How to Quickly Come up with 25 Ideas

Have you ever been in a situation where you need to come up with a few solid solutions fast? One of the best ways to give yourself a few really good solutions to explore are to come up with a lot of ideas. There are many ways to do this, but one method in particular is great for white boarding with a group. By following this process of focusing, listing, selecting and reflecting you can quickly come up with 25 ideas to explore and narrow down to five potential solutions.

Write a Focus Statement

The focus statement should clearly state the goal and purpose, the reason, the what you are trying to solve. It should be vague enough though to leave room for exploration. An example for the sample list below would be:

Focus: The experience of eating breakfast on the go for teenagers who like to sleep in on school days

Tip – The focus should clearly describe what, who, why and how.

List Ideas in Chunks

Breaking the larger idea list into sections of five ideas each makes it easier mentally and also visually. Would you rather look at 5 short lists to fill in or one long list numbered 1-25? A common structure for each section is the following five groups. You could add or swap out others too.

• Listing Ideas (list the first 5)
• Eliminating a constraint: (Time, Mass, Weight, Space, Money, etc)
• Making an analogy – like everyday activities
• Exaggerating
• Getting in the garbage (what are the worst ideas for the focus)

Start with the five easiest to think of ideas that are just burning for you to write them down. Then set your mind free. What if you could eliminate something? What assumptions do people make about their experiences? This will help you get disruptive, but in a positive way. Next compare it to an everyday activity. Are there sports or tasks or situations that might be more relatable or used to explain an idea? Exaggerate and get a bit crazy with ideas. What would it look like to really push what was possible or expected? Finally, when you are starting to run low on ideas, think about the worst possible solutions to the focus statement.

The great things about this list method is it helps short circuit judgement. We have a tendency to self censor, to judge our ideas before we even write them down. It is more important to write the idea down and get it out of your head. Qualifying the idea is a different step in the process.

Examples of Idea Chunking

Listing

1. Grab a breakfast bar from a box and eat it on the way to school
2. Pop a multigrain fruit pancake square in the toaster
3. Get a healthy and tasty protein smoothie out of the fridge
4. Eat a banana slathered in nut butter from a squeezable one serving tube
5. Microwave a breakfast sandwich while looking for your car keys

Eliminating a constraint: Time

1. Make an omelet with fresh cut veggies and protein
2. Make a full breakfast with pancakes with fruit and nuts, eggs and a protein of choice (have friends join in too!)
3. Bake a breakfast pizza
4. Make a custom smoothie with protein/vitamin fix and favorite fruit
5. Teach myself to make scones to eat and share with friends

Making an analogy – like everyday activities

1. If getting breakfast was like brushing teeth, teens could just squeeze a nutritious breakfast into their mouth
2. If eating breakfast was like checking mail, you would just have to take it out of the box and open it to eat it
3. If eating breakfast was like turning on a light, you could just flip a switch and breakfast would be on the table in front of you ready to eat
4. If eating breakfast was like picking out clothes, you could grab a full meal by choosing items from a few shelves or containers
5. If eating breakfast was like texting, you could type in a short code and order a meal delivered to your location of choice

Exaggerating – time or type of food

1. Steamed veggies are the new pop-tarts
2. Bite sized pull apart toaster waffles filled with cream cheese or fruit spread
3. Quick muffins – 10 second microwave blueberry muffins
4. Cereal to go: almond milk or milk in a cup with a sectioned top with a pull apart lid containing cereal with fruit and nuts
5. Breakfast pot pies: flaky filled pastries of egg and cheese and protein or nuts/fruit that you can zap in the microwave.

Getting in the garbage

1. Skip breakfast, what’s for lunch?
2. Parent is going to cook breakfast – market/guilt parents into buying food to heat up for their teen
3. Easy to reheat leftovers
4. A brand of breakfast bread marketed at teens with edgy colors and shapes on the bag
5. Microwaveable veggie + egg souffles

Selection of Ideas by Category

Now that we have 25 ideas, it is time to sort and select the five which best match each category below. We will choose the most useful, desirable, easiest, most functional and sustainable. You can modify the categories according to your project needs, these are just commonly used selection categories.

Most useful idea – Multigrain fruit pancake square

Toaster meals currently maybe have blueberries or whole grain in them but they are small and not very nutritious. The rise in popularity of breakfast bars shows a high demand for easy to eat hand held breakfast food. Currently all these breakfast bars are cold. There is an opportunity to create a quick and nutritious breakfast item that is full of nuts and grains and fruit that can has the softness and texture of a pancake and can be quickly warmed in a toaster and eaten on the go.

Most desirable idea: Breakfast Pot Pies

These flaky filled pastries of egg and cheese and protein or nuts/fruit are a filling meal that is also quick to make. This is the most desirable idea because it fits a niche for teens who are hungry and don’t have a lot of time. Currently a lot of “quick breakfast pastries” are very small and not enough food for a growing teen. They are also often not full of healthy things to eat like nuts.

Easiest for most people to use: A healthy and tasty protein smoothie

Quick and fast with no need to wait for a toaster or microwave. Just grab it out of the fridge and get on with your day. Easy to consume on the go in individual bottled servings.

Most functional – Cereal To Go

Drink or eat your cereal with a spoon. Just grab it out of the fridge, flip and peel off the top lid, shake and go! Multiple flavors and drink options including almond milk, gluten free rice, and cookies & milk!

Most sustainable: Bite sized pull apart toaster waffles filled with cream cheese or fruit spread

This idea is most sustainable because it gives teens a way to choose how much of a pastry they want to eat and they can break it apart to share with friends. They can mix and match pastries from the variety pack to create a mini buffet of treats to share.

Write down a lot of ideas to get to one really good solution.

I find this method is a great way to move past feeling stuck or to add structure to a group idea storming session.