Brainstorming
Use when asked to run a brainstorming session well — quantity-over-quality, non-judgmental atmosphere, timeboxing, and capture technique — the foundational technique within the broader creative-thinking toolkit (see creative-thinking).
Creative thinking
11 skills.
Creative Thinking
Use when asked which creative-thinking technique fits a situation — an umbrella overview of brainstorming, mind mapping, SCAMPER, random association, analogies, thinking hats, mindful observation, and storyboarding — as the technique-selection layer above ideation's general discipline.
Decision Tree
Use when asked to build a decision tree — a branching structure of decisions and their outcomes, for classification, prediction, or evaluating scenarios — as one structured evaluation tool, distinct from the generative, judgment-free phase of ideation (see ideation) that typically precedes it.
Flowchart
Use when asked to draw a flowchart — start/end, process, decision, connector, and input/output symbols representing a process or workflow's sequence — as distinct from a mind map's radial, associative structure (see mind-map), which suits non-sequential idea structures rather than linear/branching process flow.
Futurespective
Use when asked to run a futurespective — a forward-looking group exercise imagining possible future scenarios to inform current decisions — as the forward-facing counterpart to a retrospective, drawing on scenario planning and SWOT analysis (see swot-analysis).
Ideation
Use when asked to generate ideas or run a brainstorming session — divergent thinking, mind mapping, SCAMPER, and other idea-generation techniques — as the generative phase that precedes evaluation/selection, distinct from decision-making tools like decision-tree used afterward.
Mental Model
Use when asked to apply or explain a mental model — the cognitive frameworks people use to simplify, predict, and reason about a domain — as the general concept underlying more specific frameworks throughout this collection (SWOT, PDCA, OODA, and others are each a named mental model).
Mind Map
Use when asked to build a mind map — a central-idea-with-radiating-branches visual structure for brainstorming, note-taking, or organizing information — one specific technique within the broader ideation toolkit (see ideation).
Oblique Strategies
Use when asked for a creative-block-breaking prompt, or to explain Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's "Oblique Strategies" card deck — lateral-thinking prompts for getting unstuck on a creative or technical problem — grounded in joelparkerhenderson/oblique-strategies.
Scamper
Use when asked to apply SCAMPER — a seven-prompt checklist (Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, Reverse) for generating variations on an existing idea — one specific structured technique within the broader creative-thinking toolkit (see creative-thinking).
Thinking Hats
Use when asked to apply the Six Thinking Hats technique — deliberately switching between factual, emotional, critical, optimistic, creative, and process-level thinking modes — one specific structured technique within the broader creative-thinking toolkit (see creative-thinking).