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.
Creative thinking techniques stimulate and enhance the generation of new ideas, insights, and innovative solutions — breaking free of habitual, linear thinking patterns to encourage unconventional, imaginative approaches. This skill maps the technique family; see Ideation for the general divergent-thinking discipline (quantity over quality, suspended judgment) all of these techniques share.
The technique family
- Brainstorming — generating a large number of ideas in a free- flowing, non-judgmental setting (see Brainstorming for this in depth).
- Mind mapping — a visual representation of ideas and their interrelationships, radiating from a central concept (see Mind Map).
- SCAMPER — a structured prompt checklist (Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, Reverse) for generating variations on an existing idea (see Scamper).
- Random association — associating random words or images with a problem to trigger unexpected new ideas, a deliberate-randomness technique in the same family as Oblique Strategies.
- Analogies — drawing comparisons between seemingly unrelated concepts to find a fresh perspective on the problem at hand.
- Six Thinking Hats — adopting different thinking styles in turn to deliberately explore a problem from multiple angles (see Thinking Hats).
- Mindful observation — focused, deliberate observation of the environment or problem itself as a source of ideas, rather than pure internal ideation.
- Storyboard — a visual narrative sequence used to explore and develop a concept or solution over a sequence of steps or scenes.
Choosing among them
Different techniques suit different blockages: SCAMPER works well when there's an existing idea/product to iterate on; brainstorming and random association work well from a blank slate; Six Thinking Hats works well when a group is stuck because everyone is unconsciously applying the same thinking style; mind mapping and storyboarding work well when the problem has real structure or sequence worth making visible. There's no single best technique — the skill is matching the technique to the actual nature of the block.
Common pitfalls
- Always reaching for the same one technique — different blockages respond to different techniques; a team that only ever brainstorms misses what SCAMPER or Six Thinking Hats would have surfaced on a problem better suited to them.
- Applying evaluation criteria during a divergent-thinking technique — every technique in this family depends on the same suspended- judgment discipline Ideation describes; judging ideas as they emerge collapses the technique's value regardless of which one is used.
- Treating creative thinking as unstructured free-for-all — several of these techniques (SCAMPER, Six Thinking Hats) are actually quite structured; the structure is what makes them effective, not an obstacle to work around.
Learn more
- Ideation for the general divergent-thinking discipline underlying every technique here.
- Brainstorming, Mind Map, Scamper, Thinking Hats for the individual techniques in depth.
- Oblique Strategies for a closely related deliberate-randomness prompt technique.