Harness the Random With This Method

The use of chance is a key element in lateral thinking.  How can you deliberately introduce chance into your creative thinking?  The Random Word method is very good.  Here is another brainstorm method for you to try – Roll the Dice.

It works well with groups of 4 to 6 people and is excellent for forcing unusual combinations of ideas and settings.  If you have more people you can divide into competing teams in separate rooms.  All the equipment needed is a flipchart and a dice.

You select a challenge and then identify three or four characteristics and list six choices for each.  For example say you wanted to create a new TV drama you might choose the following parameters:

You then roll the dice four times.  Say you roll 4, 4, 2, 6 the team has to conceive and design a plan for a TV program about a CEO and a  teenager who get involved in a robbery at a theatre.  You could spin a coin to determine the genders of the two main characters.

The team spends 10 minutes discussing how this could work.  They might then roll the dice again to get another combination and see what they can make of it.  There are 1296 different possible combinations!  After three or four goes they select the most promising idea, put together a plan and present it to the other teams and the moderator.

I have found that this method can work well for new product, service and marketing initiatives.  It is quite remarkable how combinations that initially look unattractive can be moulded into interesting propositions.

Taken from the e-book, How to Generate Ideas

BUY PAUL’S NEW BOOK LATERAL THINKING FOR EVERY DAY

Not every problem has an obvious solution. Utilize the power of lateral thinking to think imaginatively and creatively to tackle everyday problems in a new, fresh way.

Lateral thinking is about re-thinking your approach to problem solving and using an indirect method to come up with innovative results. But how easy is it to do it?

In Lateral Thinking for Every Day, acclaimed writer Paul Sloane clearly explains how you can benefit from using a lateral thinking approach. Using inspiring examples from great lateral thinkers including Lady Gaga, Elon Musk and Tim Berners-Lee, this collection of practical tips, techniques, examples and challenges is guaranteed to help you deploy powerful reasoning techniques, become more persuasive and convincing and to come up with fresh solutions to creative challenges.

—

This post was previously published on Destination Innovation.

***

You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:

White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism

Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box

The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer

What We Talk About When We Talk About Men

—

Photo credit: iStock.com