Create noise cloudsinnovate, find new solutions and germinate original ideas: many methods of creativity and innovation exist meet the needs of your customers and improve your products or services.

If it is important to detect the problems encountered by users of your products, the generation of relevant and innovative ideas to solve them is just as important.

For this, there are many methods of creativity of which we offer a non -exhaustive selection.

1) Brainstorming

This is certainly the Creativity technique The most famous. It consists in bringing together a group of people who each will share their ideas on a subject, without receiving any criticism or judgment from others.

For a brainstorming to be a success, it is important that participants “release” themselves completely and bounce on the ideas of others to offer even better.

You can help yourself software to organize brainstorming. Not compulsory when you are in face -to -face, these are size tools for a visio brainstorming!

2) Brainwriting

Method of creativity similar to brainstorming, Brainwriting consists for participants to sleep their ideas on paper rather than saying them orally.

After a few minutes, everyone transmits their piece of paper to their neighbor, who develops ideas from those who are written, and so on.

Brainwriting: Creativity methodBrainwriting: Creativity method

3) The Brainwalk

The idea of ​​Brainwalk is similar to that of Brainwriting, except that the participants do not transmit pieces of paper to their neighbor; Instead, they move themselves into the room.

The goal is to go from one “ideas generation station” to another, inspired by other participants to stimulate his own creativity.

4) The worst idea possible

A sort of reverse brainstorming, this creativity technique invites participants to voluntarily express “the worst possible idea” on a subject.

This method is in particular to uninhibit the group, which is not likely to self -censor since the purpose of the exercise is to make “bad” proposals.

What is more, this makes it possible to quickly identify and eliminate the worst ideas, failing to bring out innovation pearls.

5) The sketchstorm

In English, “sketch” literally means “sketch”.

You guessed it, this creative method is based on drawing. But rest assured, there is no need to be an artist to use it: the sketches must on the contrary be as simple and basic as possible.

The interest is that visual representations have the power to stimulate the imagination still a little more than the words (spoken or written).

What is more, a drawing can allow you to express a concept On which you cannot put words.

Sketchstorm, creativity techniqueSketchstorm, creativity technique

6) Mind Mapping

Mind mapping is another visual representation technique to stimulate creativity.

It consists in building a kind of tree in which:

  • The main subject is at the center;
  • Ideas related to the subject are branches and sub-branches connected to the subject.

This visualization tool, a priori quite simple, is in fact very useful to “map” ideas and better understand the place they occupy.

There are also very good Tools to create mind maps online.

7) Bodystorm

Let's continue in line with the “Storm” with the Bodystorm, which directly puts the participants into action.

Concretely, these are scenarios during which we put ourselves in the shoes of users and customers faced with a problem that we seek to solve.

By being reconstituting action and being at the heart of the problem, it can be easier to generate ideas and therefore potential solutions.

Read also: MVP & Agile Project: The guide to succeed in your minimum viable product

8) The Focus Group

The Focus Group is to bring together not members of the company, but consumers and users of your products in order to have directly feedback and improvement ideas on their part.

Directed by one or more animators, the Focus Group is made up of 5 to 10 people to which a number of questions will be asked.

Please note: this is not an interrogation, the objective is to set up a real, fluid and frank dialogue, while following a “guide” provided in advance. Everything is fully recorded, even filmed, to be analyzed afterwards.

Focus group, ideas generation methodFocus group, ideas generation method

9) Gamestorming

Gamestorming encompasses a variety of techniques for generating ideas and problem solving that are voluntarily presented in the form of games.

Indeed, the game has the advantage of increasing investment, energy and teamwork among participants. Among the main Gamestorming techniques, we can cite:

  • Anti-problubème : The idea of ​​this game is to “return” the problem that we are trying to solve. Participants then seek solutions to “anti-Problème”, which reveals ideas related to the real problem;
  • “Fishbowl” : It consists in constituting two circles with the participants, a small and a large one that surrounds the first. The members of the small circle make a brainstorming and exchange their ideas, while the members of the large circle observe in silence and take notes;
  • Campfire : The principle of this game is to push the participants to tell a story, like around a campfire. To start, highlight between 10 and 20 post-it on which you have registered keywords (which you will have determined following a brainstorming, for example). Each participant must in turn win a post-it (or create one himself if an idea comes to him), stick it on another reserved surface (which will constitute the “thread of history”) and tell a story linked to this keyword.

There are of course a multitude of other games, this list being far from exhaustive.

10) The six hats

This technique is based on 6 different modes of thought represented by hats:

  • The white hat: the neutrality. We do not take sides and we are satisfied with figures and encrypted data;
  • The yellow hat: theoptimism. We make positive comments, we project ourselves with the ideas of others;
  • The green hat: the creativity. We are looking for new ideas and solutions, not hesitating to take liberties;
  • The black hat: the pessimism. We are prudent, even alarmist, and sensitive to risks and dangers;
  • The red hat: theemotion. We react “hot”, from feelings and intuitions;
  • The blue hat: theorganization. We channel ideas with discipline. It is actually the host of the animator of the exercise.

The idea is, for each participant, to alternate between the different hats in order to think differently, thus generating more new ideas.