Study smarter with Fiveable
Get study guides, practice questions, and cheatsheets for all your subjects. Join 500,000+ students with a 96% pass rate.
Ideation is the creative engine of design thinking—it's where teams move from understanding problems to generating potential solutions. You're being tested on more than just knowing technique names; you need to understand when to use each method, why it works, and how different techniques complement each other in the innovation process. The best business solutions rarely come from a single brainstorming session—they emerge from strategically combining divergent and convergent thinking approaches.
These techniques represent core principles you'll encounter throughout business innovation: psychological safety in idea generation, visual thinking for complex problems, structured creativity to push beyond obvious solutions, and user-centered framing to ensure relevance. Don't just memorize the steps of each technique—know what cognitive or collaborative barrier each one is designed to overcome, and be ready to recommend the right tool for specific business scenarios.
These methods prioritize quantity and variety over immediate quality. The underlying principle is that creative breakthroughs often hide among dozens of "ordinary" ideas—you need volume to find gems.
Compare: Brainstorming vs. Crazy 8s—both prioritize quantity, but brainstorming is verbal and collaborative while Crazy 8s is individual and visual. Use Crazy 8s when you need to prevent groupthink or when team members have unequal verbal confidence.
When free-form ideation stalls, these techniques provide systematic prompts to explore new directions. They work by forcing your brain down paths it wouldn't naturally take.
Compare: SCAMPER vs. Lotus Blossom—SCAMPER modifies a single existing idea through different lenses, while Lotus Blossom expands outward from a concept. Choose SCAMPER for product improvement; choose Lotus Blossom for exploring a new strategic territory.
These techniques leverage spatial and storytelling cognition to unlock ideas that verbal discussion misses. Visual processing activates different neural pathways than language, often revealing patterns and possibilities hidden in text-based thinking.
Compare: Mind Mapping vs. Storyboarding—both are visual, but mind mapping captures relationships while storyboarding captures sequences. Use mind mapping to explore problem complexity; use storyboarding to design user experiences or process flows.
These methods break habitual thinking patterns by forcing teams to adopt unfamiliar viewpoints. Innovation often comes from seeing the familiar as strange.
Compare: Reverse Thinking vs. Worst Possible Idea—both use "failure" productively, but Reverse Thinking analyzes how to cause failure (strategic), while Worst Possible Idea generates deliberately bad solutions (generative). Reverse Thinking is analytical; Worst Possible Idea is creative warm-up.
These techniques keep real human needs at the center of idea generation. The best business solutions solve problems people actually have, not problems teams imagine.
Compare: Empathy Mapping vs. Role-Playing—both build user understanding, but empathy mapping is analytical and visual while role-playing is experiential and physical. Use empathy mapping to synthesize research; use role-playing to generate emotional insights and test assumptions.
After divergent ideation, these methods help teams organize, evaluate, and select the most promising ideas. Generating 100 ideas means nothing if you can't identify the three worth pursuing.
Compare: Affinity Diagramming vs. Mind Mapping—both organize information visually, but mind mapping is top-down (starting from a central concept) while affinity diagramming is bottom-up (patterns emerge from ungrouped data). Use mind mapping to explore; use affinity diagramming to synthesize.
| Concept | Best Examples |
|---|---|
| Generating high volume of ideas | Brainstorming, Crazy 8s, Worst Possible Idea |
| Systematic modification of existing solutions | SCAMPER, Reverse Thinking |
| Visual/spatial thinking | Mind Mapping, Storyboarding, Lotus Blossom |
| Managing group dynamics | Six Thinking Hats, Affinity Diagramming |
| Building user empathy | Empathy Mapping, Role-Playing |
| Framing problems productively | How Might We Questions, Reverse Thinking |
| Testing and refining ideas | Prototyping, Storyboarding |
| Cross-domain inspiration | Analogies and Metaphors |
A team keeps generating safe, incremental ideas and struggles to think boldly. Which two techniques would best help them break through this barrier, and why do they work?
Compare and contrast Mind Mapping and Affinity Diagramming—when would you choose each, and what does each reveal that the other might miss?
Your team has completed user research and needs to translate findings into actionable creative challenges. Which technique sequence would you recommend, and what would each step accomplish?
A product manager wants to improve an existing mobile app. Which structured creativity framework would be most appropriate, and how would you explain its value compared to open brainstorming?
If a case study describes a team that generated many ideas but couldn't reach consensus on which to pursue, which technique addresses this challenge—and what principle makes it effective for convergent thinking?