Idea Generation and Innovation Activities

Dixit Braamcamp. Turning a boardgame into a co-design tool for citizen participation in local development

A group idea-generation and ice-melter activity.

Use Y-box for your New Production Development ideation workshop

Use Craig Raine's poem A Martian Sends a Postcard Home to spur creative thinking and encourage perspective shifting in a group. After a warm-up, you can then use this martian perspective to describe your product or service and gain new insights and ideas.

Observing the lives of others is not only an essential element of how we define our own identities, it can also be a great spark for creativity. This activity was inspired by a blog post by Russell Davies.

This specific activity is perfect both for honing your listening and observation skills, but also how to turn this into an everyday documentary-style output. Oh and by the way, he does warn that this activity should be done with a certain level of sensitivity to the subjects you are observing.

One of the best ways to explore creativity is through building. Simple low fidelity prototypes can allow us to transform simple (and at times complex) ideas into something physical. In doing so we inevitably open a space for continuing to explore, reevaluate and iterate.

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.

Dragon Dreaming is a process for creating and achieving collective dreams, which involves four phases: dreaming, planning, doing, and celebrating.

A lateral thinking approach for ideas to a difficult problem

Applying existing best practices for new problems

Most small-group activities will work in a hybrid setting: here are some tips on how to adapt them.

You have a wealth of brilliant ideas, and it can be a challenge to select which to take forward to develop further. 

This game will help you decide on, and select winning ideas.