How to use the Borrowed ideas template

Start a board from it
Use this template opens a new Freero board with the Borrowed ideas template on it (sign up free first). On a board you already have, open Templates in the toolbar and search for “Borrowed ideas”.
Follow the instruction on the board
“State your problem once at the top. For each row, imagine the industry named solved it, write their moves, then translate one into an idea for you.”
Fill in each part
- How would a good hotel welcome our new customers?
- How would a game teach people to use our product?
- How would a hospital triage our support requests?
- How would a supermarket get people to try something new?
Bring your team and your agents
Invite people to the board or share a link, and work on it together live. The timer is in the top bar, private mode and voting in the board menu, and Claude or ChatGPT can join through Freero’s MCP server.

Work on it with an AI agent

Connect an assistant once and it works on the board with you, with your permissions: by default it reads and proposes, and people decide.

You ask: “Fill in the Borrowed ideas board from these notes.”
What happens It reads the board, then proposes sticky notes for it. Nothing changes until someone on the board accepts them.
You ask: “Group what we wrote into themes and list the actions.”
What happens It proposes clusters with a title each and task cards for the actions, labelled with its name and yours.

Analogy brainstorm
Find who else, in another field or in nature, has already solved a problem like yours, and borrow the principle behind it.
SCAMPER prompts
Seven ways to twist an existing product or process into new ideas: swap, combine, adapt, resize, repurpose, remove, reverse.
Random word stimulus
Break out of the obvious answers by forcing a link between your problem and a word picked at random.
Idea burst
A central challenge with four idea clusters to fill, sort and vote on.
Eight sketches
Fold one problem into eight fast sketches, one minute each, then pick the strongest.
Dot voting
Collect ideas, vote with a fixed number of dots each, and move the winners to a shortlist.