## Absurdist6

Villain's Monologue Pitch your problem as an evil mastermind gloating about their scheme; the diabolical plan reveals the real solution
Explain It to a Golden Retriever Re-pitch the idea to an excitable dog who only cares about treats, balls, and naps; keep only what survives
Infomercial at 3AM Sell your half-baked idea as a desperate late-night infomercial: 'But wait, there's more!' until features fall out
Drunk Uncle at Thanksgiving Have your loudest, least-filtered relative rant about the problem; mine the unhinged hot takes for buried truth
Cursed Genie Make a wish, then let a malicious genie grant it in the most technically-correct disastrous way; patch each loophole
Three Rounds of Stupid Round 1 absurd ideas, Round 2 make each MORE absurd, Round 3 find the smallest serious thing hiding in the silliest

## Biomimetic6

Nature's Solutions Name an organism that already solved your problem, then copy its mechanism into your design
Ecosystem Thinking Map your problem as an ecosystem: who eats whom, who partners, what decays, what fills the gaps
Evolutionary Pressure Spawn many ugly variants, apply a brutal selection rule, breed the survivors, repeat until it adapts
Predator & Prey Pick a threat to your idea, then design the defense, camouflage, or escape an animal would evolve against it
Metamorphosis Stages Force your idea through egg, larva, pupa, adult: a radically different form and purpose at each life stage
Swarm Logic Forbid the master plan: solve it with dumb local rules each agent follows so order emerges from the bottom up

## Collaborative8

Yes And Building Never negate; each person opens with "Yes, and..." and adds to the last idea, stacking a chain of accepted additions
Brain Writing Round Robin Everyone writes ideas silently, then passes their sheet; you build on whatever lands in front of you, round after round
Random Stimulation Pull a random word or image and force a link to the problem: "how does THIS spark a solution?"
Role Playing Each person speaks as a different stakeholder, voicing what that role wants, fears, and would demand of the idea
Ideation Relay Race 30-second turns, no pausing: add one idea, slap it to the next person, keep the baton moving before anyone overthinks
Idea Hot Potato One idea gets tossed around the circle; each catcher must mutate it in 10 seconds before passing, no repeats allowed
Steal And Upgrade Pick a neighbor's idea you envy, claim it out loud, then make it visibly better before handing it back improved
Fold The Paper Each person adds one line to a hidden drawing or sentence, sees only the previous fragment, then unfold the surreal whole

## Constraint7

Kill the Crown Jewel Delete the single best, most beloved feature — now redesign the whole thing to win without it
1000x Budget Pretend money, time, and people are infinite — design the absurd version, then mine it for ideas you can actually steal
Ship in 60 Minutes You launch in one hour with what's already on hand — name what you cut, fake, or borrow to make it real
The $0 Mandate Achieve the goal spending literally nothing — no tools, hires, or ads; only people, favors, and what you own
One Feature Only You may keep exactly ONE capability and nothing else — pick it, then make that single thing unbelievably good
Crank the Dial to 11 Pick one dimension and exaggerate it to a ludicrous extreme — fastest, biggest, cheapest, weirdest — and see what breaks open
Constraint Roulette Each round draw a brutal random limit (no screens, half the team, one day) and re-solve under it; survivors become real ideas

## Creative10

What If Scenarios Detonate one constraint at a time — unlimited budget, opposite is true, problem vanished — and chase what rushes in
Analogical Thinking Ask 'this is like what?' and steal the solution pattern from the domain that answers
First Principles Thinking Strip every assumption to bedrock facts, then rebuild the solution from scratch on truth alone
Forced Relationships Grab two unrelated things at random and force a bridge between them until an idea falls out
Time Shifting Solve the problem as a 1900s artisan, then a 2150 colonist — harvest the era-bound constraints and tricks
Metaphor Mapping Declare the problem IS a chosen metaphor, extend the metaphor fully, map each part back to find insights
Cross-Pollination Ask how a wildly different industry — casinos, ERs, beekeeping — would crack this, then adapt their move
Concept Blending Fuse two concepts into one new hybrid category and name what the merger becomes, not just combines
Reverse Brainstorming Generate problems instead of solutions — 'how could we make this fail?' — then mine each for its inverse
Sensory Exploration Interrogate the idea through each sense — its taste, smell, sound, texture — to surface non-analytical angles

## Cultural7

Indigenous Wisdom Ask how an indigenous or traditional knowledge system would approach this — name the culture, channel its ancestral problem-solving
Fusion Cuisine Pick two unrelated cultures and force-blend their approaches; harvest the hybrid that neither alone would invent
Ritual Innovation Redesign the idea as a ceremony — define the threshold, the gestures, the transformation participants undergo
Mythic Frameworks Map the problem onto a myth: name the archetypes, find the parallel tale, let its structure dictate the resolution
Proverb Mining Collect proverbs from many cultures on this theme, then build the solution from the one that clashes hardest with your assumptions
Ancestor Council Convene three ancestors or elders from different traditions, voice each one's verdict on your idea, reconcile their disagreement
Trickster's Gambit Channel the trickster figure — coyote, Anansi, Loki — and solve it by cheating, inverting, or breaking the sacred rule

## Deep10

Five Whys Ask "why?" five times in a chain, each answer feeding the next, until you hit the root cause beneath the symptom
Provocation Technique State something deliberately absurd, then mine it: "how could this be useful?" Extract the usable principle hiding inside
Assumption Reversal List every assumption baked into the problem, flip each to its opposite, then rebuild a solution on the inverted foundation
Question Storming Generate only questions about the problem, zero answers allowed, until the real problem worth solving comes into focus
Constraint Mapping Map every constraint, sort real from imagined, then attack each: dissolve it, route around it, or turn it into an asset
Failure Analysis Dissect a relevant failure: what broke, why it broke, what lesson it leaves, and how to apply that wisdom here
Emergent Thinking Stop forcing a solution; watch what patterns the system keeps producing and name what's trying to emerge on its own
Causal Loop Mapping Diagram the feedback loops linking causes and effects, find the reinforcing and balancing cycles, and target the leverage point
Morphological Analysis List the problem's independent parameters, generate options for each, then combine across them to surface untried configurations
Laddering Ask 'and what would that give you?' up the chain until you reach the real underlying need, then ideate fresh at that level

## Introspective Delight8

Inner Child Conference Answer as your 7-year-old self: ask naive 'why why why' questions, chase wonder, ban every boring adult thought
Shadow Work Mining Name what you're avoiding, resisting, or scared of about this — then dig there for the buried insight
Values Archaeology Keep asking 'why do I care?' until you hit bedrock: the non-negotiable value secretly steering the choice
Future Self Interview Interview your wise 80-year-old self about this problem and write down the advice they give you
Body Wisdom Dialogue Scan for the tension, flutter, or gut pull each option triggers; let the body's yes/no drive the ideas
Permission Giving Write yourself an explicit permission slip to think the forbidden, impossible thought — then think it out loud
Secret Wish Confession Whisper the embarrassing thing you secretly want here but won't admit, then build the idea honoring it
Mood Weather Report Name the inner weather right now (fog, storm, sun) and let that exact emotional climate generate the ideas

## Quantum6

Observer Effect Ask how the act of watching, measuring, or shipping this idea changes the very thing you're trying to capture
Entanglement Thinking Pair two distant parts of the problem and insist a change in one instantly flips the other — surface the hidden linkage
Superposition Collapse Hold all rival solutions alive at once, then name the one constraint that collapses them to a single winner
Relativity Frame Shift Re-run the idea from a wildly different observer's reference frame — the slow user, the rival, future-you — and see what warps
Field Lines Treat the goal as a charge and map the invisible forces pulling every stakeholder toward or away from it
Quantum Tunneling Assume the idea can pass straight through the 'impossible' barrier instead of over it — what's on the other side, reached cheaply

## Speculative Future7

Time Horizon Ladder Solve the idea for 1 year out, then 10, then 100 — note what survives, breaks, or becomes absurd at each rung
Post-Scarcity Test Assume the core constraint (money, energy, time, attention) is now infinite and free — what does the idea become
Utopia vs Dystopia Split-Screen Write the same future twice: the brochure where it went perfectly and the headline where it went horribly
Sci-Fi Artifact From the Future Describe one physical object, ad, or news clip from the world where this idea already won — reverse-engineer it
Emerging Tech Collision Force-marry your idea to a frontier tech (AGI, fusion, neural implants, gene edit) and ask what new thing is born
What-If-The-World-Changed Card Flip Draw a wild world-shift (no privacy, half population, 200-yr lifespans) and redesign the idea to fit that world
Future Anthropologist Dig A scholar in 2200 unearths your idea as a relic — what do they conclude it reveals about us, and what replaced it

## Structured11

SCAMPER Method Run your idea through seven lenses: Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put-to-other-use, Eliminate, Reverse
Six Thinking Hats Examine the problem six ways one at a time: facts, feelings, benefits, risks, new ideas, process
Decision Tree Mapping Chart every choice point and the paths it forks into, following each branch to its outcome and risk
Solution Matrix Grid problem variables against solution approaches, score every cell, hunt the best pairings and empty gaps
Trait Transfer Name what makes an unrelated success work, then graft those winning traits onto your own problem
Lotus Blossom Put the theme at the center of a 3x3 grid, fill the 8 cells around it, then promote each of those to the center of its own new 3x3
Worst Possible Idea Deliberately generate the most terrible solutions you can, then flip each into what it teaches you to do right
Disney Method Cycle the idea through three rooms: Dreamer (anything goes), Realist (how we'd build it), Critic (what breaks)
Starbursting Interrogate the idea with only questions — who, what, where, when, why, how — exhaust each before answering any
Mind Mapping Branch the central topic outward, each node spawning children; follow tangents wherever they pull and let the web sprawl
Crazy 8s Eight ideas in eight minutes, one per box, no editing — speed outruns your inner critic

## Theatrical7

Time Travel Talk Show Host a talk show interviewing your past, present, and future selves to mine each era for advice on the problem
Alien Anthropologist Become a baffled alien studying the problem and narrate aloud what seems strange, arbitrary, or insane about it
Dream Fusion Laboratory Voice the impossible fantasy solution first, then reverse-engineer the bridging steps back to reality
Emotion Orchestra Run a separate ideation round led by each emotion (rage, joy, fear, hope), then harmonize their conflicting ideas
Parallel Universe Cafe Rewrite one fundamental rule of reality (physics, economics, social norms) and solve the problem under those laws
Persona Journey Embody an archetype and solve the problem in-character, naming what that persona sees that you normally miss
Devil's Advocate Courtroom Stage a trial: prosecute the idea, defend it, then deliver the jury verdict, each role argued fully in character

## Wild7

Chaos Engineering Deliberately break your idea every way it could fail, then rebuild only the parts that survive the wreckage
Guerrilla Gardening Ideas Plant your solution in the least expected place and let it grow underground until it surprises everyone
Pirate Code Brainstorm Steal the best bits from anywhere, remix without asking permission, grab what works and run
Zombie Apocalypse Planning Society just collapsed — strip your idea to only what survives with no power, no rules, no backup
Drunk History Retelling Explain it like you're three drinks in: no filter, no jargon, just the raw stupid-simple truth
Anti-Solution Brainstorm how to make the problem spectacularly worse, then invert every sabotage into a fix
Elemental Forces Let fire, water, earth, and air each sculpt your idea their own brutal way and see what survives