How to Use AI Creativity Tools to Break Out of Your Usual Thinking Patterns

I know so many people who think they’re “not that creative”.  I tell them that they are!!  These are people, just like the rest of us, who solve problems all day long, spot opportunities that others miss, and make decisions under pressure.  What they’re really experiencing is getting stuck in the same old thinking loops.

Our brains love shortcuts.  They reach for familiar ideas, familiar fixes and familiar angles, because that’s efficient.  So, when we’re under time pressure or your to-do list is doing is bursting at the seams, the likelihood is we default to the same answers and ideas we had last week.

This is where AI creativity tools can genuinely help.  I’m definitely not talking here about replacing your imagination, but by interrupting your mental autopilot so new thinking can get a look in.

Why Do Our Brains Get Stuck in the Same Ideas?

If you’ve ever sat staring at a blank page (and believe me, I have done this a LOT!), convinced that your creative brain has quietly left the building, you’ll know the feeling.

Here’s the science behind it, and it’s not particularly helpful when we are trying to be innovative:

• System 1 thinking jumps in with the quickest answer, which is not always the best one.
• The curse of knowledge blinds us to other possibilities.
• Over-familiarity with our own context can narrow our thinking.
• Stress and multitasking diminish curiosity, which ends up feeling like a luxury.

I’ve often seen L&D teams work hard to rethink a programme, brainstorm ideas and explore options…  but still end up choosing the version they started with. It’s not that they don’t want change, it’s just that predictable thinking has such a strong gravitational pull.

We’re wired for efficiency over not originality – which is great for admin, but not so great for innovation…

What Do People Misunderstand About AI and Creativity?

It concerns me that too many people think they can plug in a prompt and AI will spit out the perfect, new massively innovative idea.

Absolutely not.

In reality:

• AI doesn’t choose the idea – you do.
• AI can’t tell what’s meaningful, workable or ethical – you have decide that.
• AI is brilliant at generating variety, but not at declaring winners.

So the point isn’t that AI thinks for you. The point is that AI interrupts your usual thinking patterns so that your imagination actually has space to breathe.

That’s the difference. And it’s a big one.

How AI Helps:  It Supercharges Real Ideation Tools

This is the part that excites me, because this is where the human-AI partnership can actually make beautiful things. The tools I’m about to share with you below aren’t new, they’re grounded in established creative thinking theory. But incorporating AI makes them faster, braver and much more fun.

And for teams who complain that “our ideas are always a bit samey”, this bit is gold.

1. Role-Storming – Now on Turbo Mode

Role-storming (Rick Griggs, 1980s) asks you to tackle a problem as if you were someone else. It’s really useful, but the limitation is that you can only hold so many characters in your head.

AI, however, can become:

• An archaeologist
• Freda Kahlo
• A Victorian engineer
• Taylor Swift
• A LEGO designer
• A stressed parent at 7am
• …or 200 more personas in 30 seconds

You get perspectives you’d never reach on your own, and, and crucially, you don’t waste three hours pretending to be Homer Simpson!

This is exactly why we built RoleStormer, our free AI tool. Try it out here.

2. Parallel Universes – AI is Brilliant at Analogies

Analogical thinking – the process of comparing two different situations and applying knowledge from one to the other – is one of the most reliably powerful creativity methods (HBR have been writing about it for years). The challenge is that humans instinctively think within their own industry.

AI doesn’t.

Give it a challenge and it will fetch parallels from:

• F1 pit stops
• Emergency medicine
• Food trucks
• Theme park operations
• The postal system
• Children’s TV
• Space missions

Suddenly, our ideas break out of our organisation or industry to parallel worlds that have similar problems to us – just within a different context.

3. SCAMPER — But With More Breadth Than Your Brain Can Hold

SCAMPER (originally developed by Bob Eberle) is one of the most practical creativity tools we share in our Generating Ideas workshop. With SCAMPER, you answer a series of questions based on the acronym. It works really well if you want to take an existing system and process and iterate on it.

The challenge that I’ve found using this model is that people tend to focus in on the modes they find easiest to work with, and skip the ones they don’t like or find awkward.

Ask AI to run SCAMPER, SCAMMPER or SCAMMPERR (there are several versions!) and you’ll get:

• more quantity
• more variation
• more absurdity (which is good!)
• less self-editing
• and a much bigger starting pool

AI forces you to explore paths you would’ve quietly ignored.

4. Chunking Up and Down – Faster Reframing

Most innovation problems are actually framing problems; i.e. you’re solving the wrong version of the actual challenge or route issue.

Chunking is a classic reframing method used across psychology and design thinking.  It works by breaking down a problem or project into more manageable pieces. This helps you zoom in and out until you land on the real issue.

AI can make this even quicker. Try this prompt with your next challenge:

“Chunk this problem up three levels, then chunk it back down in different ways.”

This will provide you with multiple framings. Some might be obvious, but some probably not.

By using AI to help you frame the ‘best’, most appropriate frame for your problem or challenge, you are more likely to get more relevant and useful, better ideas.

5. The Concept Fan – An Underrated Gem

Edward de Bono’s Concept Fan encourages you to widen the conceptual space around your problem when you feel stuck.  It involves writing the problem in a central circle and fanning out with possible solutions. He introduces it in his book ‘Serious Creativity’ where he uses this approach to create lateral thinking (a term coined by him by the way!)

AI accelerates this beautifully. It can:

• generate multiple broader concepts
• expand each one
• then help you explore ideas within each branch

For example,

Prompt:
“Help me use the Concept Fan on this challenge: ‘How can we improve our onboarding?’

1. Zoom the problem out three broader conceptual levels.
2. Show me 3–5 ideas under each level.”

It’s a simple technique, but when supercharged by AI, it becomes a genuinely powerful way to escape narrow thinking.

6. Flip It – Reverse Thinking Without the Awkwardness

Reverse thinking is a great ideation tool, but people feel silly doing it, or they just end up brainstorming and fall out of using the intended process.

AI doesn’t.

For example, ask:
“How could we make this problem worse?”
or
“What’s the most unhelpful way to approach this?”

AI will happily give you terrible ideas, and terrible ideas are often the doorway to brilliant ones when you flip them back!

Practical Prompts You Can Use Today

Use any of these in Copilot, ChatGPT or your AI tool of choice:

Break the Pattern

“Give me 10 terrible ideas for solving [X].  Then turn each terrible idea into a useful one.”

Parallel Universe

“What industry faces a similar challenge to [X]?  Show me how they solve it and what we can borrow.”

RoleStormer

“Approach this as if you were an Olympic coach / Pixar animator / gardener. What would your advice be?”

Concept Fan

“Zoom this problem out three conceptual levels, then generate ideas at each level.”

SCAMPER

“Run SCAMPER on our onboarding process. Keep the ideas bold.”

What Should We Watch Out For When Using AI Creativity Tools?

• Don’t let AI converge too quickly.  Speed is good, but don’t rush for conclusions too soon.
• Don’t accept the first answer…  ever.  Keep going, try new angles.
• Don’t skip the evaluation phase.  Run your ideas through our LEAP model if you need help applying critical thinking to your outputs.
• Don’t confuse volume with value.  Yet it’s okay to start with quantity as long as you drive for quality.

AI opens doors, gives you options and wonderful ideas…
You still choose which ones matter.

So What Does All This Mean For How We Innovate?

Innovation is a process rather than a lightning bolt – and something that organisations beginning to adopt AI technologies can really leverage. It can often be a slightly messy process, but then innovation can be quite messy.  If you prefer order and process though, you can still be super creative using these AI creativity tools to organise your thinking.

Remember, if you want better ideas then you need better inputs through strong prompts to then create variety, contrast, stretch, provocation, analogy, weirdness and range.

AI creativity tools give you all of that at your fingertips. They don’t do your thinking for you but they will help you think better.

If you want to try this properly, we’ve built a free RoleStormer tool for you.  And if your organisation wants to build a culture where AI genuinely amplifies creativity, not replaces it, our AI for Innovation workshop dives into this in a way that’s practical, energising and good fun.