25/10 Crowd Sourcing
The whole room generates bold ideas on cards ("if you were ten times bolder…"), then mills and swaps cards while scoring each passing idea 1–5 over five rounds. Scores add to 25…
Thinking T5
Creativity
Ability to think outside conventional patterns, imagine new possibilities, and shape them into transformative ideas.
Tools for this skill (16)
Brainstorming with Eureka
A structured brainstorm in explicit ideation and narrowing phases: teams break a complex problem down, generate freely on cards, then converge on a simple narrative, idea, or so…
Creating New Metaphors
Groups examine the entrenched metaphors framing a complex issue (war on drugs, race to the top, footprint) and invent new metaphors that open different perspectives and options…
Creating permission for productive failure
To reduce the fear of failure that suppresses experimentation. Explicitly establish that thoughtful experiments that do not succeed are valued, not punished. Distinguish: • Prod…
Creative Destruction (aka TRIZ)
Serious fun with a subversive question: "what could we do to reliably achieve the WORST possible result?" Groups list that anti-recipe, then — the uncomfortable step — mark ever…
Cross-boundary exposure
To bring in perspectives and ideas from outside the team's usual context. Create regular opportunities to learn from outside the team's usual boundaries: • Invite someone from a…
Dedicated exploration time
To protect time specifically for creative exploration. Allocate regular time where the team explores new ideas without the requirement to deliver immediate outcomes. During this…
Drawing Together
Participants tell the story of a challenge and their journey through it using only five symbols — circle, rectangle, triangle, spiral, star-person — drawn, not spoken. Drawings…
Everyday Creative Practice
Choosing one creative activity that gives you relaxation, enjoyment and fun — drawing, music, writing, movement, crafts — practising it regularly, and deliberately exploring whe…
Improv Prototyping
Groups act out a chronic challenge scene three ways — the dysfunctional version, an improved version, and wild variants — with player groups performing while observer groups har…
Prototyping (Theory U)
Explore the future by doing: a small core team (~5, a microcosm of the challenge) moves an idea into a concrete experiential prototype — clarify intention, sense the system, hol…
Structured ideation sessions
To generate diverse ideas systematically when facing challenges that require creative thinking. When facing a challenge that requires creative solutions, use a structured proces…
The Analogy Bridge
A seconds-scale daily micro-practice for Creativity (VCoL collection): When working on a challenge, pause and ask: 'What is this situation like from a completely different domai…
The Combination Experiment
A seconds-scale daily micro-practice for Creativity (VCoL collection): Take two things that seem unrelated. Ask: 'What would happen if we combined these? What new approach might…
The What If Disruption
A seconds-scale daily micro-practice for Creativity (VCoL collection): Identify a constraint or assumption that seems fixed. Ask: 'What if this were not true? What if we could n…
Visual Narratives
Groups build a collective narrative about stress and translate it into object-based art installations — working with creative constraints, a scent, found objects, and feedback f…
Also develops it (8)
Collaborative working sessions
Most team meetings are for coordination. Teams need dedicated time for actually creating together. Create working sessions specifically designed for collaborative creation. The…
Creating unconditional space for emergence
To create opportunities to explore without pressure to reach conclusions. Periodically create protected time for a different quality of conversation: • No agenda or predetermine…
Fostering Collaborative Creativity
Participants learn to lead brainstorming-centered co-creation themselves: hosting inclusive ideation, protecting wild ideas from early judgment, and steering groups toward break…
Future Folktales
Over a multi-session arc, participants craft folktales told FROM a regenerative future — drawing on future visions to build narratives of being, not just technology — and tell t…
Imagining the Future
A guided exercise that first loosens the imagination into an expanded state and then invites a concrete envisioning of a desired future — held long enough to notice details, fee…
Long-term scenario exploration
To develop capacity to think about alternative futures. Periodically spend time exploring alternative future scenarios: 1. Identify key uncertainties that affect your work—marke…
Scribing (Visual Practice)
A practitioner draws the conversation as it happens — mapping ideas, tensions, and emerging patterns on a large visible surface while people talk — so a group can literally see…
The Stuck Exercise
A Social Presencing Theater practice: one person embodies a real stuck situation from their life or work as a physical shape ("sculpture 1"), stays with it, and lets the body —…