Tuning questions for “normal” ideas

Many ideas already exist, but are gathering dust in the back of our drawers. Why? They simply didn’t catch on, were too “normal” at the time they were created and seem “old” to us today. Yet they have undiscovered potential.

At the Verrocchio Institute, we looked at such “normal” or “old” ideas a long time ago and tried to find out what these ideas were missing in order to become really exciting.

In the process, we came across many different aspects. We have collected this and translated it into a standardized format and tool. The result is our “Tuning questions for ideas”. These questions will help you to tune and enrich your ideas or business models and thus simply make them better and more successful.

List of questions for your ideas

1. How can you make your idea flexibly scalable?
2. What do you need to change so that your idea automatically makes money?
3. What do you need to add to generate switching costs for your customers?
4. How could fun come into your idea?
5. How does your idea become a big secret?
6. What can you do to protect your idea from competitors?
7. How could you get your idea off the ground?
8. What would a child do with your idea?
9. Which detail of your idea gives customers the most pleasure?
10. How could you package your idea differently?
11. How can you bring a repeating pattern into your idea?
12. What is really new about your idea?
13. What changes if you remove important parts of your idea?
14. What happens if you turn your idea upside down?
15. How do the disadvantages become advantages?
16. What changes if money doesn’t matter?
17. How could you turn your idea into an adventure?
18. What would your idea say if it could speak?
19. What would a hero do to help you?
20. What does your idea change for the customer?
21. How can you earn more money while giving away your idea at the same time?
22. What can you leave out without destroying your idea?
23. Where else can you find ideas to enrich your idea?
24. How do you promote your idea if you hide the most important thing?
25. What happens if you double the price of your idea?
26. What ideas from the past could you activate to enrich your idea?
27. What would change if you had a serious mistake free?
28. How can you integrate social media into your idea?
29. What can you do to turn your customers into fans of your idea?
30. What would change if you had one wish?
31. What would be different in 2050?
32. Which old ways of thinking and trails could you leave behind?
33. How can others do the work?
34. What would you have to do to make your idea do exactly the opposite of what it is supposed to do?
35. What would be different if the digital world did not exist?
36. What do your customers do just before or after they have used your idea?
37. What happens within 10 meters of your idea?

What is the best way to use the tuning questions?

Complete list
The most efficient method with the highest probability of really improving an idea or turning it into a better idea is to apply the complete list of questions to an idea. You should spend at least a few minutes on each question and think it through. This variant is the most challenging way to work with the list.

Important: Write down all the answers to the questions – this will make the brainstorming process even more effective.

2. spontaneously matching questions
Option two is to read through the list of questions and write down the numbers of the questions that feel exciting in relation to the ideas. These questions are then dealt with for a longer period of time. It is also possible to conduct an entire brainstorming workshop on individual questions.

3. question lottery with the team
We have called variant three the question lottery; it is aimed more at a team that wants to tune a specific idea. To do this, all the questions on our list are written on e.g. moderation cards or printed out. The team participants form teams of 2 and each team draws a question card blindly.

Each team of two then carries out a creative task to answer the question drawn as creatively as possible. After 30 minutes, all teams present their answers. New pairs are then formed and each pair draws a new question card.

Have fun using the tuning questions.