Ideation

Coverage

Ideation covers the techniques that produce many concept variants in response to a well-framed problem, then converge on a subset worth pursuing. The practice has two distinct halves and treats them as separable activities. Divergent techniques include Crazy 8s (eight sketches in eight minutes, popularized by Google Ventures' Design Sprint), brainwriting (silent written generation that bypasses dominant voices), SCAMPER (Substitute / Combine / Adapt / Modify / Put-to-another-use / Eliminate / Reverse — Bob Eberle's adaptation of Alex Osborn's checklist), worst-possible-idea (deliberately bad concepts to disinhibit and reveal hidden assumptions), headlines-from-the-future (write the press release for the launched product), and analogous inspiration (how do other domains solve adjacent problems).

Convergent techniques include dot voting (each participant gets N stickers to place on concepts they would invest in), the NUF test (Is it New, Useful, Feasible?), impact / effort 2×2 plotting, weighted decision matrices for multi-criteria selection, and assumption-testing prioritization (which concepts, if true, would teach the team the most). Convergent methods make the selection criteria explicit before voting begins, so the choice is defensible rather than political.

The skill includes the facilitation mechanics that keep the two halves separate: enforcing silence during divergent rounds so no idea is judged before it lands, time-boxing strictly so quantity is prioritized over polish, withholding feedback ("yes-and" rather than "yes-but"), and only opening evaluative discussion in the convergent phase. This separation is the single most-cited determinant of brainstorming productivity in the literature (going back to Osborn 1953, with the criticism / refinements from Diehl & Stroebe and others incorporated via brainwriting variants).

Philosophy

Ideation is built on a counterintuitive claim: that quantity precedes quality. The case is empirical and structural — judging an idea costs cognitive effort, and judgment running in parallel with generation suppresses generation. Teams that judge as they ideate produce fewer ideas, and the ideas they produce skew toward the safe middle of the distribution. By splitting the modes, divergent rounds produce a wider range, and convergent rounds can then prune intelligently because the field is large enough that pruning is meaningful.

The discipline is sceptical of "good enough" early ideas. The first three ideas a team generates are usually the obvious ones — the ones any competitor has also considered. The interesting ideas live in the second half of a forced-quantity round, where the obvious is exhausted and the team is pushed into less-trodden territory. Worst-possible-idea exercises serve the same function from the other direction: by deliberately violating norms, they expose which norms were holding the design back.