21 Synectics Steps Cheat Sheet

In order to solve problems, we must be able to generate ideas. This is your chance to be creative!

1. Subtract – What can I omit or take away from it?

2. Repeat – How can I echo, restate or duplicate it?

3. Combine – What else can I connect to it?

4. Add – How can I expand or augment it?

5. Transfer – How can it be relocated or dislocated?

6. Animate – How can I mobilize it?

7. Empathize – How can I relate to it?

8. Superimpose – How can overlap or overlay to create a new it?

9. Substitute – What could I switch with or in it?

10. Change Scale – How can I change the size?

11. Fragment – How can I split it up?

12. Isolate – How can I crop or focus it?

13. Distort – How can I misshape it?

14. Contradict – How can I use reversal to change it?

15. Disguise – How can I hide or mask it into another frame of reference?

16. Parody – How can I make fun of it? i.e. comic, joke, irony

17. Prevaricate – How can I present this to be interpreted as something else?

18. Metamorphose – How can I change it? i.e., color, size,

    foundation

19. Hybridize – What would you get if you crossed this with that?

20. Mythologize – How can I transform this into an iconic figure?

21. Fantasize – What if this was supersized? What if logistics was life or death?