Blog | Brainzooming

24 Ideas When You Need Great New Concepts

Written by Mike Brown | Feb 1, 2023 10:50:00 AM

Do you ever feel that the odds are stacked against you in trying to come up with a great new idea that stands out because every great idea has already been imagined?

An Example of Mining New Ideas from What's Already Out There

We've covered multiple times the benefit of mining ideas already out there for new value. Let's apply those concepts here to imagine how you could generate ideas for a new app that can stand our from the crowd. Here is a mind map with 24 possibilities, along with descriptions of all of them:

  • Pick 1 function of the app and focus on doing it better (Focused)
  • Figure out what a suite of focused apps would look like and do (Complementary)
  • Move the app into a completely new context (Shift)
  • Design the app so it would work for the last person you’d ever expect to use it (Off Target)
  • Create the app for use in a completely different industry (Repurpose)
  • Combine features from across multiple apps in a new way (Aggregate)
  • Grab functions from unrelated apps and make them work together (Integrate)
  • Partner with the app creator to find new markets for what’s already developed (Re-market)
  • Bundle multiple apps into one interface (Combine)
  • Design an app users can modify to better suit their needs (User involvement)
  • Create a customizable app (Variability)
  • Do to the opposite of all the apps in your category (Contrary)
  • Introduce nostalgia into the app (Historical)
  • Make the app work on a less popular platform (Niche)
  • Incredibly simplify the app (Simplify)
  • Remove options from the app to make it more streamlined (Streamline)
  • Use the most important feature and develop multiple ways for the app to handle it (Diversity)
  • Make the app more complex through richer functionality and features (Robust)
  • Create a more sophisticated version of the app (Sophistication)
  • Deliver the benefits the app offers in a better way (Improve)
  • Add more benefits in speed, thoroughness, versatility to the app (Broaden)
  • Leapfrog 2 or 3 generations of the app (Leapfrog)
  • Deliver the most outrageous benefit possible through the app (Extreme)
  • Specifically design the app to destabilize an industry you’re not in right now (Destabilize)

Who knows if all these are stellar ideas? Most likely they aren’t all stellar ideas. But all these ideas have the possibility for more exploration if you are trying to generate a great new idea that is really something different.

24 Ideas for You

If you’re working on something other than an app where these twenty-four ideas might not quite fit, you can still use the twenty-four transformers in parentheses to play around with your run of the mill ideas to put some new life into them:

  1. Focused
  2. Complementary
  3. Shift
  4. Off Target
  5. Repurpose
  6. Aggregate
  7. Integrate
  8. Re-market
  9. Combine
  10. User involvement
  11. Variability
  12. Contrary
  13. Historical
  14. Niche
  15. Simplify
  16. Streamline
  17. Diversity
  18. Robust
  19. Sophistication
  20. Improve
  21. Broaden
  22. Leapfrog
  23. Extreme
  24. Destabilize

24 Ideas for Me?

Let us know how these twenty-four transformers work for you! – Mike Brown


For an organizational creativity boost, contact The Brainzooming Group to help your team be more successful by rapidly expanding strategic options and creating innovative plans to efficiently implement. Email us at info@brainzooming.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can deliver these benefits for you.