Bad Ideas Brainstorming
Start with obvious and absurd ideas to reach genuinely new directions
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 99%
Bad Ideas Brainstorming deliberately begins where conventional sessions try not to go. Participants generate ideas across a spectrum from painfully obvious to wildly absurd, with permission to include concepts that would not survive immediate executive approval. This removes the pressure to sound clever or practical in the first round and broadens the way the problem is understood. The group then examines the bad ideas for hidden mechanisms, emotional truths, useful constraints, unexpected formats, or provocative images. A concept does not have to be executed literally to be valuable: it can be remixed into a safer, feasible version while retaining its distinctive core. The framework therefore uses bad ideas as a shortcut to creative range, not as a lowered quality standard for final work.
Origin
Bad Ideas Brainstorming is the core methodology of Jason Keith's book The Case for More Bad Ideas. In the episode, he demonstrates it through an AI campaign prompt for UNC Chapel Hill's business school.
Core principles
- 01Bad ideas broaden how a problem is framed
- 02Obvious and absurd ideas form useful opposite poles
- 03Permission to fail reduces premature self-censorship
- 04Unusable concepts can contain mechanisms worth remixing
How to run it
- 1
Frame the Challenge
Define the audience, objective, offer, and brand context while making clear that the first round does not require approval-ready answers.
Pro tip Name the conventional solution so participants know what they are trying to move beyond.
Watch out Do not remove ethical or safety boundaries from the exercise.
- 2
Generate Obvious Ideas
Produce intentionally predictable or boring ideas that expose the category's default assumptions.
Pro tip Push obviousness until the underlying clichés become visible.
Watch out Do not mistake an obvious-idea round for the final brainstorm.
- 3
Generate Absurd Ideas
Move to impractical, exaggerated, contrarian, or apparently ridiculous concepts.
Pro tip Require at least one idea that feels dangerous to the status quo or brand convention.
Watch out Dangerous should challenge expectations, not endanger people or authorize wrongdoing.
- 4
Extract the Useful Core
For each provocative candidate, identify what makes it emotionally compelling, memorable, or structurally different.
Pro tip Ask what real version of the absurd concept could work.
Watch out Rejecting an idea wholesale can hide a valuable mechanism inside it.
- 5
Remix Toward Feasibility
Combine useful elements, reduce unacceptable risk, and create practical variants that preserve the original surprise.
Pro tip Request both faithful and safer remixes rather than weakening every idea into the same compromise.
Watch out Over-sanitizing can erase the exact feature that made the concept distinctive.
- 6
Select and Develop
Choose the concepts that best balance novelty, relevance, feasibility, and brand fit, then build them into campaign proposals.
Pro tip Keep rejected ideas available as seeds for future rounds.
Watch out Do not present raw bad ideas as finished recommendations without context.
In the wild
A brainstorm proposes recruiting top faculty to live together in a mansion and livestream their lives. The literal idea may be impractical, but its useful mechanism is turning faculty into accessible creators. The school remixes it into a recurring creator residency where professors publish short, candid lessons and collaborate publicly for one week each semester.
→ An absurd premise produces a feasible campaign that makes faculty expertise more visible and entertaining.
Common mistakes
Trying to Sound Smart Immediately
Demanding polished, defensible ideas from the outset reinstates the self-censorship the framework is designed to remove.
Executing the Absurdity Literally
Most bad ideas are raw material whose useful mechanism should be extracted and remixed.
Sanitizing Away the Surprise
A feasible version that retains none of the original tension will fall back into conventional territory.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for teams or individuals stuck producing safe variations of familiar campaign ideas.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal when participants may mistake deliberately dangerous thought experiments for permission to execute harmful ideas.
From the transcript
“I mean, bad ideas, I say are the shortcut to creativity.”
“This is the core methodology of the book, which is simply to start your brainstorming with bad ideas.”
“And how do we define bad ideas? The two core ways are obvious ideas and absurd ideas.”
From the episode
I Tested 5 AI Prompts That Replace Weeks of Creative Work