Invented in Japan by Yasuo Matsumura, the Lotus Blossom technique adds focus and power to classic brainstorming. Once mastered, the technique helps you create more and higher quality ideas for products and services, find innovative ways of improving your business, and helps you solve a variety of problems you frequently encounter.

What’s the big idea?
The Lotus Blossom technique focuses the power of brainstorming on areas of interest. It does so through the use of a visual representation of ideas and is similar to a mind-map, but is more structured and pushes you in ways you don’t experience in classic mind-mapping.

One starts off with a central idea or theme, and then expands outwards with solution areas or related themes in an iterative manner. The technique encourages you to have a fully fleshed out idea space before considering it complete.

The layout
The center square of each blossom contains a concept or problem that the other squares of the blossom are related to.