"Mad Lib" Your Way to Creative Ideas

Innovation as a buzzword has many layers and interpretations. When someone says "we need to innovate," many times what they mean to say is "we need new ideas here." The challenging part is truly new ideas are very hard to come by and even harder to design and execute. 

This Fast Co. article offers some very good advice on unlocking new ideas by combining existing ideas in new ways in order to become a better individual contributor. If you are a facilitator of teams, you might consider taking some inspiration from Mad Libs to help others unlock their own creative potential. For example, if you are brainstorming ideas for new community health services then prompt the team with an idea formula they can fill in with different options. Your formula might look like:

[something we already provide] + [something people want and we could provide for free]

Ideas might be vaccines + coffee, diabetes education + blood glucose test strips or cholesterol tests + t-shirts. These brainstorms can provide a really interesting jumping off point for a new service design based on a simple combination of existing products or services. Playing around with different formulas and collecting diverse perspectives will be even more generative.

"Ideas tend to multiply, and if you come up with a lot of combinations, eventually there will be some decent ones in there."