Exaggerate

Exaggerate magnifies and minifies issues to stretch or compress thinking. 

Uses of the method

• Breakout thinking
• Idea generation

Benefits

• Fast and ultra-low cost
• Can be used by both individual analysts and teams
• Can generate completely fresh ideas

Disadvantages

• Needs to be used with other creative techniques

Steps to complete

• Define the problem 
• List the all the components of the problem
• Choose one component and  exaggerate its effects
• Look for breakthrough innovations, incremental innovations, new venture innovations and new business models
• Repeat this for more components
• What conclusions can we draw from the exercise(s)?
  • How might the future be different?
  • How does A affect B?
  • What is likely to remain the same or change significantly?
  • What are the likely outcomes?
  • What and who will likely shape our future?
  • Where could we be most affected by change?
  • What might we do about it?
  • What don't we know that we need to know?
  • What should we do now, today?
  • Why do we care?
  • When should we aim to meet on this?
• Finish by noting your next steps. Next steps could include a further round of iteration, a recommendation on how to get the answers or use of other research and methods such as 'Starburst' to create more vantage points on the issue. Repeat the exercise from a different perspective e.g. taking a negative view or an unusual position, or from the viewpoint of another stakeholder.

Collaboration
This method and your response can be shared with other members or kept private using the 'Privacy' field and through the 'Tag', 'Report' and 'Forum' functionalities. Use 'Tag' and/or 'Report' to aggregate your analyzes, or add a 'Forum' to ask others where they agree/disagree and encourage them to make their own analysis from their unique vantage point.

Click the 'Invite tab to send invitations to other members or non-members (colleagues, external experts etc.) to ask for their input. You can whether or not you want anonymous responses.  These can be viewed and exported within the Responses tab.

Further reference

• Exaggeration - Mycoted
• Reversals - Mycoted

Contact us
Even with all the advice and tools we have provided here starting a foresight project from scratch can be a daunting prospect to a beginner. Let us know if you need help with this method or want a group facilitation exercise or full project or program carrying out by us. We promise to leave behind more internal knowledgeable people who can expand your initiative for better organizational performance.

Contact us today for a free discussion on your needs.

Are there other enhancements or new methods you would like to see here? Let us know and we will do our best to respond with a solution quickly.

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