June 19, 2025

Innovation Ping-Pong

by Our content team

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This exercise can be used with a group to generate many diverse and novel ideas in an instinctive and reactionary manner.

Participants will compete to generate as many quick-fire, creative ideas as possible for a given problem. The timing of the session will depend on the size of the group and level of detail you would like to assign to the discussion.

Participants will be able to…

generate creative ideas
provide many different solutions to a given issue

Preparation

In advance of the session, brief the group on the topic to be discussed. For example, you may wish to generate ideas for a new product/service, or how to improve existing products/services.

Customize the attached scorecard to reflect the number of people in the group. Divide the group into pairs and note the names of the participants on the scorecard.

Prepare five sheets of flipchart paper with the words ‘impossible’, ‘improbable’, ‘possibly for consideration’, ‘definitely for consideration’ and ‘genius’, written at the top. Pin up the prepared pieces of flipchart on a wall.

Suggested Resources

flipchart paper
Post-It notes
Scorecard (which can be downloaded below)

What to Do (One Hour)

Introduce the aim and learning objectives and remind the group of the topic to be discussed. You may like to give some information on why this topic has been chosen, how the session is going to work, and what you hope to gain from the session.
Inform the group that this is an idea-generating game. Their ideas can be as big or as small as they like. Not every idea has to be groundbreaking – even small improvements can be valuable. Also, their ideas can be as sensible or as outlandish as they desire. Seemingly ridiculous ideas may spark further creative ideas, or possibly be modified into a feasible idea.
Place two chairs in the middle of the room facing each other and ask the first pair to sit on the chairs. Flip a coin to see who goes first.
Pose the problem again. I.e. ‘I would like you to think of as many ideas as possible as to how we can improve our customer service.’
The pair should take it in turns to generate solutions to the problem in quick succession.
Ask for two volunteers from the rest of the group to note down the ideas from the pair. (One scribe per person will avoid confusion.) Ask them to write each idea on a separate Post-It note.
This is a knockout competition, so when a person runs out of ideas, repeats an idea that has already been suggested, or stumbles for longer than five seconds, they are out. Encourage the rest of the group to judge, although you have the final say. Note the winner’s name on the scorecard. The winner is the person who produces the most ideas. This person will go through to the next round.
Repeat this procedure for every pair. Carry the winners through to the next round and repeat the process until there is one winner.
As each pair is competing, ask those members of the group not involved to stick up the generated ideas onto the pieces of flipchart paper under the category they deem most appropriate. Do they think the idea is ‘impossible’, ‘improbable’, ‘possibly for consideration’, ‘definitely for consideration’ or ‘genius’?
Award a prize for the winner.

Review Activity (One Hour)

Gather the group together so that everyone can see the ideas on the wall.
Discuss the ideas with the group. Do they think the ideas are in the correct category? Move the ideas into different categories depending on general consensus.
You may like to explore in more detail some of the promising ideas generated.

Apply Learning (15 Minutes)

Decide as a group what you would like to do with the ideas. Which ones would you like to implement immediately, and which ones need further consideration?
Take the smaller ideas that could be implemented immediately and assign responsibility for making these happen.
Decide what you would like to do with the other promising ideas. For example, do you need to present them to senior management, explore the ideas further, or set up experiments? Assign responsibilities depending on how you would like to take the ideas forward.
Make sure you keep a note of all the ideas generated in the session in a place accessible to everyone, e.g. your intranet. It may be that some are unfeasible now, but could become a reality in the future.