Solution Discovery

Why Structured Brainstorming?

Unstructured brainstorms tend to converge on the first idea mentioned (anchoring) or favor the most senior voice in the room. Structured techniques widen the solution space before narrowing it.

Useful Techniques

• Crazy 8s — fold paper into 8 sections, sketch 8 distinct ideas in 8 minutes (1 minute each) to force quantity over polish.
• How Might We — reframe a problem statement as "How might we...?" to invite open-ended idea generation.
• SCAMPER — Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, Reverse — a checklist to evolve existing solutions.
• Silent brainstorming — everyone writes ideas individually before sharing, reducing groupthink and anchoring.

Running a Good Session

Diverge before you converge: generate a large volume of ideas without judgment first, then switch modes to evaluate. Mixing the two too early kills creativity.

Widening the Solution Space

For any given opportunity, deliberately generate multiple solution types before picking one:

• A minimal version (smallest thing that could possibly work).
• A non-digital or process-based fix (sometimes the best "solution" isn't a feature at all).
• A bold/ambitious version, ignoring current constraints, to stretch thinking.
• A solution inspired by another industry facing a similar problem.

Involving the Cross-Functional Team

Designers, engineers, and product managers each bring different constraints and creative angles — feasibility insight from engineering can spark ideas a PM wouldn't consider, and vice versa.

Avoiding Premature Convergence

Resist picking the first plausible idea. Teams that generate at least 3-5 genuinely different solution concepts per opportunity make better, more creative choices than teams that brainstorm one idea and refine it.

Evaluating Candidate Solutions

Run each candidate solution back through the four risks (Module 1): will it create value, can users use it, can we build it, does it work for the business?

A Lightweight Evaluation Matrix

Score each solution against criteria like user impact, effort/feasibility, alignment with strategy, and risk level. This isn't about false precision — it's about making trade-offs visible and debatable.

Pairing Evaluation with Cheap Validation

Before fully committing, route promising solutions into the hypothesis and experimentation process (Modules 9–10) rather than deciding by debate alone — opinions, even expert ones, are not evidence.

Killing Ideas Gracefully

Many generated solutions should die at this stage — that's a sign the divergent generation step worked. Document why an idea was rejected so it isn't re-litigated every quarter.