The 4-Point Brain Prompt System to Produce Innovative Ideas

Can the requirements of artificial intelligence teach us how to build our own creative intelligence? And what does homemade ice cream have to do with all this?

Content about AI and how AIs work will never age well, but let’s for a moment remember a time when learning how to prompt an AI effectively was important. (I assume you’re reading this in 2053 when AIs are mind readers and the merest twitch of your right eyebrow produces a 25-page on-brand mission statement.)

As I write this in 2026, general prompting results in bland, vague, and often unusable results. The more specific and descriptive the prompt, the more tailored and usable the result.

During the early days of AI prompting, the instructions were to give the AI a persona (“you are a marketing expert”), provide context (“I have a new set of services I want to provide to women business leaders”), set parameters (“do not use industry jargon”), and define the output (“I want a 500-word newsletter announcing these services”).

But this is not a blog about AI. This is a blog about your brain and the brains of your workplace team. The question therefore is: could you create a prompt that would result in genuine intelligences (as opposed to artificial intelligences) creating innovative output?

The Creative Persona

Let’s start with how you and your team see yourselves. In my experience, people often don’t like to think of themselves as “creative” or “innovative” because it comes with expectations and ramifications.

If you’re “creative,” doesn’t that mean you have to be a bit arty; someone who pops poetry on napkins or doodles poodles on noodle wrappers?

If you’re “innovative,” doesn’t that mean you need to always be on the cutting edge, always thinking of the thing no one else has thought of yet?

It all comes with pressure! And not only does life come with enough pressure already, but for some people pressure actually inhibits the creative process.

Because the “creative” and “innovative” personas come with high expectations, we tie our identity to other, more down-to-earth personas. We’re “productive,” we’re “reliable,” we’re “on time and on budget,” we’re “efficient,” we’re “high output.”

Those all sound like great things to be. And they all definitely have their place. But they’re all at the other end of the spectrum from the creative and innovative ideas that will set you apart from your competition. And a good idea might make you more “efficient” and “productive” in the long run; it just takes a different mindset in the short run.

So what if your persona (even just for one meeting) is “curious,” “open,” “interested in a variety of options,” “explorative,” and/or “brave”? There are so many possibilities for a persona that makes “what if?” an integral part of each and every conversation.

Choose a persona that changes the dynamic of you and/or the room. Something that shifts success from results to ideas.

It all starts with who you tell yourself (and your team) you are.

Context

Ideas need input. Without input, your brain can’t make the connections that spark ideas.

That means you need to provide yourself and your team information before innovation. Understanding the fundamentals of the situation, the challenges involved, what others in the space have already tried and accomplished, and the resources available all builds context.

So before you expect ideas to flow, make sure the context of the situation has been clearly laid out. This doesn’t mean every member of the team has to understand everything down to the molecular level (unless you’re all molecular biologists, in which case, you probably do). But it does mean that understanding the situation well is a key component in producing innovative thinking.

Parameters

Here we come to the subject of ice cream (because ice cream applies to just about every subject).

When you make ice cream at home with an ice cream maker, you do the following.

• You use the machine designed (and labelled!) for the job. (For the purpose of this post, that’s the persona.)
• You create a mixture of ice-creamy ingredients. (Context being the ingredients for ideas.)
• You pour the ingredients into the frozen bowl that attaches to the machine. (That bowl is the parameter.)

The ingredients will stay within that bowl as the paddle churns the gradually freezing ingredients into the output (ice cream, all going to plan). The bowl is the boundary or limit that holds the process together.

When it comes to creating ideas, complete freedom to come up with absolutely anything is not always the best course. Parameters can be your friend. A budget limitation can give the brain somewhere to start. A manpower limitation make help keep ideas to simple, manageable tasks.

The caveat to this is when brainstorming. Providing opportunities for any and all ideas to come forth in a safe and curious environment allows idea chains to grow. So beware of parameters that interfere with the divergent thinking process. If someone has a random piece to add to the conversation, give it room to exist and grow.

Use parameters like the ice cream maker bowl, to contain the ingredients and provide them a surface to work within. Often those reasonable and helpful limitations are what turn basic information into actionable innovations.

Defining the Output

The “eureka moment” concept makes us believe that ideas just happen. That one minute we’re doing something (like having a bath) and the next moment we’ve got a fantastic random idea that we had no way of expecting.

As someone who has discovered great ideas in the shower, I can attest that this does happen. But here we’re talking about how to prompt innovation and ideas. To do that, we can’t all jump in a hot tub together and wait until either someone has an idea or our toes all prune over.

To prompt creative thought, we want to define the possible output. Are we trying to fix something? Are we trying to improve something that’s already working? Are we seeking to discover something completely new? Are we looking for a way around a challenge?

By understanding the direction we would like to go in and the purpose of this whole endeavour, we make sure that we’ve got the right persona, we’ve provided the right context, and the parameters are relevant. Knowing we want to make ice cream affects all the steps that precede the ice cream actually occurring.

Again, there is an important caveat. Don’t let the output, or the parameter, or any of these elements stop you from seeing a creative possibility or a hint of an innovation that falls outside your expected output and interferes with your parameters. Remember, curiosity and bravery are the name of the game. Once you have your prompt set up, follow the possibilities wherever they lead. The prompt starts the process. You get to decide where it goes and what it accommodates.

Cliché tells us that the best ideas are the ones you don’t see coming. Practice tells us that providing the right brain prompt can set us up for success and open up innovative thought in a replicable and rewarding way.

So try prompting your brain and see what you get. But relax into the process. Pressure can be detrimental to the results. Have confidence that with the right persona, you can become a person who has innovative ideas again, and again, and again.

For tips on how to personalise your brain prompts and build confidence in the idea-generation process, sign up for my fortnightly newsletter The Bright Idea Bulletin for simple, actionable guidance.