Ban-and-Replace

Every new suggestion sounds like an old suggestion with a different name. Briefly removing the obvious answers can help you build one candidate that works in a genuinely different way.

List three. Ban five minutes. Change the slots. Restore.

Write the three obvious answers and temporarily ban them for five minutes. Construct a candidate by changing actor, mechanism, timing, scale, and rule. Then bring the originals back and compare. The ban loosens habit; it does not make familiar answers wrong.

Try this when…

Our brainstorm keeps producing the same three ideas.

Everything on the list fails for the same reason.

We have twenty options that are basically one option.

The first suggestion has taken over the whole conversation.

What you can use it for

Event planning

Discover formats beyond familiar venues by changing who contributes and how participants take part.

Learning activities

Replace variations of one study method with a different way to practice the same skill.

Work routines

Design an alternative that changes several operating assumptions together, then compare it with the incumbents.