When it comes to creative thinking exercises, I'm typically a proponent of introducing people to incremental creative thinking before trying to dunk them into extreme creativity.
That preference is predicated on getting people more familiar and comfortable with smaller creative steps. In that way, the first creative step you ask them to take isn't such a doozie.
Sometimes, however, when it comes to creative thinking exercises, starting small is not the best strategy to follow.
We were using a combo creative thinking exercise recently. We had asked creative thinking session participants for three progressive creative leaps. For the first step, it was okay for their response to be a conventional idea. We wanted to stretch the creative thinking, however, for steps two and three, with the third answer being a strong example of extreme creativity.
While that was the plan, the mindset we first set was too incremental creatively and too lasting.
Our initial question got them too stuck on what's happening today.
Subsequently, absent very strong and clear extreme creativity inducing questions for steps two and three, we had to work extra hard to move everyone toward more outrageous ideas. We eventually pushed toward extreme creativity in their responses, but it was much harder than it needed to be.
The lesson?
While it's not always the case, sometimes you do need to go big creatively right from the start before you are forced to go home with overly familiar ideas. – Mike Brown
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