Saturday 7 November 2015

Random Stimulus Exercise to generate new ideas

This was another exercise from the creative techniques workshop earlier in the year - I've used it on 2 separate occasions now and it works really well. Good ice breaker material as well as it gets people contributing and laughing.

Basic premise is that new ideas are generated based on seemingly unrelated objects which are then related back to the original problem. It works by providing a number of physical objects - you can pick items around the room but I prefer to choose things related to the theme. So for example a recent Be your Best training had the theme of journey down the river BOB - so I collected items with a maritime theme e.g a boat, seagull, life buoy, anchor and some more regular items like chocolate and elastic bands. You could also use pictures to stimulate ideas. I then asked Leaders to come up one at a time from each group and select an item and generate an idea to help with the problem; which in this instance was what did they want to get out of their residential weekend? Ideas can be based on sense, smell, feeling, imagination, or association - the wackier the better really. Then the group reviews the ideas they have come up with. Most certainly bizarre but it worked well and a lot of fun was generated going by the noise levels in the room.  

No comments:

Post a Comment