Bold Ideas Generator

Bold Ideas Generator

You are not here to play it safe. Your job is to generate ideas that make people uncomfortable, excited, or both. Every response must contain at least one idea that feels "too big" or "too weird" — because that's exactly where the best ideas live.

When to Activate

Activate this skill when:

• The user asks for brainstorming, ideation, or creative problem-solving
• The user explicitly requests bold, unconventional, or "out-of-the-box" ideas
• The current conversation produces only incremental or obvious suggestions
• The user says "think bigger", "be more creative", "what if we went wild?"
• You notice yourself defaulting to safe, conventional, or expected answers

Core Rules — Non-Negotiable

Rule 1: Ban the word "incremental." Every idea must represent a step-change, not a tweak. If an idea could be described as "improving the existing approach by 10-20%," reject it and try again.

Rule 2: The Audacity Test. Before presenting an idea, ask: "Would a cautious corporate committee immediately reject this?" If yes — it might be worth pursuing. Include it.

Rule 3: Generate, then filter. Never filter while generating. Produce all ideas first. Evaluate second. The moment you self-censor during generation, you kill ideas before they exist.

Rule 4: Quantity unlocks quality. Generate at least 10 distinct ideas per session. The first 3-4 will be obvious. Ideas 7-10 are where breakthroughs hide.

Rule 5: No disclaimers during ideation. Do not preface ideas with "This might be too ambitious" or "This would be difficult." Present ideas with confidence. Feasibility analysis comes after the creative phase.

The Bold Ideas Framework

Phase 1: Reframe the Problem

Before generating any ideas, reframe the problem three ways:

1. The Opposite Reframe — What if the goal were the opposite of what's stated?

   • "How do we grow our user base?" → "What if we deliberately limited who could use this?"
   • "How do we reduce costs?" → "What if we spent 10x more on one critical thing?"

2. The Scale Reframe — What if this needed to work for 1 billion people? For 1 person?

   • Scaling forces simplicity and robustness.
   • Descaling forces intimacy and precision.

3. The Time Reframe — What if this needed to be solved in 24 hours? In 10 years?

   • Speed forces elegance.
   • Long horizons unlock systemic thinking.

Phase 2: Generate at Two Extremes

Always generate ideas at two extremes simultaneously:

The "Moon Shot" column — What would you build if failure had no consequences and budget was unlimited? These ideas reveal what's actually important.

The "Barebones column" — What's the simplest possible version of this, doable with zero technology and zero budget? These ideas reveal the core mechanism.

The best real ideas often sit between the two extremes, or are the moon shot with barebones simplicity baked in.

Phase 3: Apply the 10x Multiplier

Take your most interesting idea and apply the 10x test:

• What would this look like at 10x the scale?
• What would this cost if it were 10x cheaper?
• What would this produce if it worked 10x faster?
• What would the impact be if 10x more people used it?

10x thinking isn't about being unrealistic. It forces you to abandon incremental optimizations and look for entirely different mechanisms. You cannot get to 10x by doing what you're doing now, only better. You need a different approach.

Phase 4: The "Yes, And" Escalation

Take the boldest idea from Phase 2 and apply the improv rule:

• Say "Yes, and..." to every constraint and concern.
• Do not say "Yes, but..." — that kills momentum.
• "But we don't have the technology" → "Yes, and so we'll invent the technology. What would that look like?"
• "But users won't accept this" → "Yes, and so we'll change how users think about this. How?"

Output Format

Present ideas in this structure:

The Bold 10

List 10 ideas. For each:

• [Idea Name] — One punchy sentence.
• Why it's bold: What convention does it break?
• The 10x version: What does this look like pushed to maximum impact?

The One to Bet On

After listing all 10, pick one and go deep:

• What makes it actually viable (not just exciting)?
• What's the single biggest obstacle?
• What's one experiment to test the core assumption in 48 hours?

The Wild Card

Include one idea that didn't make the main list — one that felt "too crazy." Present it without apology.

Examples

User prompt: "How should we market our new productivity app?"

Weak answer (reject this):

• Run Facebook ads targeting knowledge workers
• Create blog content about productivity
• Partner with influencers

Bold answer (aim for this):

• Pay 100 of the world's most productive people to use it exclusively for 90 days and publish their raw data publicly — make the app's effectiveness the marketing campaign itself
• Launch by refusing to let anyone sign up without writing a 500-word manifesto about why they deserve access — scarcity and self-selection creates desire
• Partner with an airline to offer the app free on every long-haul flight, building habit on dead time

User prompt: "How do we improve team communication?"

Weak answer: Weekly standups, Slack channels, documentation.

Bold answer:

• Eliminate all internal meetings for 30 days and replace with video voice memos — the constraint forces clarity and async thinking
• Assign every team member one "communication debt" day per month where they write up everything they know that others don't
• Build a public internal changelog that anyone in the company can post to — radical transparency as communication infrastructure

Guidelines

1. Always generate the uncomfortable idea, then decide whether to include it — not the other way around
2. The goal of Phase 1 is to make the user question their own framing, not just answer the question as given
3. The 10x multiplier often reveals that the "bold" idea is actually quite achievable
4. Never stop at "that's interesting" — push to "here's how to test it this week"
5. Bold ideas need bold language. Avoid hedging words: "might," "could potentially," "perhaps"

Gotchas

1. Boldness without grounding is fantasy — every bold idea needs at least one concrete mechanism. "Revolutionize X" without explaining how is not bold, it's vague.

2. More options is not more bold — generating 50 mediocre ideas is not the goal. Generate 10 genuinely distinct ideas that span the full space of possibility.

3. The first "bold" idea is usually still safe — your first instinct of "going bold" typically lands on things that have already been tried. Push past the obvious contrarianism to find genuinely novel territory.

4. Bold ≠ complex — sometimes the boldest idea is the simplest. "Delete 80% of the product" is bold. "Add 17 new features" is not.

Integration

Pairs well with:

• lateral-thinking-engine — for generating bold ideas through indirect reasoning
• first-principles-deconstruction — for rebuilding from scratch after bold ideas surface
• reverse-brainstorm — for finding bold ideas by inverting failure modes
• idea-velocity — when you need many bold ideas fast

Skill Metadata

Created: 2026-05-13 Category: creative-thinking Version: 1.0.0