Divergent Thinking: How to Generate Better Ideas
(and Why It Matters)
When was the last time you had a truly new idea? If you’re honest, can you even remember? Was it yours—or did it come from AI, a podcast, or something you overheard at a meeting?
Here’s the problem: most adults have lost the ability to think divergently—the skill of leveraging one's own intellectual and creative capacity in an appropriate manner (meaning right time, right topic) to develop multiple ideas oriented towards a goal.
Research tells a striking story. In a famous study by George Land and Beth Jarman, five-year-olds were asked to come up with as many uses as possible for a paperclip. Nearly all of them—98%—could generate 200 or more ideas. Fast forward to adulthood: only 2% of adults could do the same. Somewhere between kindergarten and corporate life, divergent thinking gets trained out of us. (Definitely see George Land's charming and compelling TedX Talk, in which he argues for divergent thinking as the tool we need to be leveraging to basically save the world.)
And that’s a problem. Because research shows that divergent thinking makes businesses more successful. After all, George Land's study was originally developed for NASA as a way to see who would come up with more, better ideas for solving problems. A study on divergent thinking showed that, "[T]he relation between divergent thinking and innovation outcomes is always positive, with increasing marginal returns ranging from 16-38%. There is also evidence for non-linear effects of divergent thinking on exploratory innovations, job creation, and expansion outcomes.” Add the fact that it's good for us personally—studies show it decreases anxiety, boosts dopamine, and even makes us feel more confident.
Given all that good stuff, why don't we do more of it?
Most of us operate under what psychologists call the Creative Cliff Illusion: the belief that our first idea is the best. In reality, ideas improve the longer we stick with the process.
A study published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America asked participants to predict how creative their ideas would be over time. Most expected a decline—but the opposite happened. Ideas became more creative the longer participants engaged with them. Another experiment had people caption cartoons for the New York Times. The longer participants persisted, the funnier and more creative their captions became.
Even professionals in creative fields fall prey to this illusion, often undervaluing time spent developing ideas. BUT people who work in creative fields, or people who are taught about the creative cliff illusion, predict less decline and are more willing to engage in divergent thinking. (Put this education together with the dopamine boost and you too can become your team's dopamine dealer, just by telling them about this!)
Divergent thinking works best when it’s timely and in the right domain. Timing and context are everything. But what triggers you to say, "Hmm, hang on a moment here. What WE need right now is some divergent thinking...”? 🤔
Certain signals that you can see on a team suggest it’s time to diverge:
💡One Idea—the team has jumped in with both feet on one idea is an obvious one.
😍 Someone loves a single solution—if anyone on the team is particularly attached to one idea, it’s an especially good time to explore more and make sure this one idea isn't running away with. you.
🎨 Prototypes start too early—jumping straight into high-fidelity design can blind us to better options. (Figma makes it especially easy to do this.)
😑 Feedback is universally negative—a clear sign we need to zoom out and get some fresh perspective.
🤦🏻Stakeholder misalignment—if opinions are scattered, divergent thinking helps clarify and align.
On the other hand, you might have some gut feelings to tell you when it’s time to diverge:
🤔 You have a question or hunch. This is one of my favorite tricks, because divergent thinking is in its essence a moving-forward activity. But asking questions often feels to others like moving backward (who is this for? why do they want this? etc.) Sharing a set of options is a great way to both move forward AND ask questions.
😣 You’re feeling stuck or bogged down in details.
😏 You want to play or experiment with ideas. Being in a playful state of mind is demonstrably a better time to think creatively.
These moments are cues that tell us WHEN to pause and explore multiple paths forward.
Divergent thinking isn’t just about throwing ideas at the wall—it’s about choosing the right subject to explore. Cribbing from Peter Merholz's model from his book Org Design for Design Orgs, we can draw this out:
Early in a project, the focus should be on the big picture:
Later, divergence can zoom in on lots of different ways we might solve the problem for the audience we've identified.
And finally, we'll diverge and iterate on presentation and details to explore the best way to present the solution we've selected.
The right domain ensures your divergence is productive rather than chaotic.
You don’t need hours of aimless brainstorming. Here are some of the tools we use at DesignMap to generate creative ideas efficiently:
A quick, playful exercise from the book Sprint : fold a piece of paper into eight sections and draw a different idea in each square. Eight minutes. Eight ideas. It works early in the process (exploring personas or user scenarios) and later (iterating on details like page layouts or features). A good reminder that divergent thinking doesn't need to take weeks or even days!
Originating from Stanford’s d.school, this tool asks “why” to move up and “how” to move down. For example, if the business goal is more web site traffic, asking “How can we engage users between market moments?” opens multiple solutions: car maintenance content, price tracking, or recall alerts. Going further down, we can explore other ways to achieve the same outcome.
Another trick up my sleeve: if you get a detailed design spec, ask about the most important parts of it. Put those at the bottom on the ladder. Then, starting with one of them, ask, "Why?" When you get the answer, write it above on the ladder. Do that once or twice, and then for one of the higher items you can ask, "How else might we...?" It's an automatic diverging machine!
Place ideas on opposite ends of a spectrum to explore a full range. Example: AI autonomy vs. human involvement. Mapping options in this way reveals new combinations and opportunities that wouldn’t have emerged otherwise.
Cribbed from The Universal Traveler (1972), this exercise uses verbs like magnify, minify (minify? who knows? But it was charming so I kept it) , rearrange, alter, adapt, modify, reverse, and combine. For example, to engage users between in-market moments:
Magnify: Create a dedicated app instead of just a feature
Minify: Send simple email reminders.
Rearrange: Assume that when people come to the home page they're a car owner, and not in-market. What would that look like?
Combine: Acquire or partner with a company that provides car maintenance and repair information
Look beyond your immediate domain. How do other industries solve similar problems? If helping people buy cars, then we can identify a single attribute, like helping people make important decisions. Then inspiration might come from Zillow (deciding what house to buy), AI decision-making apps, or even Tinder’s Matchmaker feature (where you invite friends and family to help you decide who to date) for collaborative choices.
Divergent thinking isn’t just a skill—it’s a competitive advantage. It:
At DesignMap, we help teams harness divergence strategically—in product strategy, design, and AI. Because “let’s see what ChatGPT spits out” is not a plan.
Ready to go beyond the first idea? Let’s talk: audrey@designmap.com
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