- Divergence tools, focused on the generation of as many ideas as possible.
- Convergence tools, which strive to analyze, filter and merge ideas, in order to select the best ones.
Within both groups there are a wide range of options to choose from, depending on the workshop and project. Below we will explain some of the most common tools, which also give us a short glimpse of what creativity for innovation means.
All the creativity tools focused on divergence try to generate as many ideas as possible during a short time span, usually a few minutes during an ideation session. A basic rule here is not to criticize or judge new ideas as they come, as negativity is probably the best way to kill any ideation. Innovators should let their brains run free to generate as many possibilities as they can; filtering and merging will come later, during the convergence process.
Intended for a clear purpose: to help us to organize, filter and select all the ideas generated during the divergence process. This step requires a very different mindset, so the tools used for this purpose are also clearly different, focusing on analysis and synthesis, rather than idea generation. Many people might think that this kind of work is not creative, but in fact, it is. If we want to successfully finish any innovation process, running only the ideation step is useless. We should also have a clear method to filter the best ideas, leaving apart those not worthy enough, and focusing on the best ones.