Blueprint to your best ideas

Drawing blanks? Hitting roadblocks? It’s time to take a trip through our idea-making map for your best breakthroughs

We’ve all been there. Idea brainfreeze. Maybe you’re at the beginning of your ideation process or maybe you’re at the end. But somewhere along the way, you hit a point of stagnation, and you’re not sure what to do next. So now what? Sit back, relax, and follow these simple tips to help take your ideas from stale to stellar.

Turn it around

Put it all on the table. All the things you think are obvious about your product or problem? Write the absolute opposite. Take restaurants. They always have menus, right? Now let’s say they don't. Maybe you pick your own ingredients and the chef improvises? Take a core assumption and consider what you would have to do to make its opposite true.

Make it random

After turning the tables, how about taking a turn for the random? Think of a random word or use a generator and try to find the connection with your product or problem. Let’s talk about...birthdays. What would your product/problem do if it only came around once a year? If it was a reward? If everyone had one? Dive into the possibilities of unexpected connections.

Give it something else to do

Take an existing feature of your product and give it another role. Have a button on your website that leads to a scheduling tool? Make it also pop open a questionnaire. Consider the possibilities of role-playing.

Complete it

If you’re working in a group, write incomplete sentences—MadLibs style—on a shared board. Set a timer and have your team members rotate the sentences, completing as much as they can in limited time. Notice how two halves (or three or four) can make a whole.

Put it in a paradox

Consider a contradiction within your problem. Let’s say your users give a lot of feedback but don’t attend educational programming. How are they so enthusiastic in one place but barely there in another? Embrace the contradiction to find a solution that can live with it.

Mess it all up

Take your product or process and break it down into smaller parts. Now rearrange it. How can you reimagine each of these parts individually? Lower the pressure and break the barriers to your lightbulb moment.

Finally unstuck? Make that new idea a reality with the help of a freelancer.

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