--- title: Creative Thinking Exercises - 25 Ways to Change Your Character for Creative Ideas description: Creative Thinking Exercises - 25 Ways to Change Your Character for Creative Ideas --- [Blog | Brainzooming ](https://www.brainzooming.com/blog) # [Creative Thinking Exercises - 25 Ways to Change Your Character for Creative Ideas](https://www.brainzooming.com/blog/creative-thinking-exercises-25-ways-to-change-your-character-for-creative-idea) Written by [Mike Brown](https://www.brainzooming.com/blog/author/mike-brown) | Jul 9, 2008 10:00:00 AM Powerful comparisons are important to many creative thinking exercises. While the types of comparisons may vary, for the more than twenty-five [“Change Your Character”](https://www.brainzooming.com/category/innovation/change-your-character/) creative thinking exercises on the Brainzooming blog, delegating an opportunity or challenge to someone you wouldn’t typically think about selecting to do your work yields a wide variety of creative ideas. ### Creative Ideas from an Unlikely Character? The Change Your Character creative thinking exercises use someone in a completely different line of work to help you look at your own situation with a fresh perspective. Here are the steps for Change Your Character: 1. State the business challenge that you’re addressing – it could be an opportunity, a problem, a new process or approach, etc. 2. Pick who you want to work on your situation. This could be a real person, a fictional or cartoon character, or even another business that faces an analogous situation. 3. Once you’ve identified who you’ll put on the job, list 8 to 10 approaches that the person, character, or business uses to address opportunities or challenges. 4. Using the 8 to 10 approaches, apply them to your situation to generate at least 3 new ideas each for solving it. Each of the Change Your Character creative thinking exercises does steps 2 and 3 for you. This allows you to focus primarily on step 4 – creative idea generation. ### 25 "Change Your Character" Creative Thinking Exercises Here's a compilation of 25 of these creative thinking exercises you can bookmark for use in successfully addressing future opportunities. Within each category, the situations and characters covered are listed, along with a link to the original article. #### Strategy - [Disruptive Strategy – Bart Simpson ](https://www.brainzooming.com/change-your-character-bart-simpson-chief-strategy-officer/724/) - [Competitive Strategy – Terrorist](https://www.brainzooming.com/change-your-character-competitive-strategy/695/) - [Competing Against Bigger Players – Wee Willie Keeler ](https://www.brainzooming.com/change-your-character-wee-willie-keeler/685/) - [Getting People to Participate in Strategic Planning – Event Planner](https://www.brainzooming.com/change-your-character-attracting-thinkers-as-an-event-planner-would-plus-a-special-bonus/666/) #### Relationship & Brand Building - [Lead Generation – Police Detective](https://www.brainzooming.com/generating-leads-as-a-police-detective-would/734/) - [Identifying Good Prospects – Baseball Scout ](https://www.brainzooming.com/change-your-character-what-to-look-for-in-prospects/710/) - [Growing Business Opportunities – Farmer](https://www.brainzooming.com/change-your-character-get-into-growth-mode/660/) - [Building Business Relationships](https://www.brainzooming.com/change-your-character-relationship-building/645/), [Strengthening & Maintaining Business Relationships](https://www.brainzooming.com/change-your-character-strengthening-maintaining-relationships/650/), and [Improving Challenging Business Relationships](https://www.brainzooming.com/change-your-character-working-on-challenging-relationships/655/) – Self-Help Advice Columinst - [Customer Service Approach – Babysitter](https://www.brainzooming.com/change-your-character-doing-it-babysitter-style/634/) - [Communicating Intangible Ideas – Garrison Keillor](https://www.brainzooming.com/change-your-character-having-garrison-keillor-sell-intangible-ideas/680/) - [Brand Repositioning – Donald Trump & Madonna](https://www.brainzooming.com/change-your-character-brand-repositioning/624/) - [Creating Product Extensions - Successful Product-Extending Brands](https://www.brainzooming.com/creative-thinking-for-brand-extension-ideas/675/) #### Team Building - [Creating Excitement – Cheerleader](https://www.brainzooming.com/change-your-character-letting-cheerleaders-support-your-team/719/) - [Training & Developing Others – Great Teachers](https://www.brainzooming.com/change-your-character-training-as-the-best-teachers-do/739/) #### Management & Problem Solving - [Managing Priorities – Air Traffic Controller](https://www.brainzooming.com/change-your-character-managing-multiple-priorities-as-an-air-traffic-controller-would/715/) - [Preventing & Dealing with Problems – Firefighter](https://www.brainzooming.com/change-your-character-fighting-business-fires-like-a-real-fire-fighter/690/) - [Diagnosing & Curing Problems – Doctor](https://www.brainzooming.com/change-your-character-identifying-doctoring-your-problem/629/) - [Project Turnarounds – Turnaround CEO](https://www.brainzooming.com/change-your-character-fixing-problems-as-a-turnaround-ceo/744/) - [Trimming Waste – Fitness Trainer ](https://www.brainzooming.com/change-your-character-exercise-to-reduce-waist-and-waste/705/) #### Professional Skills - [Improvising in Unfamiliar Situations – An Improv Comedian](https://www.brainzooming.com/improv-comics-and-unfamiliar-situations-succeeding-with-change-your-character/671/) - [Generating a Variety of Potential Solutions – Castaways from Gilligan’s Island](https://www.brainzooming.com/need-some-new-ideas-change-your-character/619/) - [Clear, Concise Writing - Reporter](https://www.brainzooming.com/change-your-character-writing-like-a-reporter/700/) - [Simplifying Things – Forrest Gump](https://www.brainzooming.com/a-week-of-struggling-for-simplicity-change-your-character-forrest-gump-simple-is-as-simple-does/729/) Just a note - I used Bart Simpson recently, and it worked very well. Give it a try and have great success Changing Your Character! – *[Mike Brown](https://www.brainzooming.com/about-brainzooming/mike-brown/)* ### [If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming blog email updates.](https://info.brainzooming.com/email) [mailto:info@brainzooming.com](mailto:info@brainzooming.com) ### Learn all about [Mike Brown’s creative thinking and innovation presentations](https://www.brainzooming.com/creativity-innovation/)! 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