Member-only story
The Best Teams Embrace the Worst Ideas
Try the ‘wrong thinking’ technique to find new ways of solving problems
In college, I took a product-design class that was largely based on group projects. For most of them, the process would play out like this: We’d read and digest the brief, begin some idea generation, and then get nowhere. My classmates and I, worried about looking stupid, would mutter bland, obvious suggestions that lacked any real creativity. Or we’d come up with a single idea and then stop, convinced it was the best thing we’d be able to think of.
Luckily, the lecturers were prepared for this. Whenever a team became too fixated on an idea or struggled to find a way to progress, they would challenge us instead to come up with something else: the worst possible idea. When they first introduced this activity, many of us were taken aback. It didn’t seem to make any sense. Why start at the bottom?
It turns out there’s a method to the madness. Intentionally trying to come up with the worst idea is known as “wrong thinking,” and it’s a technique that’s been used by innovators like Apple designer Jonathan Ive and brain-training pioneer Edward de Bono.
Wrong thinking has several benefits. One is that the creative pressure is removed: Starting with the worst possible ideas means even the most…
