ideation
![Brian Piercy](data:image/svg+xml;utf8,<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="%230A66C2"><path d="M20.447 20.452H16.89v-5.569c0-1.328-.027-3.037-1.852-3.037-1.853 0-2.136 1.445-2.136 2.939v5.667H9.351V9h3.414v1.561h.046c.477-.9 1.637-1.85 3.37-1.85 3.601 0 4.267 2.37 4.267 5.455v6.286zM5.337 7.433a1.982 1.982 0 1 1 0-3.964 1.982 1.982 0 0 1 0 3.964zm1.782 13.019H3.555V9h3.564v11.452zM22.225 0H1.771C.792 0 0 .774 0 1.729v20.542C0 23.227.792 24 1.771 24h20.451C23.2 24 24 23.227 24 22.271V1.729C24 .774 23.2 0 22.222 0h.003z"/></svg>)
A sudden flash of insight is a product of your brain. Neuroscientists track the neural activity underlying an “aha” and how it might boost memory.
Founders share the unconventional ways they found conviction in their startup ideas.
Brainstorming, thinking outside the box, working with free reign on a project--they're old creativity maxims, but how well do they really work?
Reading obituaries can boost creativity by exposing you to distant ideas, fueling the associations that lead to unexpected breakthroughs.
Can financial incentives turn innovation into a chore? A study of GitHub's efforts to sponsor software coders by Maria Roche and colleagues explores the interplay between motivation and creativity.
Organizing multistep projects can be challenging. Scrintal lets you easily focus on one element at a time.
Architect and poet Paolo Belardi traces the many conditions and situations that have inspired extraordinary ideas across the arts and sciences.
Obsidian Canvas gives you infinite space to research, brainstorm, diagram, and lay out your ideas.
You can follow my latest writing at ScreenshotEssays.com
Creativity research in psychology reveals 14 ways to increase imaginative and creativity thinking, discover new ideas and solve problems.
Sometimes the search for creative insight requires us to focus, and sometimes it requires us to look away.
Feeling uninspired? Learn how to stay creative and keep on generating new ideas with these 13 simple yet effective tips.
You might need help to turn an idea into a project. Most of the time, though, project developers walk up to those that might help and say, “I have a glimmer of an idea, will you help me?̶…
In the Creative Founder, students are paired semi-randomly, and then spend a semester trying to get to product-market fit. I always start them with market selection. A market has three key elements…
If you've ever stared at a blank page, you know the importance of creative constraints. Learn how to harness limitations for more and better ideas.
Part Two of the Needfinding/Ideation/MVP Creation Charette This is the second part of a three part essay on rapid MVP creation to start testing assumptions. Part One is here. It was written for my …
Let’s say you manage a product that helps small businesses support their customers. You’re looking to improve customers’ engagement and retention levels. There are two ideas are on the table:
With close study, the genealogies of even the most original ideas can be traced
Mike Krieger, Instagram's founder thinks you can build apps that fit the real world by watching what people want, not guessing. He presented his eight core product design insights today at 500 Startups' Warm Gun conference. Here's the cheat sheet to his talk.
Two inventors turned a failed experiment into an irresistibly poppable product that revolutionized the shipping industry
What's an idea? What sorts of ideas are there? And how to explain them once you have them?
This is an article about juxting — coming up with ideas by randomly juxtaposing two things and seeing the ways they could relate to each…
The ideas that influence us aren't always obvious. Here are ten that have shaped my life, that may have the power to change yours.
An introduction to forming hypothesis statements for product experimentation.
It’s so important to test your new product idea long before you feel ready.
I regularly help pre-seed entrepreneurs identify and evaluate potential startup opportunities. The following is a set of heuristics I’ve developed and collected over the years that might of u…
When you're faced with uncertainty, the best thing you can do is analyse your inputs, synthesise a new model, and then destroy it to start over again.
The most common question prospective startup founders ask is how to get ideas for startups. The second most common question is if you have any ideas for their startup. But giving founders an idea...
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Working backwards and breaking free from the norm exposes new and unique opportunities you probably haven’t considered.
It's been said that ideas don't matter, and that only execution does. I wholeheartedly disagree. You need both to succeed, but you can only get so good...
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Most crowdsourcing initiatives end up with an overwhelming amount of useless ideas. Dealing with a full submission box is not only extremely time consuming and costly, it also biases how ideas are selected: When firms receive too many ideas, they tend to focus on ideas that are already familiar to them, defeating the entire purpose of crowdsourcing, which is to surface new thinking. Why do many crowdsourced ideas turn out so bad, and what can firms do about it? Recent research finds that it comes down to understanding the motivations of crowd members.
One of the best ways to learn and come up with new ideas is to focus intensely on a problem, then let your mind wander. I’ve enjoyed doing this when problem solving and learning, and recently I’ve been thinking about how weird it is to build trust in your unconscious to do the work for you, especially when it comes to technical work. Letting your mind focus and letting your mind wander The first recommendation I have for anyone taking a meta look at learning is Barbara Oakley’s Learning How To Learn.
Asynchronous remote ideation allows people to contribute ideas whenever it’s convenient to do so, but synchronous sessions lead to faster results and more team building.
5 frameworks to help Founders coming up with a new startup idea that is the most likely to lead to a transformative company.
Second-order thinking is a mental model that smart people like Warren Buffett & Howard Marks use to avoid problems. Read this article to learn how it works.
Confirming what people already believe can sometimes help organizations overcome barriers to change.
Finding and building the next big idea is the holy grail of any tech company. Unfortunately the statistics are against us: when subjected…