Page 127 - 100 Great Business Ideas: From Leading Companies Around the World (100 Great Ideas)

A QUICK GUIDE TO MY FAVORITE
TECHNIQUES FOR GENERATING
ALTERNATIVES*

INDIVIDUALTECHNIQUES

Technique Best Use

Verbal Checklist/Product For redesigning existing products and services
Improvement Checklist

Mind Mapping To let ideas flow freely; for designing outlines; for
collecting thoughts about an issue

Association/ When you need lots of ideas quickly and a way to
Free Association relate them to problems; when normal processes
haven't provided many ideas

Rolling in the Grass For gaining new insights, combining ideas, and
of Ideas solving complex problems about which much is
known

GROUPTECHNIQUES**

Technique Best Use

Brainstorming For simple problems when solutions are needed
quickly

Lotus Blossom To generate lots of ideas quickly to size up a
problem; excellent for developing future scenarios

Storyboarding For understanding issues involved in complex
problems, and for solving complex problems

Excursion When problem is difficult to solve, when it has been
hard to generate ideas using other techniques

Nominal Group Technique Especially useful when you want to keep one per-
son from dominating the choice among alternatives

Morphological Analysis For generating lots of ideas quickly about product
or service improvements

**All except the nominal group technique can be used individually as well as in a
group.

*For another author's view of her favorite seven techniques see Joyce
Wycoff, Transformation Thinking: Tools and Techniques That Make Every
Member of Your Company a Great Thinker (Berkely, CA: Berkely Publish-
ing Group, 1994).

112