- Absence Thinking: Think about what is not there.
- Art streaming: Keep creating until you get through the blocks.
- Assumption Busting: Surfacing and challenging unconscious assumptions.
- Attribute Listing: Listing attributes of objects and then challenging them.
- Brainstorming: The classic creative method for groups.
- Braindrawing: Good for reticent groups.
- Brainmapping: Combining brainwriting and mind-mapping.
- Brainwriting: Group doodling for non-verbal stimulation.
- Breakdown: Careful decomposition to explore the whole system.
- Challenge: Challenge any part of the problem.
- Crawford Slip Method: Getting ideas from a large audience.
- A Day In The Life Of...: Building creative tension from contextualized situations.
- Delphi Method: Explore ideas or gain consensus with remote group.
- Doodling: Let your subconscious do the drawing.
- Essence: Looking elsewhere whilst retaining essential qualities.
- Forced Conflict: Using conflict to stimulate the subconscious.
- Guided Imagery: Letting your subconscious give you a message.
- How-How Diagram: Break down problem by asking 'how'.
- How to: Frame statements as 'How to' to trigger focused thinking.
- Incubation: Letting the subconscious do the work.
- The Kipling method (5W1H): Ask simple questions for great answers.
- Lateral thinking: Thinking sideways to create new ideas.
- Lotus Blossom: Unfold the flower of extended ideas.
- Chunking: Go up and then down elsewhere.
- Mind-mapping: Hierarchical breakdown and exploration.
- Modeling: For the artist in everyone.
- Morphological Analysis: Forcing combinations of attribute values.
- Nominal Group Technique: Getting ideas with minimal personal interaction.
- Pause: Think more deeply for a minute.
- Post-Up: Brainstorming with Post-It Notes.
- Provocation: Shake up the session by going off-piste.
- PSI: Problem + Stimulus = Idea!
- Random Words: Using a random word as a stimulus.
- Rightbraining: Combine incomplete doodles around the problem.
- Role-play: Become other people. Let them solve the problem.
- Remembrance: Remembering solutions not yet discovered.
- Reversal: Looking at the problem backwards.
- Reverse Brainstorming: Seek first to prevent your problem from happening.
- Rubber-ducking: Get someone else to listen to your talk.
- SCAMPER: Using action verbs as stimuli.
- Six Thinking Hats: Think comfortably in different ways about the problem.
- Storyboarding: Creating a visual story to explore or explain.
- Take a break: When creativity is fading.
- Talk streaming: Just talk and talk and talk until you unblock.
- TRIZ Contradiction Analysis: Use methods already used in many patents.
- Unfolding: Gradually unfolding the real problem from the outside.
- Value Engineering: Deep analysis to understand and innovate in areas of key value.
- Visioning: Creating a motivating view of the future.
- Wishing: State ideas as wishes to expand thinking.
- Write streaming: Write and write and write until you unblock.