For many business people, it’s intimidating to walk into an unfamiliar situation (whether that’s a new company, client, team, initiative, or project) knowing you are expected to contribute new business ideas right away.

If you face those types of situations, you know how nerve wracking it can be to have to go from “nice to meet you” to new business ideas in perhaps minutes.

One answer is to simply regurgitate ideas you have used previously in other situations. That can work, but often, it seems people wind up revealing that they’ve used the idea elsewhere. This lets everyone know you’re simply recycling new business ideas that aren’t so new anymore.

9 Ways to Never Suffer from a Lack of New Business Ideas Again

In place of only recycling ideas, try these nine strategic thinking questions and creative thinking paths. The formula is to ask a specific question, LISTEN for responses from others, and follow a related creating thinking direction to generate ideas more quickly:

Ask:

  1. What’s been tried before? then REACT to historical activities with new twists
  2. What are the current ideas? then BUILD on those ideas to make them stronger
  3. What ideas have been passed over previously? then TRANSFORM them so they are more pertinent to the current situation
  4. What’s causing roadblocks to progress? then try to SOLVE the barriers
  5. What has been successful before? then find ways to REFRESH them with something new
  6. What is working now? then share ways to MULTIPLY it for even broader impact
  7. What are you developing right now? then generate ideas to SPEED UP development for a quicker impact
  8. What competitors’ strategies are in the market? then share ideas on how to IMPROVE what they are doing
  9. What is the most popular idea you have? then suggest ideas to PRIORITIZE it

You don’t need all nine strategic thinking questions in very situation where you are expected to quickly develop new business ideas.

It is great, though, to have these and other strategic thinking questions ready to go whenever you walk in and want to be ready share ideas right away! – Mike Brown

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