Excursions and Metaphors – Getting crazy ideas, and turning them into brilliant solutions – Truida Prekel & Lu-Marie Sobey, 2007

Excursions and metaphors are among the most powerful techniques in the Synectics process. Excursions help to create some distance from tasks, to produce unusual ideas with potential for novel solutions, while metaphors help to turn seemingly “crazy” ideas into workable solutions. An overview of the SynNovation approach is followed by the “how and why” of excursions and metaphors, and five examples from reports on real workshops, showing how fun ideas developed from excursions can be turned into workable “emerging ideas.”