Multiply is an understanding of how growth can add value as it increases exponentially. Explore solutions by enhancing an attribute in some significant and impactful way. Multiply is also an important reminder that in this gym, the secret to unlocking your creative genius is generating as many ideas as possible.
Exaggerate is the largest, heaviest machine in the gym. It urges you to step it up, strengthen, broaden and go deeper than ever before. Here you will take things to the extreme, get your heart rate up and push yourself to the limit!
In order to enter the gym you will need to define a problem to solve. Break apart is your first workout machine and is the start of your brainstorm journey. Here you will dissect and highlight the core elements, noting all its attributes as well as listing its key features.
Elaboration adds depth, and/or value to your problem or a solution you have chosen. It will enable you to delve deeper into the details and to uncover opportunities to add merit or embellish the given to add dimension or aestheticize your intended solution.
The objective of Combinations is to connect the unconnected or to combine the discrete in order to explore different thought processes regions for generating new ideas. Combinations encourage new and unexpected integrations. Often, it represents original collaborations from existing knowledge reassembled in a unique way.
Sometimes an excess of the obvious can blind us to all the possibilities. Eliminate excess by examining attributes, identifying the elements that can be eliminated, analyzing and eradicating chaos to bring about clarity and transparency. Clean up your problem to see solution more clearly.
Morph utilizes metaphorical thinking to view the problem as something else. Like the metamorphosis from a worm to larva, and from larva to butterfly, your problem will now reshape itself. Morph urges you to find the gaps, shift shape and transform itself to new possibilities.
The objective of Opposite is to challenge your brain in a contradictory manner. To experiment with your “natural” thinking style in an “unnatural” manner. Think of an upside down elliptical gym machine. Now think of doing squats and pull ups ‘on’ the ceiling. Welcome to the essence of Opposite.
Repurpose, like recycling or upcycling, is finding new ways of use for attributes that do not match their original intentions. Take your problem apart and re-examine each attribute carefully. Utilize Repurpose to discover creative ideas in what seemed to have single purpose before.
Personification is simply giving human traits, such as emotions, desires and sensations to your problem. Listen to what it says, asks you, what it tells you about itself, or what it reveals about its past. Its answers may reveal something you did not think of before.
Playground invites you to let your inner child surface and take over. Research shows that our creative mindset peaks during childhood. Go back to the world of curiosity and candy. Take flights of fantasy and find cues in story tales to help solve problems and find unique solutions.
The principle of substitution is a sound way to develop alternative ideas to practically anything that exists. Think up ways of changing ‘this’ for ‘that’ and ‘that’ for ‘this’. Some things have superb counterparts that could change everything! What are the most obvious parts that can be substituted?
Tip-of-the-Iceberg alludes to the fact that the bulk of a floating iceberg is concealed beneath the water, leaving only a small portion, its tip, visible. This visible portion is part of a much larger and more dangerous, more intriguing, more complex problem. Now imagine a huge underwater edifice of intelligence, hidden from plain view. Here you will explore what is behind your problem.
Zoomin takes a microscopic view of your problem. It refers the ‘minute details’ that could unlock answers or reveal possibilities. It could be the smallest things that make the biggest difference. Put on your lab coat and bring an inquiring frame of mind and zoom in.
Similarities will set you on an adventure to find associations with your problem attributes. The elaboration of randomly selected groups and then comparing them one at a time, produces very distinct shifts in their meaning and purposes. This random process can spark ideas never thought of before.
Zoom out beckons you to stand back and see the implications, the size and the context of your problem. This stimulates creative, strategic and visionary thinking which in turn leads to prioritization and a clearer vision of your goals. Get ready to suit up, rise up and focus on big picture thinking.
Bizarre forces new neural paths and connections by forcing the brain to explore outside the outer limits of logic. Where logic often impedes effective problem solving through continuous exploration of deductive reasoning, Bizarre gives you license to conjure up wild and outrageous “illogical” thinking.
The randomizer establishes unusual and novel associations by aligning your problem attributes with
random machine properties in order to initiate unexplored solutions or ideas.