All Creative Tools

Here are all creative tools in alphabetic order:

• Absence Thinking: Think about what is not there.
• Adoption Checklist: A checklist of what leads to adoption.
• Art streaming: Keep creating until you get through the blocks.
• Assumption Busting: Surfacing and challenging unconscious assumptions.
• Attribute Listing: Listing attributes of objects and then challenging them.
• Brainstorming: the classic creative method for groups.
• Braindrawing: Good for reticent groups.
• Brainmapping: Combining brainwriting and mind-mapping.
• Brainwriting: Group doodling for non-verbal stimulation.
• Breakdown: Careful decomposition to explore the whole system.
• CATWOE: A checklist for thinking about problems and solutions.
• Challenge: Challenge any part of the problem.
• ChangingMinds: The ultimate persuasion website.
• Chunking: Take a higher or more detailed view.
• Concept Screening: Comparing options against a baseline benchmark.
• Context Map: Mapping the overall problem domain.
• Crawford Slip Method: Getting ideas from a large audience.
• A Day In The Life Of...: Seeing things as they are experienced.
• Delphi Method: Explore ideas or gain consensus with remote group.
• Diffusion Lifecycle: Spreading ideas one group at a time.
• Doodling: Let your subconscious do the drawing.
• Essence: Looking elsewhere whilst retaining essential qualities.
• Forced Conflict: Using conflict to stimulate the subconscious.
• Force-field Analysis: Exploring forces for and against an idea.
• Guided Imagery: Letting your subconscious give you a message.
• Head, Heart and Hands: Get all three systems of motivation engaged.
• The Hundred Dollar Test: How will you spend $100 on your ideas?
• How-How Diagram: Break down problem by asking 'how'.
• How to: Frame statements as 'How to' to trigger focused thinking.
• Incubation: Letting the subconscious do the work.
• Is − Is not: To scope out boundary of problems.
• The Kipling method (5W1H): ask simple questions for great answers.
• Lateral thinking: Thinking sideways to create new ideas.
• Lotus Blossom: Unfold the flower of extended ideas.
• Mind-mapping: Hierarchical breakdown and exploration.
• Modeling: For the artist in everyone.
• Moment of Truth (MoT) Analysis: Finding vulnerable customer moments.
• Morphological Analysis: Forcing combinations of attribute values.
• Negative Selection: Sort out the 'definitely nots' first.
• Nominal Group Technique: Getting ideas with minimal personal interaction.
• NUF Test: Check idea is New, Useful and Feasible.
• Pause: Think more deeply for a minute.
• PINC Filter: Evaluate pros and cons of ideas.
• Positives, Negatives: Look at both problems and benefits.
• Post-Up: Brainstorming with Post-It Notes.
• Problem Statement: Getting a clear statement of what you are trying to achieve.
• Provocation: Shake up the session by going off-piste.
• PSI: Problem + Stimulus = Idea!
• Purposing: Finding the real purpose of what you are doing.
• Random Words: Using a random word as a stimulus.
• Remembrance: Remembering solutions not yet discovered.
• Reversal: Looking at the problem backwards.
• Reverse Brainstorming: Seek first to prevent your problem from happening.
• Reverse Planning: Working backwards from a perfect future.
• Rightbraining: Combine incomplete doodles around the problem.
• Role-play: Become other people. Let them solve the problem.
• Rubber-ducking: Get someone else to listen to your talk.
• SCAMPER: Using action verbs as stimuli.
• Six Thinking Hats: Think comfortably in different ways about the problem.
• Storyboarding: Creating a visual story to explore or explain.
• Swap sort:  Sorting a short list by priority swapping.
• Take a break: When creativity is fading.
• Talk streaming: Just talk and talk and talk until you unblock.
• TRIZ Contradiction Analysis: Use methods already used in many patents.
• Unfolding: Gradually unfolding the real problem from the outside.
• Value Analysis: Deep analysis of where true value is created.
• Visioning: Creating a motivating view of the future.
• Voting: Democratic casting of votes for the best idea.
• Why not?: Challenge objections and assumptions.
• Wishing: State ideas as wishes to expand thinking.
• Write streaming: Write and write and write until you unblock.