2 Brainstorming Exercises to Boost Innovation

2 Brainstorming Exercises to Boost Innovation

Every innovation begins with an idea. At PCDworks, in our Immersive Innovation™ sessions, we guide participants through two to three days of brainstorming to discover potential solutions to their identified problem. Through experience and real results, we’ve identified several exercises that reliably increase creative thinking. In this article, we’ll share two of our favorites.

The interesting thing about these two exercises is that at first glance, they seem like polar opposites. One is fanciful, the other practical. One erases all limits, the other establishes boundaries. With a deeper look, though, you’ll find that they share something important in common. Let’s dive in.

#1: Free-Thinking Wishing

When you first begin brainstorming, you don’t want to be limited by such trivialities as “reality.” With free-thinking wishing, you suspend all notion of physics and natural laws, and imagine the ideal end state without constraints. I wish … How could we … What if … At this point, you allow everyone to have the most fanciful ideas, regardless of whether they have any grounding in reality or possibility.

For example, maybe the problem you need to solve is how to transport pallets. In that case, you might wish you had antigravity, so you could make the pallets weightless and move them easily. 

Out of the absurd, one might find a way to make the impossible possible.

From the perfect, impossible solution, you can back up and work your way to a great, possible solution. What are the issues that make you want antigravity? How do you achieve part of that perfect solution? We can’t do antigravity, but we can lighten a load. We could add tires, get better bearings, have independent suspension, or put motors on it. 

What’s the closest substitute for impossible?

With free-thinking wishing, you’ll probably come up with some impossible solutions, but you’ll also surprise yourself with what is possible. Often you can get far closer to that ideal end state than you would have let yourself imagine.

#2: Liberating Constraints

Imagine I gave you a blank piece of paper and said, “Go create something.” How would you react? How quickly would you be able to come up with something? How good would your solution be?

The great irony is that for most people, when faced with a completely blank piece of paper, their mind goes blank too. When there are too many possibilities, we get overwhelmed. Our brains don’t know what to focus on, and we end up spinning our wheels without making any progress.

A complete absence of limits is itself limiting. 

As counterintuitive as it may seem, brainstorming is often more productive when there are constraints. Of course, there’s a fine line to walk here. Too many constraints, and you will stifle the free thinking needed to be innovative. Too few, and you will be paralyzed with indecision. The right balance is liberating constraints.  

A liberating constraint pulls the scope from “anything” to something focused. As opposed to boxing you in, it gives you an anchor to ground your brainstorming. Liberating constraints can come in many forms, and often, they naturally occur based on the problem you’re trying to solve. Maybe there’s a certain technology you need to use—e.g., electricity versus hydraulics, linear motors versus rotating motors, lidar versus radar. Perhaps you know the solution needs to fit into a specific space, or it must be below a certain weight threshold. Are there energy requirements? Output specifications? Safety considerations?

Starting from the problem you’re trying to solve, identify the nonnegotiables and prerequisites for the solution. These can serve as your liberating constraints.

The More Ideas, the Better

So, what do these two exercises have in common? Though the methods are different, the ultimate goal is the same: to generate more ideas. Each exercise is designed to help overcome a common block to brainstorming. The first addresses the limiting assumption that “It can’t be done,” and the second mitigates the overwhelm and resulting paralysis. 

By bypassing the common roadblocks, both exercises free up our thinking, allowing us to come up with more ideas. The more ideas you generate, the more likely you are to discover that one great idea that leads to an impactful innovation.

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