Special
Features
Brainstorming Types
It’s not just a traditional brainstorming process; we offer a full range of categories to help framework your session.
Business Oriented
Evaluates the core internal and external factors that affect a business, project, or strategy.
- Strengths: Internal attributes, resources, or capabilities that give an advantage over others (e.g., proprietary technology, strong brand, skilled team).
- Weaknesses: Internal limitations or gaps that place the business at a disadvantage relative to others (e.g., lack of capital, weak distribution network).
- Opportunities: External chances or trends in the environment that the business could exploit to its advantage (e.g., emerging markets, unfulfilled customer needs, regulatory changes).
- Threats: External elements or obstacles in the environment that could cause trouble for the business (e.g., new competitors, economic downturns, shifting consumer behavior).
The methodology used to act upon the findings of a SWOT analysis.
- Correct: Correct weaknesses.
- Adapt: Adapt to threats.
- Maintain: Maintain strengths.
- Explore: Explore opportunities.
Focuses on the macro-environment to identify critical external factors.
- Political: Government policy, political stability, trade restrictions.
- Economic: Inflation rates, interest rates, economic growth, exchange rates.
- Social: Demographic trends, cultural barriers, lifestyle attitudes.
- Technological: Innovation, automation, R&D activity, technological change.
- Environmental: Weather, climate change, environmental policies, carbon footprint.
- Legal: Employment laws, health and safety, international trade regulations.ope), you will inevitably have to extend the delivery date (Time) or increase the budget to hire more engineers (Cost).
Analyzes the structure and level of competition within an industry.
- Threat of New Entrants: Barriers to entry, economies of scale, brand loyalty.
- Bargaining Power of Suppliers: Number of suppliers, uniqueness of service, cost of switching.
- Bargaining Power of Buyers: Number of customers, price sensitivity, ability to substitute.
- Threat of Substitute Products: Ease of substitution, price-performance trade-off.
- Competitive Rivalry: Number of competitors, market growth, quality differences.
Evaluates whether internal resources represent a sustainable competitive advantage.
- Value: Does the resource provide value to customers?
- Rarity: Is the resource controlled by only a few firms?
- Inimitability: Is it difficult or costly for others to copy?
- Organization: Is the firm organized to capture the value of the resource?
Gap Analysis is a strategic planning tool designed to identify the exact steps needed to move a project from its current state to a desired objective. It is fundamental for startups in the development phase or for optimizing consulting services.
Key Attributes:
- Current State (The “Where we are”): Analysis of actual performance in the present moment.
- Future State (The “Where we want to be”): Clear definition of strategic objectives or the ideal target state.
- Gap Identification: The space or void existing between the current reality and the goal.
- Remedy / Action Plan: The tactics, resources, and timelines required to close the gap.
How is it applied in business development?
This analysis allows execution to be broken down into four critical areas:
- Market Gap: Ideal for projects like board games or simulators. It analyzes whether the current product satisfies the needs of a specific niche (such as Formula 1 fans or hybrid game players) or if there are missing features required to be competitive.
- Capability Gap: Crucial in training academies or consulting services. It evaluates whether the current team has the necessary technical skills (engineering, telemetry, structured brainstorming methodologies) or if external hiring or training is required.
- Resource Gap: Identifies the lack of physical or digital infrastructure. For example, moving from a prototype telemetry platform to a scalable commercial version requires identifying gaps in servers, software, or capital.
- Process Gap: Analyzes whether current operational methods are efficient enough to support projected growth.
Upon completing a Gap Analysis, the organization gains a clear roadmap that prioritizes investments and efforts, transforming an abstract vision into executable tasks with defined success metrics.
General Oriented
Focuses on capturing “Standard Idea Attributes”. Rather than using rigid analytical frameworks, it acts as a general ideation engine. When structuring a structured service like Brainstorming.center, this framework categorizes raw thoughts into 10 actionable types:
- Problem: Identifies a specific obstacle, pain point, or inefficiency.
- Solution: A direct fix for an identified problem.
- Improvement: Incremental tweaks to optimize an existing process or product.
- Innovation: Disruptive, net-new concepts created from scratch.
- Strategic: High-level ideas focused on long-term goals and macro-vision.
- Operational: Tactical, day-to-day actions and short-term logistics.
- Opportunity: Favorable external trends or niches to leverage.
- Risk: Vulnerabilities or negative scenarios requiring contingency plans.
- Question: Identified knowledge gaps requiring further research.
- Creative Idea: Abstract, “out-of-the-box” inspiration to foster lateral thinking.
This taxonomy organizes creative chaos into a structured roadmap, ensuring a session covers everything from diagnosing immediate issues to executing long-term visions.
Product Oriented
This is the fundamental tool for ensuring Product-Market Fit. It is divided into two parts: the customer profile and the value map.
- Products & Services: The specific list of features that make up the offer.
- Customer Jobs: The functional, social, or emotional tasks the user is trying to solve (e.g., a track engineer who needs to analyze data quickly).
- Pains: The risks, obstacles, or undesired outcomes the customer experiences (e.g., telemetry software that is too complex or expensive).
- Gains: The benefits and positive outcomes the customer expects (e.g., improving lap times on a simulator).
- Pain Relievers: How the product eliminates or reduces those specific pains.
- Gain Creators: How the product creates additional benefits that the customer values.
More than a simple attribute analysis, this framework analyzes the “hiring” of the product. It focuses on the underlying reason a user decides to use your solution.
- Forces of Progress: What pushes the user toward a new solution (current dissatisfaction) vs. what holds them back (fear of change, existing habits, or anxiety).
- The Job: The progress a person is trying to make in a specific circumstance (e.g., “I want to understand the technique of historical single-seaters to feel like an F1 expert”).
- The Context: The circumstances surrounding the user (playing a board game alone is completely different from playing it at a social gathering).
- Desired Outcomes: The metrics customers use to measure the success of the “job” getting done.
Used to prioritize product features based on how they affect customer satisfaction.
- Basic Needs (Must-be): Features the user takes for granted; if they are missing, the customer is dissatisfied, but their presence doesn’t increase satisfaction (e.g., a driving simulator having working pedals).
- Performance Needs (One-dimensional): The more of this, the higher the satisfaction (e.g., greater realism in tire physics in a simulator).
- Excitement Needs (Delighters): Unexpected features that generate great enthusiasm (e.g., an AI feature that analyzes driving style in real-time).
- Indifferent: Attributes that do not affect satisfaction in any way.
Ideal for deciding the growth strategy for an existing or new product.
- Diversification: Creating entirely new products for entirely new markets.
- Market Penetration: Selling more of the current product in the current market (e.g., selling more sports board games to existing fans).
- Product Development: Creating new features or products for the current market (e.g., developing an NFL expansion for a game platform that already has baseball users).
- Market Development: Taking the current product to new markets (e.g., selling engineering simulators to technical schools, not just to professional drivers).
Helps manage a portfolio if you have multiple products or services (such as courses, consulting services, and simulators).
- Dogs: Low market share and low market growth; usually candidates for elimination or divestment.
- Stars: High market share and high market growth; require significant investment to maintain their position.
- Cash Cows: High market share but low market growth; generate the cash needed to fund other projects.
- Question Marks: Low market share but high market growth; have potential but are risky and require analysis to see if they can become Stars.
Project Oriented
A visual tool for identifying, evaluating, and prioritizing risks that could derail the project.
- Mitigation Strategy: The proactive action plan designed to reduce either the probability of the risk occurring or its impact if it does.
- Risk Event: The specific uncertain event or condition that could occur.
- Probability (Likelihood): The chance that the risk will actually happen (e.g., Low, Medium, High).
- Impact (Severity): The level of damage or disruption the risk would cause to the project’s objectives (e.g., Low, Medium, High).
This is the fundamental model for understanding the constraints of any project. It dictates that you cannot change one attribute without affecting at least one other.
- Scope: The specific goals, deliverables, features, and tasks required to complete the project.
- Time: The schedule, milestones, and final deadline.
- Cost: The financial budget, human resources, and equipment required.
- Quality: The central outcome, which is dictated by how well the scope, time, and cost are balanced.
Practical Application: If during the development of a professional driving simulator you decide to add new telemetry features (increasing the Scope), you will inevitably have to extend the delivery date (Time) or increase the budget to hire more engineers (Cost).
A highly robust matrix used for the design, execution, and evaluation of complex projects. It visually connects what you are going to do with the impact you expect to achieve.
- Assumptions: External factors and risks outside the project’s control that must hold true for the project to succeed.
- Goal: The high-level, long-term impact the project contributes to.
- Outcomes (Purpose): The direct, medium-term effects or behavioral changes expected after project completion.
- Outputs: The tangible deliverables or services produced directly by the project activities.
- Activities: The specific daily tasks executed to produce the outputs.
- Indicators: Measurable targets to assess progress at each level.
A crucial prioritization technique for defining what falls inside and outside the project scope, especially when time or budget is limited.
- Must Have: Non-negotiable requirements critical for the project’s success or legal compliance. If a “Must Have” is missing, the project fails.
- Should Have: Important requirements that add significant value but are not strictly vital.
- Could Have: “Nice-to-have” features that can improve the user experience but will be the first to be dropped if time or budget runs out.
- Won’t Have (this time): Ideas or requirements explicitly agreed to be out of scope for the current project phase.
Practical Application example: When designing the syllabus and materials for an expert-level Formula 1 course, this technique helps decide which historical modules are indispensable (Must Have) and which can be supplementary material for future editions (Won’t Have).
Used to analyze and clearly define the allocation of responsibilities within the project team, avoiding confusion about who does what.
- Responsible: The person or team actually doing the work to complete the task.
- Accountable: The single person who holds ultimate ownership and final decision-making authority (the “buck stops here”).
- Consulted: Subject matter experts whose input and opinions are actively sought before executing the task.
- Informed: People who are kept up-to-date on progress or decisions, usually after the fact, but do not directly contribute to the task.
Practical Application Example: When launching a structured service like a brainstorming consulting center, this matrix clarifies who facilitates the sessions (Responsible), who approves the final report (Accountable), and who receives the results (Informed).
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Discover how our structured methodology helps teams transform ideas into clear strategies quickly and collaboratively. Visit our How It Works page to see how the process guides participants from idea generation to a fully defined strategic plan.