In knowledge work, fire-starting techniques are the spark that ignites the imagination, a call to adventure. They initiate a quest or search. In the wilderness, the way you start a fire is very important, and in gamestorming the same is true. Start a fire in the wrong way or in the wrong place, and you may soon find that things are out of control—you can have a raging forest fire on your hands. By the way you initiate an inquiry you can inspire the kinds of thought, reflection, emotion, and sensation that are most likely to get you the result that you want.
The most common and powerful fire-starter is the question. A good question is like an arrow you can aim at any challenge. The way you frame a question will lay out a vector, a line of inquiry that points in a certain direction. There are many kinds of questioning techniques and they bear careful study and practice. You can use them to change people's perspectives on a problem, drill down to expose root causes, elevate a conversation to a higher plane, and many other things.
Another common fire-starter is called fill-in-the-blank, in which you craft a short phrase or sentence and ask people to fill in the blank like they would on a test. For example, if you want to explore customer needs, consider how customer needs are typically expressed. A fill-in-the-blank to explore customer needs could be written as "I want ________." (Fill in the blank.)