In this newsletter, I will discuss one practical tip for challenging workshop participants’ thinking patterns and drawing out even greater ideas during an ideation session.

challenge the way participants think.

Are you looking for ways to encourage more creative thinking from your workshop participants? One practical tip is to challenge their thinking patterns. During an ideation session, there will be a time when the pace of generating ideas slows down. As a facilitator, you don't want to miss out on a chance to draw out even greater ideas from each participant. You can help them with creative thinking by introducing disruption cards.

Disruption cards

Disruption cards are a simple yet effective way to encourage creative thinking. Here's how you can use them:

Walk around the room or digital collaborative space where people generate ideas.
Randomly or intentionally pick one or a few ideas and present them with a disruption card.
A disruption card might say "make it work without charging a fee" or "make it work without Wi-Fi." The card tends to start with "Make It Work". Like HMW (How might we)Statement, we can call it "MIW (Make it work) Statement."
Participants must address the limitation on the card and come up with new ideas.

As the facilitator, it's your job to come up with an appropriate MIW statement. You can prepare universal statements before the workshop, but you'd also want to create a custom MIW statement that would challenge their thinking. Note that these statements should challenge participants to overcome their fundamental assumptions about the subject matter.

Why does it work?

When people generate ideas, they have lots of assumptions about the subject matter, and they tend not to question them when thinking about new ideas. By using disruption cards, participants can challenge themselves to go beyond assumptions. The ideas that come out through this method have a higher chance to be unique, original, or interesting.

For example, when thinking about the future of the supermarket experience, you would assume the followings:

The store would carry fresh fruits and vegetables, meat and seafood, dairy products, loaves of bread, and many varieties of drinks.

Customers can choose what products to buy.
Customers have to line up at the cashier to make payment before walking out of the store.
There are store staffs to support the operation.

However, everything we listed above is merely an assumption. By using disruption cards, participants can challenge themselves to go beyond these assumptions and come up with unique ideas.

How to write a MIW statement

There is no wrong way to create a MIW (Make it work) statement as long as you are able to challenge thinkers and generate more interesting ideas. Below are some examples to get you started:

"Make it work without ___"
"Make it work with ___"
"Make it work when ___"
"Make it work by ___"
"Make it work even if ___"
"Make it work before/ after/ while ___"

Summary

Through MIW statements, the goal is to challenge thinkers' fundamental assumptions and enable them to come up with interesting ideas.

If you have used the disruption cards approach described in this article, please DM me and let me know how it worked for you! I would love to hear about your experience with this method of encouraging more creative thinking in ideation sessions.

Whenever you’re ready, there are 2 ways I can help you:

If you’re looking for innovative ideas for your products, services, and businesses, I’d recommend hosting innovation workshops with me.
If you are interested in training for a systematic innovation thinking, I’d recommend getting trained with the BreakBias Master Course.

Disrupt the thinking for more ideas!