Understanding Idea Fusion
Another example of helping you to find and generate ideas is the practice of idea fusion.
So what idea fusion is?
It means that you are trying to take two things and explore how you can bring them together. Start by inserting one random thing and try to connect it with your idea to solve the problem. Here’s an example. If we were trying to decipher why you didn’t write a paper that you had due on March 25th, I’m likely going to be thinking about how to plan better and what tools to use.
One thing that I could explore is what tools do I have to record information for my paper? Next, I need to add something to practice idea fusion. I’m going to add that I’m thinking about eating a snack (it sounds random, I know, but that’s the point).
My favorite snack is peanut butter eggs.
Now we have two very different bits of information to process and combine.
- I have a paper that I need to write, and I need to be sure that I”m capturing my research.
- My favorite snack is peanut butter eggs.
One way that we could fuse these is that I could decide to keep my to-do list by my peanut butter eggs stash because I know that I’m going to go and get a snack every day; this will help to ensure that I keep looking at my to-do list and making progress on my paper.
Now it’s your turn to give this a try.
- What is something that you’re trying to solve?
- What is another idea or a bit of information?
- Now work on combining the two.
More tips on Idea Generation
Learn how to generate ideas by thinking of opposites
How to generate more ideas by pretending that you’re someone else
