Coaching practices for Idea Generation Techniques
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Idea Generation Techniques, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I grab the first idea that pops up and start poking holes in it immediately, so I never get more than two or three options on the table
- The first decent idea shows up and I grab it and call it done
- We fill the whiteboard with dozens of ideas, the energy is great
- 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’ve hit a wall where every new idea is just a slight rewording of the last one
Practices that may help
- Ideate — generate options before judging
Produce many candidate solutions, deferring evaluation until you have quantity.
Design Thinking, Step by Step - The obvious veto: reject the first three ideas before keeping any
Force yourself to generate more by vetoing the first plausible ideas — they are almost always the most obvious ones.
Deliberate Constraints, Made Practical - Harvest and cluster ideas after the session
The generation phase is worthless without a systematic harvest: sort, name, and prioritize the output.
Osborn’s Brainstorming Rules, Made Practical - 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 - 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 - Defer judgment during generation
Generate ideas with no criticism, then evaluate in a separate pass.
Divergent Thinking: Generating Many Ideas - Go for quantity first
Aim for a high number of ideas; the best ones tend to come later in the list.
Divergent Thinking: Generating Many Ideas - 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 - 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
Related concerns
- How To Generate Ideas
Aim for a high number of ideas; the best ones tend to come later in the list.
Go for quantity first
- Idea Generation Technique
Produce many candidate solutions, deferring evaluation until you have quantity.
Ideate — generate options before judging
- Divergent Thinking Generating Many Ideas On A Budget
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.
- How To Generate More Ideas
Aim for a high number of ideas; the best ones tend to come later in the list.
- Divergent Thinking Generating Many Ideas As A Caregiver
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.
- Divergent Thinking Generating Many Ideas As A Parent
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.
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