On Ideation and Other Why’s

Methodologies and other factors

This week, one of our Masterclasses was held in Johannesburg, South Africa, deep diving on the Front End Innovation. Taking this opportunity, I'll give a snapshot on common techniques used to generate ideas and other factors that will affect the quality of them. 

Brainstorming Techniques

Any activity involving a group of people thinking of different ways to do something is commonly called ‘brainstorming’, and companies often use it as part of their ideation process. It is common for companies to look out for different ways to come up with great ideas, learning methods for selecting the best ones, and procedures to manage the process.

There are many processes to use when generating ideas, some are structured; some are not-structured. These are some of the ones we practice:

• There is the Kipling method comes from the poem ‘Six Serving Men’, and tackles the session with the questions ‘what, where, when, how, why, who’; 
• The Pictionary method, where ideas are drawn on post-it notes ; 
• The ‘One Person Writes’ method, where one person is in charge of writing everything everyone is saying on a flipchart, or the ‘Everyone Writes’ method, where everyone writes on post-it notes what others say; 
• With the ‘Roll-the-Paper’ method there is an endless white roll of paper is laid on a flat surface and everyone writes on it – if you run out of space, just keep the paper rolling!;
• 'Restating the Problem' method allows new perspectives to be developed by focusing the problem in different angles;
• and the ‘Categories’ method structures the session in categories, driven from the elements of the problem, and everyone writes on post-it notes and relates to the category. 

Other Factors

Apart from the methodology used, there are other factors that will affect the outcome of the session, which can be overlooked sometimes:

Group chemistry is extremely important. People have to be confident enough to say what they have in their minds without feeling fear of expression. Build a team that embraces knowledge and is willing to transform wild ideas into useful ones without killing them from the start. As Jeffrey Phillips said in one of our past Masterclasses: "Ideas belong to the group."

Environment must allow freedom to develop an idea. If you are working on the walls, remove the hanging pictures and make sure the wall paper favour post-it notes and blue tack. Use colours, flipcharts, have long flat surfaces to work on.

Most important, curiosity is a must. There is a reason why most of the structured methodologies involve the question ‘Why’. ‘Why’ is a question that exercises the brain, forcing the mind to step aside from the comfort zone and question current perceptions. It even forces people to ask new questions. ‘Why’ feeds curiosity, and makes connections where there’s nothing to connect. The curiosity of the ‘why’ is what enables out-of-the-box thinking; it allows leaping through the tangent and seeing the problem with different eyes, leading the session to bigger results.