As powerful as the traditional brainstorming is, it has a drawback: All the participants have a common understanding, a collective mind frame that traps them equally in the same box or comfort zone. They all think about the problem in the common terms, and as a result, the normal process of associations eventually becomes unproductive. This is when you need to switch to another Power Thinking technique: Forced Connections.
DEFINITION
Forced connections are based on the brain’s ability to link two disparate items -such as words, objects, feelings, and ideas - and then use the new language generated by the linkages to think through the problem. It is called Forced Connections because it relies on random external triggers that force people to make a connection between the problem at hand and the trigger. These triggers cause people to broaden their perspective.
Extracted from https://brooklynbilbao.wordpress.com/2011/08/02/forced-connections/
