Think Outside the Box - with Artificial Intelligence

In a world where innovation is the key to better and more efficient solutions, we face a perpetually pressing question: How do we generate more of those ‘why haven’t we thought of this before’ types of ideas?

Although the most creative and innovative thinkers naturally excel in this discipline, many of us struggle to be creative on command, especially when everyday life is also filled with many meetings, personal concerns, and other pressing tasks.

AI as a Creative Genius

Fortunately, help can come from an unexpected place. Research shows that AI chatbots can develop original, valuable, and meaningful ideas that surpass most people’s abilities. AI is particularly adept at shifting perspectives on problems and developing potential future scenarios—something humans often struggle with because we tend to get caught in conventional thought patterns and groupthink. But how do we extract these ingenious ideas from machines?

Creative Thinking as a Play with Knowledge

Creative thinking can be seen as a play with knowledge, where we combine existing ideas to create new, valuable solutions. Imagine you’re tasked with developing ideas for new ways to illuminate the main shopping street in your city. Perhaps you saw a newspaper headline yesterday about bioluminescence – that certain animals can produce light biologically in the same way that humans produce heat. Inspired by this, you get the idea of combining fireflies in glass spheres with fungi that emit light upon movement, and aquariums with lanternfish, which are among the animals that emit the strongest light. An exciting and innovative idea.

By applying knowledge from different domains, such as marine biology and bioluminescence, artificial intelligence can help assess the potential for such a new idea in minutes. For example, ChatGPT or Copilot can quickly identify potentials and challenges with bioluminescent lighting and suggest solutions to overcome these. This includes everything from energy savings and aesthetic considerations to practical challenges such as temperature regulation in aquariums. This increases the likelihood that new, vulnerable ideas stand a greater chance against well-known existing solutions.

However, we must be aware that artificial intelligence can hallucinate – that is, it can provide incorrect information, much like humans can make mistakes. Therefore, AI as an idea expert should always be supplemented with a deeper investigation of the idea’s potential and challenges.

At the Bar with AI

Imagine you’re discussing an important problem with a friend over a drink at a bar. Similarly, you can engage AI in an in-depth, exploratory dialogue to develop and evaluate new ideas. Using AI’s audio features can allow for a continuous, interactive conversation, where AI not only listens and responds but also challenges and contributes with entirely new perspectives during your idea development.

Especially, AI’s ability to combine broad knowledge opens up for exciting idea generation processes. For example, ask your AI to simulate being a dentist, to help find ideas for new ways to serve ice cream – ideas that go beyond stick, cup, cone, and bowl. It might suggest serving ice cream in a toothpaste-like tube with a toothbrush-like spoon. This could be practical if your children are slow to eat their ice cream while you walk in strong sun and heat along a southern beach. This innovative packaging could also encourage “brushing” the ice cream more around the mouth, which would intensify the taste experience, as all taste buds would thus be stimulated. Maybe the ice cream should be sugar-free, so it does not attract too much criticism from dental associations.

Then you can ask the AI to simulate being a carpenter, which might result in the idea of serving ice cream in a “caulking gun-like” container. This could be a fun way to serve ice cream to 20 children at a birthday party. You could even put a star on the nozzle, so the ice cream is star-shaped.

Compelling New Ideas

The difference between being perceived as a fool and a genius can be decided by how the idea is presented to colleagues, the boss, or customers. Here, AI can also play a crucial role. By utilizing AI’s capacity to generate convincing arguments, memorable names, metaphors, and slogans, as well as create presentations of possible usage scenarios, we can convey our ideas in ways that captivate and persuade our audience. This way, the new ideas stand a greater chance against the otherwise easy “that’s not how we usually do things”…

Are you inspired to get started with artificial intelligence in your innovative processes, creative thinking, and general problem-solving? Then follow Christian Byrge’s research or book a lecture with him for your team.