Creativity Triggers

Creativity Triggers is a technique that guides you to generate new ideas from different perspectives. Select the creativity trigger(s) to work with from the choices below and follow their guidance. There are over 20 triggers grouped according to their focus - the athlete, the training process, the environments, and competitions.


You can also download our PDF to look through and print all the creativity triggers listed on the website.

  • WHAT DO I NEED AND HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE?

    Duration


    You can generate ideas in under 10 minutes.

    Work with as many triggers as you want, but don't use one trigger for more than 10 minutes at a time.


    What you need


    • Either yourself or a small group of colleagues
    • The selected creativity trigger(s)
    • Post-it notes and pens

  • WHAT DO I DO AND HOW DOES IT WORK?

    Once a coaching challenge has been identified, explore and come up with ideas in three simple steps:


    1. Select your creativity triggers


    Choose the creativity triggers which relate to your challenge from the buttons below. Each trigger is different and covers key perspectives on coaching. Choose the triggers you think will be most useful, then focus on the first of them.


    2. Generate ideas with a trigger


    Ask yourself how the trigger relates to your challenge. Follow its guidance to discover new ideas, and record them on post-it notes. Don’t worry if ideas are fanciful and unrealistic. Non-sensical ideas have a tendency to become sensible over time. 


    Keep going until you run out of ideas – which is usually no more than 10 minutes.


    3. Select the next trigger


    You could choose your next trigger randomly, but we recommend selecting triggers related to your new ideas to keep them flowing. 


    Repeat steps 2 and 3.

CHOOSING YOUR TRIGGERS

THE ATHLETE

Athlete triggers cover motivation, physical and mental wellbeing and adolescent athletes

THE TRAINING PROCESS

Training process triggers include injury and recovery, nutrition and the coaching process

ENVIRONMENTS

Environment triggers look at coaching facilities, parents of athletes and team and home environments

COMPETITIONS

Competition triggers focus on locations, timelines and opposition in relation to competitions

  • EXAMPLES

    Consider a swimmer who has asked for strategies to reduce her tiredness. She has not reported a lack of sleep, her nutrition and diet are balanced, and she undergoes regular recovery processes.


    Using the Injury, Recovery and Rehabilitation trigger, you might investigate the effect of recovery process timings on the swimmer’s tiredness. New ideas might include lengthening the planned recovery processes, to explore its effect on this tiredness.


    Using the Coaching Facilities trigger, you might explore whether the swimming pool and/or its location has impacted on tiredness. New ideas might include using different pools and gyms and using different types of facilities beyond the pool.


    And using the Parents of Athletes trigger, you might ask the parents of the swimmer, who still lives at home, to monitor her sleep and related home behaviours, to discover home-based factors that contribute to her tiredness.

  • HOW DOES IT WORK IN SPORT SPARKS?

    The Explore and Solve sparks in the digital product direct you to discover ideas by exploring the challenge and its solution. Sport Sparks will generate many more sparks and perspectives for you to explore. You can direct this generation process by selecting relevant topics for your challenge. Each different topic corresponds to one of the creativity triggers listed above.

  • FOR MORE INFORMATION

    Different forms of creativity triggers have been used to generate new ideas regularly in the design and technology sectors. You can you read about this work here. 


    Sport Sparks have adapted creativity triggers to coaching, you can give them a go by hitting the sign-in button on our website to try out the app.

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