What can give us fresh business ideas?

Unfamiliar conversations, reading and experiences can bring fresh material into collaborative thinking. In a naming project for a UK-wide insurance broker, inspiration came from an unexpected online source encountered during a train journey. The useful connection emerged outside the usual working routine, rather than from a predictable source of naming ideas.

The practical advice is to look deliberately beyond familiar inputs: the same podcasts, habitual reading and comfortable experiences. A conversation, book, event or chance online discovery can offer a different perspective. Generating ideas is a team effort, but colleagues can contribute more varied starting points when they also seek inspiration beyond their everyday work.

Tentative suggestions deserve time to develop rather than immediate dismissal. Welcoming ideas from unexpected people and places gives colleagues opportunities to combine different stimuli and explore possibilities together. Curiosity, empathy and co-creation matter more than expecting every contribution to be a finished proposal.

Generative AI can support creative work and take on repetitive tasks, leaving room for human imagination. Keeping varied human contributions central is particularly important when teams use AI for brainstorming. In 2025, the Mack Institute for Innovation Management at Wharton reported that ChatGPT-assisted brainstorming produced significantly less diverse ideas in 37 of 45 statistical comparisons across 5 experiments involving experimental brainstorming tasks. The practical priority is to welcome and develop different possibilities, rather than settle quickly on repeated versions of an attractive idea.