The Reverse Brainstorming Technique
When you reverse brainstorming, you essentially work to create problems rather than solutions and avoid them from the get-go. Creating problems teaches you what not to do so you’re more intuitive to the needs of your project.
A perfect example is data security in companies, there are many organizations that hire hackers to break their security systems and find out where the weaknesses are. Este enfoque “inverso” de la seguridad, en el que piratea su propia empresa, se considera una de las mejores formas de proteger un servidor de intrusiones.
Say, for example, you want to drive awareness to a new product. In a reverse brainstorming session, you might come up with the following:
- Avoid hyperlinks to the product’s purchase page
- Don’t tweet about the product
- Criticize the features of your product
Obviously, these are all horrible ideas if your goal is to promote the product. But, take the reverse of these ideas, and you’ve effectively created three excellent starting points for a supportive campaign: Link to the product in a series of blog posts, develop a Twitter campaign around the product, and identify specific features of the product that prospects would be most interested in reading or hearing about.
The reverse brainstorming technique tells you what to avoid from the get-go. It’s easier to start with what to not to do rather than what to do — the latter of which can make us feel stuck.
It helps you avoid decision fatigue early on in the ideation process.
