🤔 Feeling Stuck? Unblock Any Bottleneck With These 5 Frameworks

When standups and sprints aren't clicking, these tools can spark the next breakthrough.

👋 Hey, Chris here! Welcome to BrainDumps—a weekly series from The Founders Corner. Every Thursday, I share unfiltered insights and stories from decades of first-hand experience. It’s a Substack exclusive, inspired by topics in my upcoming book, The Big Book of BrainDumps. Let’s get into it! 👇

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📖 Table of Contents

• 🧬 Great Products Don’t Just Emerge—They’re Designed to Evolve

• 🎨 1. Design Thinking: Empathy → Insight → Action

• 🌸 2. The Lotus Blossom Technique: Expand the Edges

• 🎩 3. Six Thinking Hats: A Team Favourite

• ❓ 4. The Five Whys: Find the Root, Not the Symptoms

• 🔁 5. SCAMPER: The Framework for Feature Reinvention

• 🧪 How to Use These Frameworks in Your Business

• 📖 A Story From the Trenches: When We Almost Missed the Big Idea

• 💬 Final Thought: Innovation Is a Muscle—Not a Mood

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🧬 Great Products Don’t Just Emerge—They’re Designed to Evolve

Over the years, I’ve sat across the table from dozens of brilliant software founders who’ve built fast, grown strong—and then stalled.

The cause? Not lack of capital. Not lack of talent. But a creativity ceiling.

They’d stopped thinking differently.

They were too close to the product, too deep in the backlog, too overwhelmed with operations to imagine new futures.

And here’s the hard truth: in B2B SaaS, execution is critical—but creativity is what separates you from the crowd.

That’s why in this article, I want to walk you through a set of practical frameworks that we’ve used, recommended, and deployed inside countless B2B product teams.

These aren’t theory. They’re tools.

And they’re built to do one thing: help your team break through the noise and unlock product innovation.

Let’s start with the one I always go back to.

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Innovation and Creativity: Top 5 Frameworks for B2B Leaders

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🎨 1. Design Thinking: Empathy → Insight → Action

“Design Thinking” is the gold standard of product creativity for a reason. It starts where all great software should: with the customer’s world.

The five-step framework is simple:

1. Empathise: Immerse yourself in the user’s environment

2. Define: Articulate the core pain points

3. Ideate: Generate multiple potential solutions

4. Prototype: Build quick, low-fidelity tests

5. Test: Get real feedback and refine

I still remember a fintech founder I worked with who was deeply convinced they needed a new reporting module. The data said otherwise. But it wasn’t until they spent 3 days shadowing customers that they discovered the real pain: users didn’t need new dashboards—they needed clearer language and fewer inputs.

Lesson: Don’t solve what you think is the problem. Solve what actually is. And use empathy to get there.

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🌸 2. The Lotus Blossom Technique: Expand the Edges

This one’s less known, but incredibly powerful—especially for B2B teams dealing with feature sprawl or market expansion.

You start by putting a central idea or challenge in the middle of a visual “blossom.” Then you add related themes around it. And then ideas around those.

It’s idea generation by expansion, not depth.

We once ran this in a workshop with a founder targeting procurement teams. One outer ring idea? “Carbon offset tracking.” Two quarters later, it became a differentiating feature.

Lesson: Your biggest unlocks are often two layers beyond your current thinking. This technique gets you there.

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🎩 3. Six Thinking Hats: A Team Favourite

I love this one. Not just because it works—but because it’s a blast to run.

Edward de Bono’s “Six Thinking Hats” assigns each team member a lens:

• 🎩 White: Data, facts

• ❤️ Red: Emotions, gut reactions

• ⚠️ Black: Risks and caution

• 🌞 Yellow: Positives and benefits

• 🌱 Green: Creativity and alternatives

• 🔵 Blue: Process and control

In product meetings, people usually default to one or two perspectives. This forces the group to consider them all.

I ran this at a portfolio offsite once. The CPO wore the black hat and ripped their roadmap apart. The CEO, in yellow, reframed every fear as an opportunity. The dev team, in green, unlocked two new prototypes that hadn’t even been considered.

Lesson: Innovation doesn’t just need new ideas. It needs new perspectives.

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❓ 4. The Five Whys: Find the Root, Not the Symptoms

This one’s so simple, it’s almost laughable.

But I’ve used it to fix more problems than any analytics dashboard ever has.

You start with a problem. Then ask “why?” five times to drill down.

Problem: Users aren’t converting.

1. Why? They don’t reach the aha moment.

2. Why? They get stuck in onboarding.

3. Why? The copy is unclear.

4. Why? It uses internal language.

5. Why? Marketing wrote it without user input.

There’s your answer.

A founder I worked with reduced churn by 15% using nothing but “The Five Whys” to debug user drop-off.

Lesson: Every metric has a story. “The Five Whys” gets you to the punchline.

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🔁 5. SCAMPER: The Framework for Feature Reinvention

This one’s perfect for product teams that feel stuck or uninspired.

“SCAMPER” stands for:

• Substitute

• Combine

• Adapt

• Modify

• Put to another use

• Eliminate

• Reverse

Each action prompts fresh thinking. For example:

• Substitute: What if we replaced customer onboarding calls with Loom videos

• Combine: Can we merge usage and billing dashboards into one view?

• Reverse: What if our support team learned from churned users first?

We used “SCAMPER” to help a startup pivot a failing feature into a lead gen tool—just by changing how it was packaged and where it lived in the UI.

Lesson: You don’t always need new ideas. Sometimes you just need to see old ones differently.

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🧪 How to Use These Frameworks in Your Business

These frameworks are only useful if you apply them regularly. Here’s how we’ve seen founders make them stick:

1. Use one framework per sprint

Every sprint planning session, pick a lens to view backlog items through. It keeps teams curious and prevents tunnel vision.

2. Run a monthly “Creativity Hour”

Get cross-functional. Invite devs, marketers, support. Pick one customer problem. Use one tool (e.g. “Lotus Blossom”). Watch the magic happen.

3. Build a Framework Library

Print them. Share Notion pages. Include example use cases. Make creative thinking part of your operating system—not a one-off.

4. Celebrate “wild” ideas

The best innovations often sound ridiculous at first. Make space for them. We had one founder build a prototype feature from a joke that came out of a “Six Hats” session. It became their #1 retention tool.

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📖 A Story From the Trenches: When We Almost Missed the Big Idea

Let me tell you a story from my own operating days.

We were building a finance automation tool. Solid growth, loyal users, and a good roadmap. But churn plateaued. Growth slowed. Our product was “fine”—but no longer exciting.

We ran a “SCAMPER” session out of desperation.

One dev suggested we “reverse” the core workflow—let customers set goals before seeing reports. It sounded backward. But we mocked it up. Tested it with ten users.

Seven said:

“This changes everything.”

Three months later, it was our most loved feature. NPS jumped. Activation soared.

Lesson: Creativity is not a luxury—it’s an unlock. But you have to make space for it.

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💬 Final Thought: Innovation Is a Muscle—Not a Mood

Most people think creativity is a spark. A eureka moment.

But in my experience, the best product innovation comes from structure, repetition, and deliberate practice.

These frameworks aren’t gimmicks. They’re reps.

And reps build muscle. Creative muscle.

So here’s what I want you to do:

• Pick one framework.

• Apply it this week.

• Then another next sprint.

• And another next quarter.

Make creativity a system, not a side project.

Because in SaaS, the best products aren’t just fast or feature-rich.

They’re surprising. Elegant. Insightful.

They make users say:

“Wow, I didn’t even know I needed this.”

That’s the kind of product that wins.

—Chris Tottman

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