Innovation exercises that will help your team grow

Your crew can have trouble when it comes to being creative and thinking outside the box. However this doesn't mean that they can't be creative. In order for this creativity and innovation to come to your team, you must set some exercises and practice. In this space you will be able to find creativity and innovation exercises you can use to help the creative juices flowing. 

If you haven't started implementing design thinking and creative thinking exercises into your workspace this is your chance. 

Brainwriting

This is a great example of a structured collaboration. During this exercise you should ask your team to start with an initial idea that has a determined topic. After the ideas are confirmed, tell everyone to add comments, extension, and creative words or topics to this idea.

At the end of the exercise you will be able to have different team perspectives and will be able to create a discussion on these.

Solution Laddering

With this technique you can get to the root problem of basic ideas. Through the solution laddering you can start with a selected challenging problem your team has. After this you will go around asking two simple questions. Why does this problem exist? How does the problem manifest? 

In between the answers and the continuity of asking how and why you will be able to reach a root issue. This way you can find different solutions and ideas to a problem instead of going to the same boring and cliché ideas. 

Ideart

This creative technique works best with images or any visual stimulation. Choose an image that can generate any kind of creative thought, it can be a painting too and with this image you construct stories, phrases, hidden aspects etc by taking concepts out of these. Through these images you can make comparisons, and create even a type of forceful connections between the creative focus and whichever the objective of the meeting is. This way you can make more creative phrases, solutions, products etc. 

Forced relationships (Random words)

This creative methods is useful for combining the known with the unknown. This way you can create new ideas and original ideas. This process can help the brainstorming process when it seems like it has sunk. Remember through these types of activities any idea is welcome, write and gather as many ideas as you can, and select any word or even an image completely random this way the connection has to be forced into a new level and new ideas can come to work. 

Use any of these techniques to increase the range of thought, discover new ideas, improve your team alignment and enhance problem solving. Remember creative thinking can be fun and you can gain valuable advantages from these exercises with your team. What are you waiting for?