EXERCISE ANEGATIVE BRAINSTORM

Objective

The objective of this activity is to push the participants to come up with more and original ideas. It could be done instead of or together with exercise 2.

Description

Step 1

Generate negative ideas

Ask participants to brainstorm on finding ideas to the negative question:

“What business idea could we go for that will not be successful?”

Step 2

Turn it into positive ideas

1. Facilitate the participants to go through each negative idea and try to change it into a positive idea.

That will not be possible for all ideas, but it may lead to surprising and original ideas

Negative brainstorm

What this technique uses is the human tendency to see the negative side of things. When a topic or problem is put forward, it is often easier to come up with reasons why it won’t work or why the problem cannot be solved rather than looking for what’s good about the idea or solutions to the problem.

So if we’re good at coming up with negatives, we might as well use this skill!

The problem is defined. Instead of brainstorming for possible solutions the team brainstorms for everything that could make the problem worse.

The output from this brainstorm is then taken and explored to see if any new ideas for a solution are suggested by thinking about how to eliminate the things which make the problem worse.

Negative brainstorming is usually more focused than regular brainstorming and the solutions become self-obvious.

Negative brainstorming also ensures that the stakeholders involved get out all of their thoughts of why something will not work or cannot be solved on the table.

So the next time you need to create solutions to a problem or build activities to make an idea work, try being negative to get a positive outcome.