Coaching practices for How to Generate Creative Solutions
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For How to Generate Creative Solutions, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- Every time we get the team in a room to brainstorm, the loudest two people steer it and everyone else goes quiet
- I’ve been brainstorming this for hours and every idea is a slight variation on the same one
- I stop brainstorming the moment I have a few decent ideas, satisfied too early
- I treat every idea on my list as its own separate thing, judging each one solo, and it never occurs to me to mash two of them together
- I keep dreaming up clever solutions and they keep falling flat, and I’m starting to suspect I’ve been solving for what I’d want rather than ever really looking at the person I’m supposedly making this for.
Practices that may help
- Brainwrite instead of group brainstorm
Have people generate ideas silently and individually first, then pool and build.
Divergent Thinking: Generating Many Ideas - Sample inventive principles to generate solution directions
Apply one or more of TRIZ’s 40 inventive principles as generative lenses, even without the full contradiction matrix.
TRIZ: Systematic Invention and the Logic of Contradictions - Maximize quantity of ideas before evaluating
Set an explicit quantity target — generate at least 20 ideas before reviewing any of them.
The Medici Effect: Innovation at the Intersection - Combine and build on others’ ideas
Treat every idea as a building block — the best ideas in a session are usually hybrids.
Osborn’s Brainstorming Rules, Made Practical - Lead ideation with deep user empathy
Understand the person you are designing for before generating a single solution.
Creative Confidence, Made Practical - 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 - Separate divergence from convergence sessions
Keep idea generation and idea selection in separate sittings — never mix the modes.
Quantity Over Quality: How More Drafts Produce Better Work - Use SCAMPER and other prompts to vary ideas
Apply structured prompts (substitute, combine, adapt, modify, etc.) to push ideas in new directions.
Divergent Thinking: Generating Many Ideas - Walk to generate ideas (divergent thinking)
When you need many options, walk while you brainstorm.
Walking for Creativity - Concept fan: map the solution space before picking a direction
Expand from specific solutions to the broader concept behind them, then generate alternatives at the concept level.
Lateral Thinking, Made Practical
Related concerns
- Creative Input
Collect the best examples you can find, then combine and mutate them into something new.
Steal, steal, then remix
- Creative Thinking
Walking, showering, or doing dishes — rhythmic, low-demand activities free up associative thinking.
Use low-demand movement as incubation time
- Play And Divergent Thinking
Divergent thinking is generating many varied ideas before judging any of them — the opposite of converging on one answer. The most reliable practical principle is to separate idea generation from evaluation. An honest caveat: traditional group brainstorming usually underperforms the same people working alone and pooling ideas, due to a documented productivity loss.
- Brainstorming Solutions
Have people generate ideas silently and individually first, then pool and build.
Brainwrite instead of group brainstorm
- Collect Creative Ideas
Treat every idea as a building block — the best ideas in a session are usually hybrids.
Combine and build on others’ ideas
- Creative Insight Diverse Inputs
Pull ideas and analogies from fields unrelated to your problem.
Cross-pollinate from distant domains
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