The Secret to Breakthrough Ideas: How to Run Game-Changing Ideation Sessions

The world‘s most innovative companies – from Apple to Amazon, Pixar to Procter & Gamble – all have one thing in common: they invest heavily in ideation. Put simply, ideation is the process of generating, developing and communicating new ideas. And one of the most effective ways to ideate is through structured ideation sessions.

When done right, ideation sessions can be an incredible source of creative breakthroughs and outside-the-box solutions to challenges. They tap into the collective brainpower and diverse perspectives of a group to produce ideas that individuals could never come up with on their own.

In fact, in one famous example, an ideation session at Amazon led directly to the idea for Amazon Prime. As the story goes, while brainstorming ways to increase customer loyalty, someone threw out the absurd suggestion of "What if we gave people free shipping?" From there, the idea evolved into the game-changing subscription service that now has over 150 million members.

But productive ideation sessions like Amazon‘s don‘t just happen by chance. They require thoughtful planning, skilled facilitation and proven techniques to draw out participants‘ most creative, unfiltered thinking. Having run and participated in countless ideation workshops over the years, I‘ve learned what works (and what doesn‘t) when it comes to making magic happen.

In this post, I‘ll share my top tips and techniques for running truly effective ideation sessions that result in breakthrough ideas. Whether you‘re a team leader, an entrepreneur, or just someone looking to boost your creative problem-solving abilities, you can use these strategies to unlock innovation and make ideation a superpower for your team or business.

What Makes an Ideation Session Effective? 3 Key Ingredients

Not all ideation sessions are created equal. I‘m sure we‘ve all been in those painful "brainstorming" meetings that felt more like pulling teeth than pulling rabbits out of hats. The group stares blankly at each other, a few shallow ideas get tossed around halfheartedly, and everyone leaves feeling frustrated and drained rather than energized and inspired.

So what separates an exhilarating, generative ideation session from a demoralizing waste of time? In my experience, truly effective ideation has three essential ingredients:

1. A clear problem statement and focus
2. Psychological safety and permission to be "crazy"
3. Enforced rules of engagement

Let‘s unpack each of these a bit more:

1. A clear problem statement and focus

Effective ideation sessions are focused on solving a specific, well-defined problem or answering a particular question. Before the session, it‘s critical to have alignment from stakeholders on what the problem is you‘re trying to solve and why it matters to the business.

The problem statement should be phrased in an open-ended "How might we…" format, such as:

• "How might we reduce customer churn by 25% this quarter?"
• "How might we make our e-commerce checkout flow more user-friendly?"
• "How might we create a new product line to reach Gen Z consumers?"

Having this clear focus gives the group a North Star to guide their ideation and evaluate ideas against. Without it, discussions can quickly go off the rails into irrelevant tangents. As the facilitator, your role is to continually bring the group back to the problem statement and keep them focused on ideas that could potentially solve it.

2. Psychological safety and permission to be "crazy"

Studies have shown that the level of psychological safety – the belief that you can speak up and take risks without fear of punishment or embarrassment – is one of the strongest predictors of a team‘s creativity and innovation. Google spent years studying what makes some teams more successful than others, and they found psychological safety was the #1 key dynamic that set high-performing teams apart.

In an ideation session, psychological safety means giving everyone explicit permission to think big, think weird, and put out their most unfiltered "crazy" ideas without judgment. The wilder and more out-there, the better! You want an environment where people feel they can truly let loose and no idea is considered too absurd or unrealistic.

To create this safety from the outset, start the session with an icebreaker or improv game to get people laughing, connecting and in a playful headspace. You can also share the famous anecdote about how Don Draper‘s classic "carousel" pitch in Mad Men was inspired by a random comment someone made about the slide projector being like a time machine. Emphasize that those seemingly random, oddball suggestions are often the spark of genius that leads to incredible ideas.

Throughout the session, it‘s your job as the facilitator to protect the safe space and shut down any criticisms, cynicism or devil‘s advocacy that can quickly suck the energy out of the room. Keep things positive, build on each other‘s ideas with "Yes, and…" and celebrate the crazy to keep those unfiltered ideas flowing.

3. Enforced rules of engagement

On the flip side, unbridled creativity can quickly turn into chaos without some structure and rules in place. That‘s why it‘s important to set clear rules of engagement for the ideation session and enforce them consistently.

At the start of the session, introduce these classic brainstorming guidelines originated by Alex Osborn in the 1940s:

• Defer judgment – no criticizing ideas
• Encourage wild ideas – the crazier the better
• Build on the ideas of others – "Yes, and…" instead of "No, but…"
• Stay focused on the topic
• Hold one conversation at a time
• Go for quantity over quality

Write these rules on a whiteboard or poster where everyone can see them. If conversations start to get off track or turn negative, gently but firmly bring the group back to the rules. You can even have some fun with it – for example, give out red cards for "idea killers" like lawyers or accountants in the room who can‘t help but poke holes in ideas.

By sticking to these rules, you create a safe container for people to freely express their most unedited, unfiltered ideas and build momentum. The rules help ideas flow while keeping things on track.

5 Techniques to Generate More and Better Ideas

Now that we‘ve covered the essential ingredients for an effective ideation session, let‘s get into some specific techniques you can use during the session to really tap into the group‘s creativity:

1. Warm up with creativity exercises
2. Go for quantity with time limits
3. Build on ideas to make them better
4. Use stimuli to spark new ideas
5. Try "reverse" or "bad idea" brainstorming

1. Warm up with creativity exercises

Just like you wouldn‘t start a workout without warming up your muscles, you shouldn‘t dive straight into ideation without warming up people‘s creative muscles first. Creativity exercises and improv games are a great way to get the group "in the zone" and help people shed their inhibitions.

One of my favorite exercises is called "30 Circles". Give everyone a sheet of paper with 30 blank circles on it. Set a timer for 3 minutes and challenge the group to turn as many of the circles as they can into recognizable objects like a baseball, a planet, a smiley face, etc. This gets people thinking visually and primes them to connect unrelated concepts together.

2. Go for quantity with time limits

Remember, in the divergent "idea generation" phase of ideation, quantity is the name of the game. The more ideas you generate, the greater the likelihood of coming up with something truly original and brilliant.

One way to force quantity is to set an aggressive time limit, like 15 or 20 minutes, and challenge the group to come up with as many ideas as humanly possible in that timeframe. Having a giant timer visible creates a healthy sense of urgency and gives people permission not to filter or overly wordsmith their ideas.

To keep the energy up, you can even gamify it by splitting the group into teams and seeing which team can generate the most ideas before time runs out. Celebrate the winning team with a silly prize.

3. Build on ideas to make them better

Many people think that truly innovative ideas appear out of thin air as "Eureka!" moments. But in reality, most great ideas are the result of combining and building upon fragments of other ideas, like pieces of a puzzle.

Known as "idea sex", this building process is one of the most powerful parts of group ideation. To encourage it in your session, try giving everyone a pad of Post-It notes and having them write one idea per note. Then, have people swap notes and challenge them to add something to or combine two or more of the ideas to form a new idea. Keep swapping and building until you have several layers of ideas inspired by others‘ ideas.

Another technique is to rate ideas on different criteria like feasibility, scalability, or level of customer delight, and then focus the group on improving the highest potential ideas by adding new elements to them. The best ideas often take many iterations to fully form.

4. Use stimuli to spark new ideas

The human brain is an association machine, constantly making connections between seemingly unrelated concepts. You can harness this power in ideation by strategically using stimuli to spark new trains of thought and get the group unstuck if energy starts to dip.

Stimuli can take many forms – photos, videos, quotes, objects, words, etc. For example, you could show a provocative image and ask the group to come up with ideas inspired by or metaphorically related to the image. Or you could have the group generate random words and then challenge them to link the words to the problem statement in a novel way.

Analogy is another powerful tool for generating ideas. Look to other industries, nature, sports, or history for examples of how similar problems have been solved and use those as inspiration for your own situation. Imagining "How would X solve this problem?" can lead you to whole new creative corridors.

5. Try "reverse" or "bad idea" brainstorming

Sometimes the best way to get to a great idea is to start with intentionally bad or opposite ideas. Reverse brainstorming involves flipping the problem on its head and asking the reverse – e.g. instead of "How might we reduce customer churn?" you‘d ask "How might we increase customer churn as much as possible?"

Have the group shout out the most counterproductive, destructive ideas they can think of. Then, look at those "bad" ideas and ask how you could tweak or invert them to actually solve your problem. The silly bad ideas tend to lower people‘s guard and get them thinking more playfully, which often reveals interesting insights and solutions.

After the Session: 4 Steps to Carry the Momentum Forward

Of course, generating breakthrough ideas is only half the battle. For your ideation session to have been truly successful, you need to actually do something with those ideas! Too many great ideas die in the meeting room. Here are four steps to carry the momentum forward:

1. Document all ideas
   Assign someone to be the scribe and write down ALL ideas generated throughout the session, not just the "good" ones. You never know when a seemingly stupid idea could plant the seed for something bigger down the road. Capture everything in a shared document, Trello board, or idea management system.

2. Vote on top ideas
   Once you have your master list of ideas, have the group vote on their favorites. You can give everyone a set number of votes, like 3 votes per person, or use a weighted voting system with different colored dots representing different criteria. Identify the handful of ideas that rose to the top.

3. Assign next steps
   For each of the top ideas, determine clear next steps and owners. What needs to happen to further flesh out or validate the idea? Who will be responsible for moving it forward? By when? Agree on a timeline and put next steps on the calendar before leaving the session. This creates accountability and keeps ideas from languishing.

4. Remix and repeat
   Recognize that breakthrough ideas often take time – they‘re more like slow hunches than lightning strikes. Keep iterating and building on the ideas over multiple sessions. Take fragments from one session and use them as stimuli or starting points for the next round of ideation. The best ideas will gain traction and evolve from "crazy" to viable through sustained effort.

Go Forth and Ideate!

Hands down, ideation sessions are one of the most fun and rewarding parts of any creative or problem-solving process. With the right mix of people, preparation, techniques and follow-through, they can be an incredibly fruitful source of innovative ideas and solutions.

But don‘t just take my word for it – gather a group and give these tips a try in your own ideation session. Be sure to let me know how it goes and what other techniques you find helpful for coming up with your best ideas. I‘d love to hear from you!

Now if you‘ll excuse me, I have to go sketch out this crazy app idea about an Uber for dogs that hit me during my last session…