
Alter a single variable at a time to see how the rest of the system responds.
Oblique Strategies, Made Practical - Combinatorial Creativity, Made Practical
Arthur Koestler’s bisociation theory holds that creative breakthroughs emerge when two previously unconnected frames of reference collide and suddenly fit — not from blank-slate invention but from unexpected combination. The practical implication is that creative output depends heavily on the breadth and diversity of your input: you can only combine what you have already absorbed. - Experiment without attachment to outcome
Make many small experiments and treat each result as information — not as success or failure.
The Creative Act: Rick Rubin’s Approach to Making - SCAMPER: A Systematic Creativity Technique
SCAMPER is a structured brainstorming checklist that prompts you to Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify/Magnify, Put to other uses, Eliminate, and Reverse/Rearrange elements of an existing product, process, or problem. It is a practitioner-derived tool with no randomized trial evidence but a strong theoretical grounding in divergent thinking research — it works by forcing systematic exploration of an idea space that unguided brainstorming leaves partially uncovered. - Keep a "what if" journal for speculative combinations
Write out daily "what if X and Y were combined" prompts — and take the speculative ones seriously.
Combinatorial Creativity, Made Practical - Welcome wild and outrageous ideas
Explicitly invite the absurd — it’s easier to tame a wild idea than to enliven a dull one.
Osborn’s Brainstorming Rules, Made Practical - Borrow the conventions of a different field and apply them to yours
Take the organizing principles of an adjacent discipline and treat them as constraints for your creative problem — the unfamiliar conventions force beginner perception.
The Beginner’s Mind in Creative Practice - Run low-cost experiments on intersectional ideas
Test cross-domain ideas quickly and cheaply before investing in them fully.
The Medici Effect: Innovation at the Intersection - Treat creativity as combination
Make new work by joining two existing things that haven’t been joined before.
Steal Like an Artist, in Practice
Related concerns
- Creative Substitution
Ask: what component, material, person, process, or rule could be swapped for something different?
Substitute
- Absurd Idea Creativity Method
Explicitly invite the absurd — it’s easier to tame a wild idea than to enliven a dull one.
Welcome wild and outrageous ideas
- Creativity Is Combination
Arthur Koestler’s bisociation theory holds that creative breakthroughs emerge when two previously unconnected frames of reference collide and suddenly fit — not from blank-slate invention but from unexpected combination. The practical implication is that creative output depends heavily on the breadth and diversity of your input: you can only combine what you have already absorbed.
- Systematic Creativity
SCAMPER is a structured brainstorming checklist that prompts you to Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify/Magnify, Put to other uses, Eliminate, and Reverse/Rearrange elements of an existing product, process, or problem. It is a practitioner-derived tool with no randomized trial evidence but a strong theoretical grounding in divergent thinking research — it works by forcing systematic exploration of an idea space that unguided brainstorming leaves partially uncovered.
- Wwxd Creative Technique
Step into a named other’s perspective to access approaches you would not generate as yourself.
Ask what a specific other person would do
- Combinatorial Creativity For My Teenager
Arthur Koestler’s bisociation theory holds that creative breakthroughs emerge when two previously unconnected frames of reference collide and suddenly fit — not from blank-slate invention but from unexpected combination. The practical implication is that creative output depends heavily on the breadth and diversity of your input: you can only combine what you have already absorbed.
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