Article · 15 min read

Extreme brainstorming questions to trigger new, better ideas

Jason Cohen · A Smart Bear (Jason Cohen) Free Intermediate

A working set of prompts that push your thinking to extremes to shake loose non-obvious ideas. When your list feels stale or you keep circling the same few thoughts, these questions are a reliable way to manufacture new candidates rather than wait for them. Cohen built two companies to unicorn scale, so the prompts come from practice.

  • Deliberate extreme prompts break you out of entrenched thinking
  • Push a constraint to absurdity to surface a genuinely new angle
  • Keep a small bank of prompts for when the idea list stalls

The question it answers

  1. How do I generate a steady flow of idea candidates instead of waiting for one big flash?

Read with it

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