Product Management & Innovation Blog | Sopheon

Generating ideas with the rule of three

Written by Cecilia Thirlway | March 4, 2016

Self-confessed start-up nerd and Coach.me founder Tony Stubblebine posted on Medium recently about his rule of three for generating ideas.According to Tony:

“one idea is a bad idea…two ideas is an argument…three ideas is a brainstorm”

We love this post - Tony explains in a really engaging way why when it comes to the initial stages of idea generation, more ideas, even if they’re bad ones, is the way to go. He terms this initial idea generation stage ‘flaring’ (with thanks to Janice Fraser of Pivotal), followed by a ‘focusing’ stage where you whittle the ideas down to the ones that might work.

Separating out the generation of ideas from their evaluation is hugely valuable for creative thinking - as Tony says, it ‘unblocks people’.

It’s a quick read with a great takeaway - have a look!