Blue Sky Thinking

A Blue sky thinking exercise can be very beneficial to future product development at your company. Typically, this might involve asking a single question, such as:

• • What could our product look like if we changed the way they are made?
• • How could we diversify our current product range?
• • What if we made a new product in a completely different market all together?

With a blue sky thinking exercise, Cube3 would explore that simple question and present ideas back to you. These will show ideas that are not restricted by commercial constraints or manufacturing limitations. They could be interesting style options, different ways of making your product, different forms for your current products, the sky is literally the limit!

The idea is to generate thought provoking ideas that may be incorporated in some form or another in future product developments or it may just allow your company to see things in a different light or provide inspiration to open up new product lines in new markets.

Some further insight

In blue sky thinking, you are literally of the mindset that ‘the sky’s the limit’ so encouraging creative thought: the Collins dictionary defines the term as ‘creative ideas that are not limited by current thinking or beliefs.’

When trying to think of ideas to perhaps create a new product, write something original or problem solve, we often automatically limit and qualify them before they’ve even had a chance to ‘take flight’. The risk here is, while an idea may well need refining and some logic applied to it in time, it can be snuffed out prematurely if limiting thoughts are applied too early.

Thoughts such as “that’s ridiculous” or “that would never work” or “far too expensive” or “no-one would like it” can crowd in as part of the general way we filter creative thoughts and ideas. The ‘blue sky’ approach is to free our minds of limitation so as to let ideas flow – even to the point of applying some so-called ‘wacky’ thought to them.

You can read more about the Blue Sky Thinking topic in our in depth blog post.