IDEAS: Creating your innovation toolkit

PRACTISING THE COMBINATIONS to solve problems

Now you have a routine for adding new elements to your repertoire, it is time to practice combining them. It's time to practice generating ideas.

Let's explore some creative ways to solve problems.

thinking THE OPPOSITE

The first exercise is to try solving the problem by attempting to achieve the opposite goal. For example: if my problem is reducing customer wait time, think of ways to increase that wait time even more while making your customer very happy to wait. Use all your creativity and that of your colleagues to list solutions — the more bizarre, the better.

Then, carefully analyze each solution. You might be able to reverse some of them and find ways to actually reduce wait time. Even so, you can still discover ways to make waiting maybe even enjoyable. Have you ever thought that VIP lounges in airports might have started this way?

ChangING the viewpoint

A good exercise for generating ideas is to change your perspective (for this, practicing empathy helps a lot). So, start thinking:

• How would a blind person solve this problem?

• How would an actor solve this problem?

• How would an elephant solve this problem?

• How would a child solve this problem?

• How would an alien solve this problem?

• How would a flower solve this problem?

• How would your grandmother solve this problem?

• How would a monk solve this problem?

• How would your math teacher solve this problem?

• How would Lady Gaga solve this problem?

• How would a detective solve this problem?

And so on. You can make as many combinations and points of view as you like.

USING RESTRICTIONS & CONDITIONS

Placing restrictions and conditions, contrary to what many people think, helps more than it hinders. We can start by thinking about how we would solve the problem if we necessarily had to use, as part of the solution:

• a rock and a rope,

• a roller coaster,

• a rusty nail,

• a person who wears glasses,

• a bottle of wine,

• a red fruit, or

• a Labubu

testing limits

Testing limits also helps unlock your imagination. Think about how you would solve the problem using:

• all the money in the world,

• no money at all,

• using only technology,

• using zero technology,

• using many people,

• using zero people,

• using only rare materials, or

• using only common materials.

HAVING SUPERPOWERS

Another idea is to imagine having superpowers to solve the problem. How would you solve the problem if you could:

• change the laws of nature (e.g., make water evaporate at 20°C),

• change the proportions of the universe (e.g., make a planet the size of a bus and a person the size of a building),

• change the people senses (e.g., make everybody able to visualise the pain),

• change the colors of things (e.g., make the sky yellow and water red), or

• change the sequence of events (e.g., with a time machine)?

USING MAGIC

What if you could use magic? Consider the following possibilities to solve the problem:

• turning water into milk,

• reading thoughts,

• making an object disappear,

• making an object appear,

• pulling something out of a hat,

• training a white rabbit to do something,

• shuffling information like cards, or

• cutting people in half without causing harm.

Special talents

What if you had a special talent that needed to be used in the solution? What would solving the problem look like:

• singing arias from famous operas,

• knitting exotic lingerie,

• using contortion,

• reciting prime numbers from memory,

• writing poetry in Mandarin,

• playing an invented instrument,

• sewing Carnival costumes,

• painting sports bikes, or

• plucking eyebrows?

ABOUT STORYTELLING

The human brain is especially sensitive to narratives, and mastering this art has countless uses: from increasing your influence in the world to pursuing a creative career.

Think about it: the entire world of art, entertainment, marketing, advertising, politics, education—in short, almost everything revolves around stories.

But here we'll explore just one of the uses of storytelling: exercising the brain to generate more ideas.

To create stories, we have to recombine the elements already in our repertoire. This is exactly what we do when we generate ideas.

Imagining stories is a precious resource tool not only for solving problems (you can predict the consequences of the solution you found and perhaps prevent future problems). It can also be useful to build personas and user journeys.

But even if you don't want to solve a specific problem, inventing narratives is an excellent brain-building exercise to increase our creative abilities.

Here are some tips for you to practice storytelling in your daily life; the variations are endless and you can invent more.

PHOTOS

Open some random photo gallery, for example, and create a story based on the sequence of images that appear, as if you were describing a picture book. Create characters, conflicts, and crises. You can do this with your friends or coworkers; it's fun!

LINES

If you're in a line or in a place with more than one stranger, imagine a story for each one and the relationship between them. For example: the guy in front of you at the supermarket is a secret agent who has to pass a message to the old lady without getting too close. But the person with him can't see it because he's an undercover policeman. And so on...

OBJECTS

Observe the objects around you and imagine they're talking to each other. What might your chair be saying to the rug next to it? Are they talking about the table legs?

You might make your fork talk to your knife or discover why your plant is upset about the criticism it received about its new cushion...

ANIMALS

If you have pets, try imagining what they think about you and your household situations; just picture them as your roommates. If you don't, you can do the same exercise with birds outside your window, ants in your garden, or even neighbors' animals. This often reveals interesting perspectives you hadn't considered.

METAPHORS

How about rewriting the metaphors and clichés we know? For example: instead of "ending on a high note", how about "closing with a standing ovation from Beyoncé"; instead of saying someone is "tempest in a teapot" it could be "hought a wobbly table leg was an earthquake", and so on.

Short Stories

This tip comes from the great writer Edgar Allan Poe. You open the dictionary randomly three times, writing down the first word you find each time. Then you just create a short story using those three words.

significant objects

Imagine you need to sell an object and have to invent a story to add value to it (For example: this old ballpoint pen belonged to the great Truman Capote, who used it to write his first book; that's why it has so little ink left). There's actually an incredible social experiment where writers were hired to do this with random objects on eBay, and the results were surprising (learn more at Significant Objects).

Collective Story

This exercise can be done asynchronously, even on social media. You write a paragraph and ask the next person to continue the story; they write another paragraph.

If the number and order of participants are defined at the beginning, we'll have a story with a beginning, middle, and end, but nobody knows how it will develop. If the exercise is done more freely, maybe you could even have a contest for the best ending.

The idea is to build a story collectively, where each person builds on the previous collaboration.

It forces writers to be flexible and work with unexpected plot developments, while also creating something that no single person could have imagined alone.

BEYOND IMAGINATION

You can also exercise your imagination just for fun, without specific goals or problems to solve. You can, for example:

Imagine impossible professions

• Cloud designer (this professional would create shapes and patterns to match events)

• Animal interpreter (a professional who would translate everything your cat wants to tell you)

• Wing installer (someone responsible for installing and uninstalling wings on your back when you need to fly)

• Personal detective (someone who finds all the things you've ever lost).

Imagine impossible objects

• A water pill that you put inside a bottle, blow on it, and it turns into water

• A thought recorder that writes down everything you think (then you can search by keyword or approximate time)

• Shampoo that makes hair grow instantly, just like the picture on the packaging

• A flying motorcycle.

• Jelly cars (accident-proof).

Imagine useless superpowers

Imagining useful superpowers is too easy — try doing the opposite and see how hard it is! Here are some examples:

• Making everything you eat taste like butter

• Reviving insects.

• Absorbing bad luck

• Talking to green fruits

• Becoming invisible, but only when nobody is looking at you

• Always burning dinner when you have guests

• Tearing book covers with the power of your mind

• Making the soles of your feet turn blue for exactly 3 hours a day.

These exercises are delightfully absurd and would definitely stretch creative thinking in unexpected directions.

WHERE does AI ENTERS THIS STORY?

Artificial intelligence generative isn't creative—remember: digital repertoires are limited to past facts, all previously published on the internet or stored in databases. Your repertoire, however, includes perceptions, feelings, and experiences, where the value assigned to each element is influenced by your emotions. These are incomparable in terms of richness and scope. LLMs (Large Language Models) use only statistics and probability to respond with the most likely information from their training data.

They're extremely useful tools, but they're not creative in the human sense of the word.

Machines will make combinations between repertoire elements only when instructed to do so—and as mentioned before, these combinations don't involve emotions or subjectivity, which are essential for creativity.

But they can be very useful as assistants in the creative process when used well. You can, for example, ask for:

• Creative constraints you hadn't considered

• Hypothetical scenarios

• Extensions of your ideas

• Provocative questions

• Testing different viewpoints

• Research on different organisms with distinct sensory abilities

YOUR PERSONAL INNOVATION TOOLKIT

We've presented just a few ways to expand your repertoire and practice generating ideas, but these are only starting points — far from exhausting all the possibilities.

Something interesting you've probably noticed is that you don't need money, specific knowledge, or even free time to practice. So there's really no excuse not to exercise your brain.

To build your personal innovation toolkit, I suggest following these steps:

1. Identify ways to expand your repertoire and do it proactively (You can write down—preferably by hand—things that come to mind to make this happen, like enrolling in a course, volunteering to cook for homeless people, etc.)

2. Establish storytelling practice rituals (For example: every time you're in line or waiting in a waiting room, imagine dialogues; or always create short stories while looking at mannequins in store windows; or once a day write a short story using the first word from the last 3 posts you saw on social media).

3. Use creative ways to solve everyday problems through perspective shifts or any of the techniques presented. You can invent your own techniques and share them with colleagues, but always try to create as many ideas as possible.

Long story short

More than ever, we need new ideas to solve problems we might never have considered tackling. Designing original solutions requires an extensive and rich repertoire and practice. We believe that enlarge the repertoire and exercise creativity should be a daily routine. Here we introduce some methods and techniques to help all kind of professionals improve their mental condition for innovation and to build a personal innovation toolkit.

How to be more creative and generate ideas easily?

The first and most important thing is mental conditioning.

Think about a marathon. I suppose you agree with me that anyone can run a marathon if they are healthy and have a pair of legs working well. Of course, some are more genetically predisposed than others, but what really makes the difference is how much you invest in training.

Daily practice and conditioning are what determine whether someone can run a full marathon or barely make it around the block. Those who have a knack for it but rarely run will fall behind those with less talent who train hard every day. Definitively.

Creativity is a practice like any other, involving combining ideas in original ways. It’s like cooking, writing, drawing, programming, dancing: the more you practice, the closer you get to excellence.

The problem is that most people tend to think automatically most of time and, out of the blue, want to sprint 10 km. It simply doesn’t work.

There is no point intaking a great course at an international and famous institution if you go home and continue doing exactly the same. It doesn’t matter how many Post-it notes you’ve filled out and stuck on the wall or what revolutionary Silicon Valley techniques have been introduced, trust me. Without daily practice, there’s no way.

Ok, but how can I practice creativity in daily life?

The first step is to understand that creativity uses the ingredients we already have in our repertoire (everything we have learned, experienced and felt) as raw material.

But think with me: if your repertoire is poor, has a few and most ordinary elements, it’s mathematically easy to prove , thorough combinational analysis, that we’ll have serious limitations in creating something truly original (specially if these elements are probably also part of most people’s repertoires). You can’t make 20 creative dishes using only potatoes, tomatoes and rice, you know?

Wait a moment... But why do I need create 20 dishes? Two or three aren’t enough?

Why do I need so many combinations? Why can’t I generate just one idea, with two elements, and have it be the great, brilliant solution to my problem?

Simple: because to have a great idea, we need many, really many ideas. Dozens, preferably. Hundreds, if possible.

It's Better have 100 ideas

Darwin’s theory of Evolution teaches us that nature creates random variations on a theme (or, in this case, a living being), and depending on how each variation performs, it survives or not.

It is impossible to know in advance which will be the most successful; selective evolution takes time. It’s the same with innovation. It’s only possible to know if something is innovative after the fact.

For an investor, there’s no way to look into a crystal ball and be certain it will work. The success of a venture depends on many random variables, most of which are completely beyond our control. In fact, determinism doesn’t exist in innovation.

This apply to any innovative idea. But if I have no way to knowing if it will work, what can I do?

You should have as many ideas as possible. And as Rod Judkins, author of the excellent “The art of creative thinking”, teaches us:

"If you produce 100 ideas, one of them will probably be great. If you produce 5 ideas, the chances of one being great are very small (…) The first 40 ideas are obvious. The next 40 are unusual and offbeat. The last 20 are strange and surreal because they are pushing their minds into areas they've never been before."

Most people lack original ideas because they fall in love with their second or third idea, at most. Almost no one has the patience to reach their 90th.

And that’s where the difference lies; the great solution emerges after your brain has been turned inside out (even if unconsciously). Or after you’ve exhaustively combined your entire repertoire with that of others, since it takes a lot of ingredients to generate so many ideas. So it's good to have extensions.

The importance of repertoire

I hope from this point you’re convinced that is very important to have many ideas to reach a really good one. But to be able to make many combinations, I need to have many elements to combine, that is, a rich and large repertoire.

But if the repertoire is the sum total of everything I’ve felt, learned and experienced, the only way to increase my repertoire is by feeling, learning and experiencing more. Better if you expose your brain to things it doesn’t know or it has never experienced before. That’s why is so important to have an open mind and try to see the world with curiosity and without judgement.

Here are some suggestions on how to improve your repertoire:

Social work

It makes you know realities outside your social bubble. People with stories, trajectories, and cultures different from yours. It's almost like taking a free course; you think you're helping someone, but you're the one benefiting the most.

Travel

Getting to know different places, cultures, foods, habits, and languages will certainly expand the number of elements in your mind.

Exhibitions

You know that contemporary art exhibition you didn't understand and even think isn't art? It's because the concept of art is already a ready-made and defined shelf in your head; and your brain is making maximum effort to reuse it. Think about and open your mind without trying to judge.

Books and movies

You can live other lives in other times and places, put yourself in situations you never imagined, just by reading or watching a movie. But attention: books have the additional benefit of exercising our imagination, after all a novel is just an instruction manual for creating the story — you have to imagine everything. In movies, the director, actors, and production team have already done this for you.

Courses

Anything new you're going to learn that brings knowledge you didn't have before, expands your repertoire and the way you see the world.

Languages

Learning a new language doesn't only include grammar and vocabulary; it also includes a new culture and way of thinking. In fact, there are studies that show we have personality variations according to the language we're speaking. It's not just new elements: it's an entire library being built in your head!

Talks

Talk with strangers can be a very good way to discover a new world, especially if this person has a different cultural or social background. If you can talk with people using other language, it could be better.

Experiences

Trying new activities could be an excellent way to improve your repertoire. For example, if you’re a doctor, could try to work as a waiter for some time. Or if you’re a waiter, you can try help a mechanical friend for one day. You can accept to change your country and work in other language. Or organise a big party in your neighbourhood. Get a different way to do to work; every new experience counts.

The most important thing is to get out of the automatic mode of living, pay attention to this new experience with all your senses.

CONCLUSIONS

It's important to notice three things:

LESS SCREEN TIME

The time we spend on social media "numbs" our creative capacity since we're passively consuming content without using our imagination or creativity to interact. So a good idea is to try reducing screen time by creating rituals. For example: I only allow myself to 15 minutes of screen time after creating a short story or inventing three new viewpoints to solve problems.

more collaboration

Collaboration is also super important because no matter how rich our repertoires are, they're finite — at least at the moment of the exercise. So if we connect with other repertoires, the possibilities for connecting elements increase exponentially. Try working with people from different backgrounds than yours — it's the richest way to increase your chances of having original ideas and innovating.

think using your hands

Last but not least, try writing more by hand. We've spent thousands of years developing this skill that we're rapidly losing. There are people who only know how to type, and others are heading toward not even doing that—they just speak what they want through voice messages. The process of writing by hand is part of developing the idea and can really help organize thoughts. Get used to "thinking with your hands," whether writing, scribbling, or drawing.

Do you ready to start building your innovation toolkit? We hope this guide gets you started. Drop us a line with your experiences, suggestions, or creative discoveries—we'd love to learn from you too.