Many good ideas for interesting actions are already in your heads. There are many useful techniques to originate new ideas. We will present you three of them here:

You need: Several pens with different colours and big sheets of paper

1. Hang the sheets up on the wall and get the pens ready to use.
2. Designate a note taker.
3. Formulate the problem in just a few words but so that it is clearly understandable, write it down in the middle of the sheet of paper and circle it with a red pen in order to highlight it.
4. Now start brainstorming: Ideas are collected which can solve the problem. Write down all any ideas that come to mind, even if they seem to be silly or far-fetched. This is meant to be a fluid and loose process to get ideas out and flowing.

Important: Only throw out ideas at this point. Do not get into evaluation/criticism of ideas. (ie. Don´t say such things as  `That won´t work! … What nonsense! ... That´s stupid´  Make sure everyone understands this concept and repeat it if necessary so that people feel free to throw out as many ideas as possible.

The note taker arranges the ideas within a circle around the problem.

Allow 15 to 20 minutes time for this step.

1. After finishing your brainstorming, start to evaluate the ideas:

Discuss each idea and focus on the interesting and realisable ones.

Decide together which idea will be selected.

You need: Several pens with different colours and big sheets of paper

Steps 1 to 3 see ‘Classical Brainstorming’ above.

4.       With this method, instead of looking for ideas to solve the problem, do the opposite: brainstorm ideas that won’t solve the problem at all or which make it even worse.

Allow 15 to 20 minutes time for this step.

5.       Evaluation

Mark the worst ‘anti ideas’ and convert them into the opposite. Like this, you will get many good ideas.

You need: Minimum 6 persons, one grid per person to collect ideas (see below), pens and sticky tape.

Steps 1 to 3 see ‘Classical Brainstorming’

4.      Everybody writes three possible ideas/solutions into the fields in the first line of his/her grid.

Allow maximum 5 minutes (stop watch)

5.       After 5 minutes, the grids will be passed on to the left. Now the next person will have to develop or complete the ideas on the received grid in the line below. After 5 minutes, pass them on again and so forth.

The same rule as above applies here: NO CRITICAL COMMENTS!

6.       Evaluation

The completed grids will be hung up on the wall.

Everyone should read all grids/ideas and mark the three most interesting/feasible ones with a dot.

7.       The ideas that receive the most dots should be discussed and fully developed.