Ideating Stage

Stage #3 of spiritual design thinking is entitled "ideating"

To understanding this ideating stage, it is important to know what it is not. In spiritual design thinking, ideating isn't just the creation of new ideas for creation sake. Rather it is to explore ways that we can align with the Holy Spirit's activity in our lives. The focus is the creation of "many" ideas rather than the "right" idea. In the context of spiritual formation, this stage is informed by the previous two stages. The spiritual design process starts from a place of listening (empathy and defining) but moves into practical responses (ideating, prototyping, and ultimately testing and retesting).

This stage was heavily informed by 10x thinking or "moonshot" thinking. Google (now Alphabet) has incorporated this theory in the DNA of the company. One practical implication of this theory would be in how they view innovation. True innovation happens when you try to improve something by 10 times rather than by 10%. This serves as an incredible filter for the type of ideas that are generated and pursued. This type of thinking "take the top off" many of the delimiters and restrictions that we unwittingly put upon ourselves and others.

The hope in the ideating stage of the spiritual design thinking process is to allow individuals to "dream big dreams" for God and to begin to move into a life of faith stepping.