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