Library of facilitation techniques

Idea Generation and Innovation Activities

Idea generation techniques to get your group into creative thinking mode and boost innovation. Help people to find new perspectives and build on the collective inspiration of your group.

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Thiagi Group

One will get you Ten

If I give you a dollar and you give me a dollar, we both end up where we began. But if I give you an idea and you give me an idea, we end up with two ideas each, benefiting from a 100 percent return on our investment.

In One Will Get You Ten, we leverage this principle so that you and all other participants receive a 1000 percent return on your investment on ideas.

Alex Leviton

Ten True Statements about creativity

Time: 5-10 minutes

  1. (15-30 minutes) Write down 10 true statements about your creativity in your Creativity Notebook. These can be anything: ‘I feel the most creative when I’m dancing.’ ‘My desk needs to be messy/tidy for me to feel like I can be creative.’

  2. EXTRA CREDIT: If you get even the slightest whiff of an 'aha!' moment, add a second layer sentence to your Noticing Wall (the back page of your Creativity Notebook). Noticing Wall Statements look like anything from, 'Huh, I never thought of it that way!' to 'Wow, I guess I really do need a messy desk to feel creative; I wonder why.'

Hyper Island

This n’ That

Creativity is connecting things. If you are looking to give your creative mind a workout with a simple concept mash-up, look no further. The more you do this, the better you’ll get at one of the fundamental skills that lead to new ideas, combining elements. We've found a simple online tool from Dave Birss that helps you to define random objects that can form the basis of your creative combination.

Hyper Island

Apple-Drawing Ideation

The purpose of this simple exercise is to demonstrate three key principles useful for creativity and idea generation: quantity is a condition for quality; building on the ideas of others; the ideas we come up with are usually all the same. The format is simple, with small groups standing and drawing apples. At the end of the exercise, the whole group reflects and draws out learnings and reflections.