How do you modify generated ideas

You can involve students from different universities in your idea generation activity. There are many creative students with great ideas which can be used for product development. Look out for such creative thinkers who can contribute towards improving and modifying your new product plan. Moreover, you can ask these students to critically evaluate the already developed plan so that you can spot loopholes.

This will help you modify and further improve your plan. There will be product development ideas that you saved up for future use. You can start working on these ideas and modify them. By looking at details of these unused ideas you can think of the possibilities of utilizing them. Sometimes they invite you to choose from several guiding questions or a position to support or refute. Sometimes the genre of the text can help you identify how this kind of assignment should begin or the order your ideas should follow.

Knowing this can help you develop your content. Before you start conjuring ideas from scratch, make sure you glean everything you can from the prompt. Finally, just sitting with the assignment and thinking through its guidelines can sometimes provide inspiration for how to respond to its questions or approach its challenges.

When your writing task is centered around analyzing a primary source, information you collected, or another kind of text, start by rereading it. Perhaps you are supposed to develop an argument about an interview you conducted, an article or short story you read, an archived letter you located, or even a painting you viewed or a particular set of data. In order to develop ideas about how to approach this object of analysis, read and analyze this text again.

Read it closely. Be prepared to take notes about its interesting features or the questions this second encounter raises. You can find more information about rereading literature to write about it here and specific tips about reading poetry here.

When you first read a text, you gain a general overview. But when you reread that same text, your attention is freed to attend to the details. Since you know where the text is heading, you can be alert to patterns and anomalies. You can see the broader significance of smaller elements. You can use your developing familiarity with this text to your advantage as you become something of a minor expert whose understanding of this object deepens with each re-read.

This expertise and insight can help lead you towards original ideas about this text. Then start jotting down or listing all possible ideas for what you might write in response.

The goal is to get as many options listed as possible. Write down absolutely everything that comes to mind—even preposterous solutions or unrealistic notions. You might give yourself a set amount of time to develop your lists, or you might stretch out the process across a couple of days so that you can add new ideas to your lists whenever they occur to you.

The idea behind this strategy is to open yourself up to all possibilities because sometimes even the most seemingly off-the-wall idea has, at its core, some productive potential. And sometimes getting to that potential first involves recognizing the outlandish. There is time later in your writing process to think critically about the viability of your options as well as which possibilities effectively respond to the prompt and connect to your audience.

But brainstorming or listing sets those considerations aside for a moment and invites you to open your imagination up to all options.

Sit down and write about your topic without stopping for a set amount of time i. The goal is to generate a continuous, forward-moving flow of text, to track down all of your thoughts about this topic, as if you are thinking on the page. Repeat the same word or phrase over again if you need to. Write in full sentences or in phrases, whatever helps keep your thoughts flowing. Let your words follow your thought process wherever it takes you. The purpose of this technique is to open yourself up to the possibilities of your ideas while establishing a record of what those ideas are.

Through the unhindered nature of this open process, you are freed to stumble into interesting options you might not have previously considered. This technique removes that temptation to revise by eliminating the visual element.

This is another variation of freewriting. Make that the starting point for another round of timed freewriting and see where an uninterrupted stretch of writing starting from that point takes you. After this second round of freewriting, identify a particular part of this new text that stands out to you and make that the opening line for your third round of freewriting.

Keep repeating this process as many times as you find productive. By identifying and expanding on concepts that you find particularly intriguing, this technique lets you focus your attention on what feels most generative within your freewritten text, allowing you to first narrow in and then elaborate upon those ideas. Find a generous and welcoming listener and talk through what you need to write and how you might go about writing it. Start by reading your assignment prompt aloud or just informally explaining what you are thinking about saying or arguing in your paper.

While a friend or classmate might be able to serve in this role, writing center tutors are also excellent interlocutors. If you are a currently enrolled UW-Madison student, you are welcome to make an appointment at our main writing center, stop by one of our satellite locations , or even set up a Virtual Meeting to talk with a tutor about your assignment, ideas, and possible options for further exploration.

A genuinely curious listener can motivate you to think more deeply and to write more effectively. Sometimes course instructors specifically ask that you do your analysis on your own without consulting outside sources. When that is the case, skip this technique and consider implementing one of the others instead. What did they say about this issue? Do some internet searches for well-cited articles on this concept. Locate a book in the library stacks about this topic and then look at the books that are shelved nearby.

Read where your interests lead you. Take notes about things other authors say that you find intriguing, that you have questions about, or that you disagree with. You might be able to use any of these responses to guide your developing paper. Make sure you also record bibliographic information for any texts you want to incorporate in your paper so that you can correctly cite those authors.

Exploring what others have written about your topic can be a great way to help you understand this issue more fully. Through reading you can locate support for your ideas and discover arguments you want to refute. Reading about your topic can also be a way of figuring out what motivates you about this issue.

Which texts do you want to read more of? Capitalize on and expand upon these interests. This technique is a form of brainstorming or listing that lets you visualize how your ideas function and relate.

To make this work, you might want to locate a large space you can write on like a whiteboard or download software that lets you easily manipulate and group text, images, and shapes like Coggle , FreeMind , or MindMapple. Write down a central idea then identify associated concepts, features, or questions around that idea.

Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world. Skip to main content. Login using Touchstone. This technique works by using each of the seven prompts to ask questions about existing products with the goal of improving upon them or innovating new solutions. Also known as reverse thinking, instead of going with the rational route to solve the problem, you consider the exact opposite of the idea. Earlier we discussed how brainstorming and mind mapping are the most common idea generating approaches.

Because of that, it is no wonder there are a variety of tools you can take advantage of online to generate or house ideas. Some of our favorites include:. However, you must then task someone with gathering all the notes and sharing with the broader team. While there is nothing wrong with this approach, a central location to store all the ideas and that everyone can access is preferred. Before entering your credit card, you should consider a few characteristics when choosing the right management software for your business—usability, versatility and accessibility.

Based on these criteria, the below tools are our top picks:. The best way to inspire and encourage the ideation process is to continue learning and developing your own approach. We recommend taking a look at a few of these top reads:. Read More ». Recent eBooks Tools Infographics. Workplace culture Your company culture should provide an environment in which creative expression and active discussions are encouraged.

Principle one: a new idea is nothing more than a new combination of old elements Principle two: capacity to bring old elements into new combinations depends largely on the ability to see relationships Consciously or unconsciously, every idea we produce follows a certain technique that includes these principles.

Step 2 — Blend your information together The second step, after thorough raw material gathering, is to blend the information together—bringing facts together to see how they fit. Step 3 — Drop and forget it Drop the idea completely and turn it over to your unconscious mind: In other words, let it develop while you sleep.

Step 5 — Share your idea This is when reality hits. Other popular methods and techniques for generating ideas Brainstorming Probably the most well know idea generation exercises are brainstorming and mind mapping.