Using ChatGPT for Innovators: AI for Creativity & Innovation

Posted in Blog, Design Thinking, Facilitation, Innovation by Jo North

ChatGPT for Innovators: Advanced Use Cases, Prompts, Tips and Techniques

The release of ChatGPT marked a shift in how innovation teams can use large language models as part of their work. As you’re no doubt well aware, ChatGPT is an ai-powered chatbot that produces human-like responses through natural language processing and machine learning. It has quickly become a valuable tool for innovation professionals across various sectors who want better results in their innovation projects.

ChatGPT can be an essential tool for idea generation, product design, product innovation, and business models. It can support innovation management and strategic planning in large organizations, start ups and scale-ups, help identify new opportunities, and accelerate the creation of new products and new revenue streams. By combining human intelligence with generative ai tools, facilitators and teams can create a powerful synergy that strengthens innovation processes and delivers innovative solutions and innovative ideas.

How to Use ChatGPT as Your Innovation Partner

A Stage-by-Stage Guide: ChatGPT for Innovators and Facilitators

This article explains how to use ChatGPT stage by stage through the Big Bang Innovation Framework. It provides use cases, best practices, and practical workshop activities for corporate innovators and facilitators. It also explains how reflectors and extraverted thinkers can adapt the use of ChatGPT to match their preferred thinking style.

The Big Bang Innovation Framework

The Big Bang Innovation Framework is a structured approach that guides innovation from the earliest spark of opportunity through to long-term growth. It is designed for innovators and facilitators who need a clear process that balances creativity with flexibility and disciplined execution.

The framework has six stages:

1. Envisioning Potential – uncovering opportunities by exploring unmet needs, emerging trends, and signals of change.
2. Sparking Creativity – generating a wide range of new ideas and creative approaches to address those opportunities.
3. Expanding Possibilities – refining initial ideas into concepts and testing critical assumptions through low-cost experiments and rapid prototyping.
4. Forging Pathways – building business models, value propositions, and delivery plans that connect innovative ideas with organisational strategy and resources.
5. Making It Happen – implementing and scaling solutions, monitoring progress, and ensuring effective communication and adoption.
6. Growth – embedding continuous improvement, exploring adjacent opportunities, and sustaining a culture of creativity to fuel future innovation projects.

The Big Bang Innovation Framework supports innovation teams in large organizations and smaller enterprises alike. It brings structure to ideation activities and innovation workshops, supports product managers in product design and product innovation, and helps leaders integrate innovative solutions into their strategic planning and business plans.

The framework is a practical, people-centred model that helps innovation professionals turn fresh ideas into new products, new services, and new revenue streams. It combines the flexibility and discipline of innovation management with the creativity needed for disruptive thinking, providing a consistent path for better results in innovation processes.

Cognitive Preferences in Divergent and Convergent Work

Innovation moves between two modes: divergent work, which expands options, and convergent work, which narrows and selects. Both are essential in innovation processes.

• Divergent stages such as Sparking Creativity and Expanding Possibilities need lots of fresh ideas, creative ideas, and disruptive thinking.
• Convergent stages such as Forging Pathways and Making It Happen require critical thinking, evaluation, and commitment.

Reflectors and Extraverted Thinkers in Innovation

Reflectors think carefully before sharing. They often study training data, market research, and interview scripts in depth. Reflectors prefer structured frameworks to explore a specific problem and they like to analyse patterns across various domains. They benefit from good prompts that generate structured outputs such as SWOTs, PESTEL scans, or business plan templates.

Extraverted thinkers process information out loud. They thrive in ideation activities, prefer live interaction, and enjoy sparring with chatgpt’s response in real time. Extraverted thinkers are energised by interview-style role-play, ideation sessions, and prompts that deliver creative ideas on the spot.

Both thinking styles play a crucial role in innovation workshops, training sessions, and ideation sessions. By accommodating both, facilitators can support a culture of creativity and encourage disruptive thinking, critical thinking, and creative problem solving that lead to groundbreaking ideas.

For facilitators, the crucial role is balancing these preferences. Short solo think periods give reflectors time to go deep. Fast-paced dialogue with ChatGPT keeps extraverts engaged. Clear signposting of “now we diverge” or “now we converge” helps the whole team stay aligned and produces better results in innovation workshops and training sessions.

Stage 1. Envisioning Potential

Mode: Balanced, with light divergence then light convergence

Purpose
Identify new opportunities through market research, customer support feedback, future trends, and market shifts.

How ChatGPT helps
Use ChatGPT to create a structured starting point for strategic planning and the use of chatgpt in research. Example prompts:

• “Identify unusual themes in these 10 customer interview notes.”
• “Critique these discovery questions for bias or gaps.”
• “Provide a PESTEL analysis for this industry and note potential impact in the near future.”

ChatGPT can generate valuable insights by highlighting patterns in market research and customer data. It can also summarise trends across various sectors and new technologies, giving innovation teams a clearer view of signals that matter for future planning.

Thinking Style Examples
Reflectors could ask: “What am I not noticing in this market research?”

Extraverted thinkers could run live interview scripts with ChatGPT as a frustrated customer or a rival product manager.

Group use
Use ChatGPT to generate provocative questions that challenge assumptions. You could also ask ChatGPT to stimulate extreme personas to broaden viewpoints:

Workshop activity
Extreme Persona Q&A

1. Form three groups. Assign a regulator, a competitor, and a reluctant buyer.
2. Prepare five questions per group.
3. Ask ChatGPT to role-play each persona.
4. Capture significant implications and new opportunities.

Stage 2. Sparking Creativity

Mode: Divergent

Purpose
Generate new ideas, fresh ideas, and creative ideas that match the opportunity areas.

How ChatGPT helps
Use perspective shifts, constraints, and analogies. Prompts:

• “Generate five innovative ideas, each from the perspective of a CEO, comedian, philosopher, activist, and child.”
• “What innovative solutions could we try if we had no budget and one day?”
• “Suggest ten names for a new product that improves customer service. Explain each.”

ChatGPT supports naming, product design concepts, marketing strategies, and interview scripts for early checks.

Thinking Style Examples
Reflectors could ask ChatGPT to cluster initial ideas and add one variant per cluster. Extraverted thinkers could run fast sprints such as “Give me 20 creative ideas in 90 seconds.”

Group use
Assign groups a different prompt strategy: analogies, constraints, personas, or naming. Collect outputs and blend them.

Workshop activity
Multi-approach Ideation Sprint

1. Four groups. One uses analogies. One uses constraints. One uses personas. One creates names and messaging.
2. Ten minutes per group with ChatGPT.
3. Share outputs. Combine into three concepts with a one-sentence value proposition each.
4. Note competitive advantage angles and social media hooks.

Stage 3. Expanding Possibilities

Mode: Balanced, divergence for options then convergence for test choices

Purpose
Turn initial ideas into concepts and design lean experiments. Include rapid prototyping and early user experience checks.

How ChatGPT helps

• Extreme versions: “Describe a budget version and a luxury version.”
• Adversarial sparring: “Challenge this concept like a venture capitalist.”
• Narrative prototyping: “Write a 2030 customer review for this service.”
• Assumption mapping: “List critical assumptions and one test per assumption.”
• Experiment design: “Suggest three lean tests under 500 pounds.”
• Persona walkthroughs: “Simulate the user interface journey of a busy parent.”

These approaches form an effective method for product innovation and user interface improvement. They work well with ai writing tools for quick artefacts.

Thinking Style Examples
Reflectors request SWOTs, risk maps, and assumption lists. Extraverted thinkers run debate rounds with ChatGPT as a regulator or journalist to sharpen problem solving.

Group use
Run concept presentations while ChatGPT plays a hostile stakeholder. Use a failure storm to list weak points, then design fixes.

Workshop activity
Pre-mortem Failure Storm

1. Ask ChatGPT: “List ten ways this pilot might fail.”
2. Cluster by technical limits, adoption, market forces, and customer experiences.
3. Assign clusters to teams. Design safeguards.
4. Convert top safeguards into tests with owners and timelines.

Stage 4. Forging Pathways

Mode: Convergent

Purpose
Align the concept with business realities, build business models, and develop a detailed business plan.

How ChatGPT helps

• Draft a Business Model Canvas or Value Proposition Canvas.
• Outline milestones, roles, and resources.
• Anticipate organisational challenges and compliance steps.
• Simulate a stakeholder panel with human-like responses.

Thinking Style Examples
Reflectors request impact maps, risk registers, and PESTEL checks. Extraverted thinkers rehearse Q&A with ChatGPT acting as CFO, investor, or regulator. This strengthens strategic planning and prepares clear messages that support competitive advantage.

Group use
Run a stakeholder panel where ChatGPT asks one tough question at a time. Update the plan after each round.

Workshop activity
Business Model Refinement

1. Share a draft canvas.
2. Ask ChatGPT to critique weak links.
3. Edit the model live.
4. Capture a short decision log with the next test and success metric.

Stage 5. Making It Happen

Mode: Convergent with short divergence bursts for problem solving

Purpose
Execute and scale. Coordinate delivery, communication, and learning. Track early signals and identify new revenue streams.

How ChatGPT helps

• Simulate investor or board Q&A.
• Explore second-order effects of scaling to one million users.
• Draft tailored announcements for staff, investors, and regulators.
• Suggest go-to-market options and simple scorecards.
• Analyse early feedback and propose new ways to strengthen the value proposition.

These outputs help product managers and project leads coordinate work in large organizations and improve customer service and customer support.

Thinking Style Examples
Reflectors create monitoring checklists and cadence plans. Extraverted thinkers rehearse tough meetings with ChatGPT as a resistant stakeholder before live sessions.

Group use
Run war-gaming challenges. Ask ChatGPT for three scaling problems, then design mitigations.

Workshop activity
Future Headlines

1. Ask ChatGPT for one success headline and one failure headline in the near future.
2. Identify actions that lead to success and safeguards that prevent failure.
3. Confirm owners, timelines, and metrics.

Stage 6. Growth

Mode: Balanced, convergence for reviews then divergence for next horizons

Purpose
Sustain innovation, improve continuously, and embed a culture of creativity. Scout adjacent markets and future trends.

How ChatGPT helps

• Summarise feedback and propose improvements to user experience.
• Suggest adjacent opportunities and various domains to explore.
• Scan trends and market shifts that influence potential impact.
• Draft lessons learned and retrospective summaries.
• Offer prompt engineering tips for team practice.

Thinking Style Examples
Reflectors draft lessons learned and improvement plans. Extraverted thinkers run future scenario role-plays to spark innovative ideas for the next wave.

Group use
Hold AI-assisted retrospectives and horizon planning sessions. Use interview scripts to generate insights.

Workshop activity
AI-Assisted Retrospective

At the end of a project or sprint, gather the team for a structured review. Share a short pack of key outcomes such as goals, results, and customer feedback. Then ask ChatGPT to generate a draft “lessons learned” summary based on that information. Use the AI’s draft as a starting point for discussion. The team can confirm what is accurate, add missing details, and highlight priorities. Agree on a small set of improvements and assign actions. To close the session, invite each participant to suggest one idea for the next horizon that builds on what has been learned.

Summary: ChatGPT for Innovators & Facilitators

Next Steps

At The Big Bang Partnership, we work with organisations to design and deliver innovation workshops, strategy sprints, and facilitation that turn ideas into results. If you are exploring how AI and new innovation practices can support your business, get in touch here for a no-obligation discovery call. Together, we can identify opportunities, shape your next steps, and give you the tools and confidence to achieve better results.

Final Note

ChatGPT can help innovation professionals and facilitators with a practical route to better results. It can support idea generation, product design, product innovation, and business models. It helps facilitators run strong innovation workshops and ideation sessions. ChatGPT can strengthen strategic planning and innovation management, opening new opportunities, creating new ways to test concepts, and supporting new products and new revenue streams.

Teams achieve a powerful synergy when they combine generative ai tools with human intelligence and human intervention. Good prompts, clear criteria, and consistent best practices keep work high quality. This approach plays a crucial role in the innovation game and the wider technological revolution. It helps chat gpt users turn initial ideas into innovative ideas that create competitive advantage, improve customer experiences, and deliver outcomes with significant implications.