IdeationDébutant

Worst Possible Idea

A liberating ideation technique that inverts the usual brainstorming prompt. Instead of 'How might we solve this?', participants are asked 'How might we make this as bad as possible?' or 'What is the worst idea you can think of?' This removes the pressure of having good ideas, frees up creativity, and often leads — by inversion — to genuinely useful solutions.

Durée

20m–40m

Taille du groupe

2–20 people

Matériel

sticky notes, markers, whiteboard

Source

Community

Comment l'animer

1
Frame the problem clearly.
2
Reframe the prompt: 'Forget good ideas. Generate the worst, most useless, most harmful ideas you can think of for this problem.'
3
Give 5 minutes for silent individual ideation — write every terrible idea on sticky notes.
4
Share all the terrible ideas with the group. Have fun with them.
5
Now invert: for each terrible idea, ask 'What's the opposite?' or 'What would we need to do to avoid this?'
6
The inversions become raw material for genuine solutions.
7
Evaluate and develop the most promising inverted ideas.

Conseils

The laughter that comes with bad ideas is not a distraction — it's a signal that creative inhibitions have dropped.
The funnier the terrible idea, the more likely the inversion will be novel.
Allow absurdity.

Variantes

Run a 'Kill the Company' variant: 'If you wanted to destroy our product/company in 6 months, what would you do?' Then invert for strategic insights.

Contextes d'utilisation

Breaking creative blocks in brainstormingDesign thinking workshopsStrategy sessionsEnergising stalled groups

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Method descriptions on Workshop Weaver are original content written by our team, based on established facilitation practices.