In the past, I’ve shared three essential creative exercises for innovation workshops. In case you’re looking for more exercises that will help you generate new ideas, here are three more. They’re just as useful.
1 Attribute Listing
This exercise forces you to break down the challenge you’re facing into smaller parts. You then look for ‘micro alternatives’ for each part of the challenge you’re facing. It’s particularly useful when you’re looking for improvements to existing products or services with high levels of complexity.
It works like this.
1 Reflect on the Task eg ‘improve our customer service’
2 Break down the Task into smaller elements. Using the example above, it could be all the opportunities/occasions when you interact with your customer
3 Look for ideas / improvements for every single element
It gets into the real detail of a challenge. The solution starts by combining several small improvements, rather than via a single big leap.
2 Rule Breaking
This technique forces you to challenge the accepted conventions, rules, wisdom and norms of a category. It’s quite different from the first exercise. It’s particularly useful when you’re looking for big, challenging, breakthrough ideas. It’s also really simple to run, requiring little stimulus. It draws upon people’s wisdom and appetite for change.
It works like this.
Step 1: Ask participants to capture the accepted rules/conventions / norms that surround the brand or category you’re working on
Step 2: Generate ideas that deliberately ‘break’ these ‘rules’ that you’ve identified
Often the ideas you generate will be illegal, morally questionable, or technically impossible. But you may well hit upon something magical.
3 Questioning Techniques
The premise for this exercise is that by asking searching questions, answering them will lead you to potential solutions. It’s a very logical approach to idea generation and is great for people who enjoy problem-solving.
It works like this.
Step 1 Provide participants with a set of questions (see example below)
Step 2 Ask participants to apply these questions to the Task they are facing
Step 3 Capture the answers that emerge
There are many different types of questions you can apply to a challenge. One of the most well-known sets of questions uses the SCAMPER acronym below.
Substitute: components, materials, people
Combine: mix together, combine re-assemble, re-integrate
Adapt: alter, change function, use part of another element
Modify: increase, reduce, change shape, change colour
Put: to another use
Eliminate: remove elements, simplify, reduce to the core
Reverse: turn inside out, upside down, go backwards, do the opposite
Use some or all of these when applying them to a problem. Or simply invent your own set of questions.
In Summary
Here are three powerful creative exercises to use in your innovation workshops. Use them during the divergent phase when you’re looking to generate a high volume of ideas. They’re all quite different, so choose the ones you feel are most suitable for the challenge you’re working on.
By using creative exercises in your innovation sessions you’ll maximise the opportunity to generate breakthrough ideas.