On reframing
The brief is the first thing to break
Most teams optimize the question they were handed instead of questioning it. The fastest route to a genuinely new idea is to take the brief apart and ask what it quietly assumes, then decide whether those assumptions still hold.
On constraints
Constraints aren't the enemy. They're the trigger.
A blank page invites a safe answer. A real edge, a tight timeline, a fixed price, a channel you can't use, forces a sharper one. We look for the constraint worth wrestling with, because that's usually where the interesting idea is hiding.
On wedges
Look for the wedge, not the platform
Grand visions stall because they ask for everything at once. A wedge is the small, almost unfair point of entry that earns the right to the bigger move. Find the thing you can change first that makes the rest easier.
On collisions
Borrow a lens from somewhere unrelated
New thinking rarely arrives in a straight line. It shows up when a familiar problem meets a lens it has never been held up to, a different industry, a different customer, a different era. The collision is the method, not the accident.
On experiments
An idea you can't test is just an opinion
The point of a good idea isn't the slide, it's the bet you can act on. Before we fall in love with one, we ask what would have to be true and find the cheapest, fastest way to learn whether it is.
On conviction
Conviction is a decision, not a feeling
Waiting to feel certain is how good ideas die quietly. Conviction is choosing to back a bet that's small enough to survive being wrong and bold enough to matter, and then actually shipping it.