Innovation and unique ideas seem to be on the top of mind for product and service people these days. This article is an interesting summary with a few links for further reading at the bottom.
Design for Interaction: Ideation and Design Principles
“The purpose of brainstorming is not to find the one perfect design for your project. That will come later. Instead, the reason to ideate is to generate many concepts as rapidly as possible. At this point in the design process, quantity — not quality — is what matters the most. You want a wide variety of concepts that approach the project from a wide variety of angles. Even ideas that seem outlandish and completely unfeasible are welcome”