I was reading about creative ways to generate new ideas yesterday. The subject was “provocations” and the book was Serious Creativity by Edward De Bono. A provocation, or provocative operation, is just a deliberate step taken to break out of the normal ways of thinking about things. A fundraising example will help to illustrate.
De Bono writes about several types of provocations. I’ll focus here on three: reversal, wishful thinking, and exaggeration. A reversal is just about what it sounds like, a reversal of an assumption. Wishful thinking is just a fantasy statement that relates to the situation for which you need new ideas. Exaggeration takes one element of the situation and magnifies it or minimizes it.
With each type of provocation the point is not to create a perfect idea, but just to get the seeds of useful new ideas. As usual with brainstorming most of the ideas will be worthless or will need lots of work.
Reversals
Let’s see how these provocations would work for fundraising. I’ll start with a reversal, for no particular reason. The first step here is to take some assumptions about fundraising and reverse the. We assume that a nonprofit will appeal to many donors. We also assume that donors are going to give us money. Reverse these assumptions like so:
Nonprofits only have one donor each.
We give money to donors.
Take a minute to think about each of these reversals. You might just come up with the beginnings of a cool new fundraising idea.
Wishful Thinking
Wishful thinking could take two forms. You can just make a statement that’s obviously contrary to facts – “We never run out of money.” You could also ask a fantasy question: “What if in-kind contributions grew on trees?” Take a minute to see if you get any ideas that might be workable for your nonprofit, then go on and read about my crazy idea.
The question prompted the beginnings of an idea. This idea was prompted by thinking about trees in a relatively straightforward way. Perhaps farmers could donate land or produce to sell or bake. You could get a farmer or rancher to let you plant trees on marginal land that’s otherwise not doing much. The trees could be varieties that produce any number or products.
Exaggeration
Just pick an element of whatever subject you are thinking about then make that element MUCH bigger, smaller, or whatever change makes sense. The most important element in fundraising might be the existence of potential donors. Donors sometimes support more than one organization. So, let’s wildly exaggerate this relationship: Each donor supports 1000 nonprofits.
One thousand is much more than a couple dozen, so how would my idea really be implemented. Maybe there could be an “eBay of social entrepreneurship” where people could shop for products and services from hundreds of nonprofits. Maybe there could be actual auctions run by nonprofits too. A coalition of nonprofits could run virtual stores on Yahoo or eBay.
De Bono writes about several types of provocations. I’ll focus here on three: reversal, wishful thinking, and exaggeration. A reversal is just about what it sounds like, a reversal of an assumption. Wishful thinking is just a fantasy statement that relates to the situation for which you need new ideas. Exaggeration takes one element of the situation and magnifies it or minimizes it.
With each type of provocation the point is not to create a perfect idea, but just to get the seeds of useful new ideas. As usual with brainstorming most of the ideas will be worthless or will need lots of work.
Reversals
Let’s see how these provocations would work for fundraising. I’ll start with a reversal, for no particular reason. The first step here is to take some assumptions about fundraising and reverse the. We assume that a nonprofit will appeal to many donors. We also assume that donors are going to give us money. Reverse these assumptions like so:
Nonprofits only have one donor each.
We give money to donors.
Take a minute to think about each of these reversals. You might just come up with the beginnings of a cool new fundraising idea.
Wishful Thinking
Wishful thinking could take two forms. You can just make a statement that’s obviously contrary to facts – “We never run out of money.” You could also ask a fantasy question: “What if in-kind contributions grew on trees?” Take a minute to see if you get any ideas that might be workable for your nonprofit, then go on and read about my crazy idea.
The question prompted the beginnings of an idea. This idea was prompted by thinking about trees in a relatively straightforward way. Perhaps farmers could donate land or produce to sell or bake. You could get a farmer or rancher to let you plant trees on marginal land that’s otherwise not doing much. The trees could be varieties that produce any number or products.
Exaggeration
Just pick an element of whatever subject you are thinking about then make that element MUCH bigger, smaller, or whatever change makes sense. The most important element in fundraising might be the existence of potential donors. Donors sometimes support more than one organization. So, let’s wildly exaggerate this relationship: Each donor supports 1000 nonprofits.
One thousand is much more than a couple dozen, so how would my idea really be implemented. Maybe there could be an “eBay of social entrepreneurship” where people could shop for products and services from hundreds of nonprofits. Maybe there could be actual auctions run by nonprofits too. A coalition of nonprofits could run virtual stores on Yahoo or eBay.
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