Creative Idea Generation & AI Partnering

This unit introduces systematic creative techniques and frameworks for generating business ideas, including combinational methods, analogies, twists/qualifiers, and collaborative exercises with generative AI. Students practice hands-on ideation and prepare concise pitch-ready concepts that will be refined and validated in subsequent units.

Learning Objectives

• Analyze business problems by decomposing them into generic parts and using analogy and blending techniques to produce alternative solution pathways
• Apply structured creative techniques (exquisite corpse, combinational methods, twists and qualifiers, and distant-domain blending) to generate a portfolio of at least ten distinct business concept variants
• Demonstrate effective partnering with generative AI by designing prompts, iterating outputs, and integrating AI-generated suggestions into ideation workflows while addressing quality and ethical considerations
• Evaluate and communicate a concise startup pitch that leverages analogies and combinatorial reasoning to articulate value proposition, target market, and differentiators