SolveYourProblem
Article Series: Brainstorming
Brainstorming, Where Do I Begin?
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5 Brainstorming Session Tips
If your brainstorming sessions are coming
up dry, maybe its time to take a new approach. The following
are 5 ways to breathe new life into an exhausted brainstorm.
1.
Be Contrary
Criticizing
ideas is anathema to the very definition of brainstorming,
but creatively role-playing the
way a critic would perceive your problems and ideas can be
an amazing brainstorming tool. What would a critic say about
your current problems, challenges, and objectives? Take an
opposite tack to the one you’ve been taking. Negate some
of your best ideas to find their equally powerful polar opposite.
If you’re really having such difficulty brainstorming solutions,
then brainstorm obstacles for a little while. Then see what
your mind does to confront those obstacles one by one.
2.
Make Change
Take
a break from trying to come up with new ideas for a while
and spend some more time with your existing
ideas. See how many ways you can alter those same ideas to
different effect. Change as many properties about each of
your ideas as you can, its form and function alike. See what
new
ideas you come up with after all, in the guise of your existing
ideas slightly skewed.
3.
Feed the Masses
The
masses all want the same things: food and shelter, time and
space, money, convenience, health and
beauty. Take each of your ideas and see how it meets those
needs. Certainly one idea can’t meet all of those needs,
but it can certainly meet more than one. So ask yourself
first
which of these needs your current ideas already meet. If
you find an idea that meets none of these needs, then you’ve
got
a starting point. Start playing with that idea until you
can find a way for it do so. Once you’ve identified at least
one
need met by each of your ideas, see how you can alter, adjust,
and adapt your ideas to start fulfilling multiple needs of
the masses. The more of their needs you fulfill, the more
of them that will be interested in what you have to offer.
4.
Beef it Up
Add
value to your existing ideas. Give it a boost, make it New
and Improved. Whatever that means to you
and your market. Whether its more features, greater strength
or security, increased attractiveness and appeal, longer
lifespan, added extras. Anything that will make your existing
ideas even
more valuable to those they affect.
5.
Copy
In
school we’re told not to copy anyone else’s work. But in
the real world it happens all the time. It’s a staple
of survival, in fact, to learn from other’s successes as
much as their failures. Someone was the first to use the
phrase
“New and Improved” or “Free Trial” or “Sale”. Someone was
the first to come up with a flip-top lid. Innovations that
work
should be embraced, not shunned because you weren’t the one
who came up with it. Find business models that work, and
emulate them. It doesn’t have to be new to be new to you.
If someone
else has already figured out how to solve the same problem
you have, benefit from their trial and error and get on with
solving problems that haven’t been solved yet.
# # # # # SolveYourProblem.com
: 2008
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