Use tools like these when you want to come up with new ideas or organize many ideas:

Affinity diagram: Organizes a large number of ideas into their natural relationships.

Benchmarking: A structured process for comparing your organization’s work practices to the best similar practices you can identify in other organizations, and then incorporating the best ideas into your own processes.

Brainstorming: A method for generating a large number of creative ideas in a short period of time.

Nominal group technique: A structured method for group brainstorming that encourages contributions from everyone.

Excerpted from Nancy R. Tague’s The Quality Toolbox, Second Edition, ASQ Quality Press, 2004.