Here’s a fun brainstorming exercise to generate a multitude of ideas in just a few minutes.
Copy the below verbs onto a fresh sheet of paper and print it out. Then, on a clean sheet, without putting your pen down, write down the first idea that pops into your head for each of these verbs, starting each sentence with that word. Spend no more than 12 seconds on each sentence. That’s a total of 600 seconds or 10 minutes. You can manage to write for that long, right?
For example, let’s take the first three words on the list: predict, consolidate, and generate. I’d start the clock with the word, predict.
Predict the number of transaction failures per 1000 trades and identify ways to remediate
Consolidate all financial information into a single application
Generate trade ideas from user-supplied information (preferences, goals, risk tolerance)
…
Replace human pricing recommendations with AI
As you can discern from the above, you won’t produce any revolutionary ideas from this exercise, but perhaps you will create one or two that will prove worthy of further exploration. That’s not a bad return on ten minutes of your time.
Another way to attack this exercise is to pick one verb that inspires you and spend five minutes coming up with as many ideas as possible with that word.
Let’s pretend the word democratize kicks off a creative frenzy in the right hemisphere of your brain. Great. Spend your time focusing on ideas that start with that word. Here’s the catch. After your second or third idea, you’ll start to struggle. The five-minute countdown will feel like a mini-eternity. That’s not a bad thing if you can resist the frustration to quit. Sometimes, the best ideas come once you exhaust all the obvious answers.
Whichever option you choose, once you're done, pick out a few that look promising. Expand on them. Refine them until you’re ready to conduct due diligence.
Now that you have your instructions, here’s the list.
Ready. Set. Go.
Predict
Consolidate
Generate
Restructure
Expand
Revolutionize
Democratize
Simplify
Connect
Aggregate
Disseminate
Overcome
Streamline
Overhaul
Unlock
Demystify
Centralize
Eliminate
Evolve
Facilitate
Track
Sever
Protect
Secure
Slash
Reduce
Beautify
Codify
Organize
Gather
Augment
Purge
Productize
Arrange
Interpret
Evaluate
Facilitate
Examine
Train
Solve
Teach
Coach
Shake up
Cut
Orchestrate
Engineer
Design
Formulate
Unify
Replace
How’d you do?