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Brainstorming… Ideation…Creative Huddle…
Call it what you will. Unfortunately, it’s gotten a bad rap.
Similar to some of the unfortunate evolutions that Agile and Lean project management have experienced, Creative Ideation is often bastardized to the point of failure. This often happens when you have something new and notable.
When an Ideation is designed and facilitated correctly… it is a powerful weapon.
A correctly executed Ideation is specifically designed to inspire and extract the best ideas out of participants in a way that is (1) supported by consumer and business needs, and (2) captured in a trackable and measurable way.
If these two criteria are met in the set-up of the Ideation, then all other restrictions can be forgotten.
Cue the freak out.
It may scare some people—okay, a lot of people—to let go of reality’s restrictions and to truly allow themselves to think, “What if…?”
What if my grill had a mirror under the lid?
What if microwaves had remote controls?
What if refrigerators had bookshelves?
What if… telephones had computers in them?
Bingo.
It’s okay to have bad ideas. And there are three reasons why:
1. By allowing yourself to have bad ideas, you allow yourself to think of things that have never been thought of before.
2. Bad ideas can be the spark for BRILLIANT ideas. If you hold back from sharing something because you think it’s dumb, you may have just silenced the exact thing that would have inspired something revolutionary in someone else on the team.
3. Lastly, divergent thinking (aka Ideations) should not be scary because when used correctly, it is sandwiched by convergent thinking. The reality is…restrictions exist. But it is a hell of a lot easier to scale down a big idea than it is to scale up a small one.
The next time someone schedules a “creative huddle”, stop relying on slinkys to get to the big ideas. Read more about how to conduct a productive ideation session first. And if you still have questions, give me a shout.