Supercharge Ideation: Use Design Thinking to Transform Brainstorming Sessions

Thinking outside the box and brainstorming are common phrases among conversations about ideation. But how successful is your team at shattering the glass when it comes to developing new ideas? To get to the best idea, you must be willing to toss out 100 ideas.

Common roadblocks of traditional brainstorming restrict teams’ abilities to develop new ideas every day. Teams are quick to rally around one idea too soon, quiet people are left with no voice, or the highest paid person’s opinion takes the stage.

To get to 100 ideas quickly, you need to start strategically designing your ideation sessions.

This session explores design thinking methods to advance teams’ abilities to generate new, innovative ideas. We’ll delve into common challenges with traditional brainstorming and explore three methods to strategically design ideation sessions for developing innovative solutions.

The first method will focus on quantity over quality where the emphasis is devoted toward developing lots of solutions, quickly. We’ll share research for why it is necessary to develop multiple solutions before executing one and discuss logistics for developing creative matrices.

The second method will encourage teams to channel new mindsets in pursuit of unique ideas via alternative worlds.

The final method emphasizes the importance of iterating on multiple ideas. We’ll explain the logistics of round robin ideation and explore the benefits of iterating among teams early in ideation.

You’ll leave this session with three techniques for teams to apply and transform their approach to any stage of innovation and idea generation.

In this session you will learn:

• The challenges that impede teams’ abilities to develop new, innovative ideas and solutions
• Research to support why it is vital to develop multiple solutions, before prioritizing one
• How to design and facilitate outcome-driven ideation sessions using three design thinking methods for generating multiple solutions
• Within the context of a real problem, participants will practice three ideation techniques to use at various stages of innovation and idea generation