The ideation experience falls under the create category, but it was almost a number game to me more so than anything else.
Creation to me has always been at the heart of time; I have always fallen under the lonesome artist stereotype, creating “when the inspiration strikes me.” This process was almost instinctively the opposite of that–it demands (an unprimed brain at times) to create solutions, focusing on the quantity rather than the quality. This was completely the opposite of any creation process I had taken under before, so it was hard for me to adapt to this line of thinking.
The first part of the ideation experience was a conglomerate of mass brainstorming activity. Using first the HMW statement: “How might we make sustainable initiatives more noticeable and tangible?” then the HMW statement: “How might we grow towards Olay’s changing consumer market and values?” We found that our HMW statements combined into one overarching question: “How might we make sustainable initiatives more noticeable and tangible for Olay’s changing consumer market?” Four minds generated ideas alongside one another, building off each other’s work at times, but most importantly still engaging in independent thinking. I think that was really key at the beginning; to force the group to think individually before coming together. This prevent groupthink or convergent thinking processes, and we were better able to generate a mass number of solutions. Even if the solutions weren’t great, we found that we could build off of each other’s initial thoughts to create something great. This, in my opinion, was the most productive part of the process. Rather than jumping into the problem as a group, we were able to step back and work through the problem individually which led to a wider range of diverse and creative ideas.
As soon as we were done, we had to resist the urge to immediately start discussing the ideas we had generated. The next part, creating unique solutions, even absurd solutions, was the most challenging part of the process. When you go through the school system thinking within parameters that were drawn from your first day of class–parameters that focused on practical and logical solutions–it becomes hard to erase those lines form your mind. I very much struggled with this part; I found myself reaching to create solutions I had seen done elsewhere rather than creating my own solutions. It was almost as if my mind didn’t know how to think outside the box anymore. The box had become so ingrained within my brain that I wasn’t able to distinguish where it started and where it ended; it was just there and set the parameters from which thoughts flowed in and out of my mind.
The next step in our process was to organize the ideas. The most challenging part of this was to find the two parameters that would work for our company to organize our ideas. The initial parameters we used–consumers accept it/love it and fit/stretches the business model–didn’t answer our original HMW statement. Our HMW statement was focused on two things: 1) the changing consumers and 2) noticeability/tangibility of the product. Thus, we decided to redefine our two axes as “new consumers more/less likely to adopt” and “noticeable/tangible and not noticeable/tangible.” In doing so, we were much better able to develop solutions that were specified for our HMW statement. Looking back, I wish we had taken the time to really think about our two axes of organization during our first ideation process. Organizing them by our original axes was really a setback on our group and made our ideas feel jumbled and chaotic. Taking the time to really think through what outcomes we are most looking for in our products really helped us define what our axes were, and thus we were better able to clump our solutions together in categories that would really target our areas of need.
My biggest takeaways from this process are:
- When in doubt, create, create, create!
- My group didn’t feel like we needed to do a second ideation process, but by doing so, we were able to generate ideas we had not thought of during our first process and later combine our ideas from our first and second process to create an even better solution.
- Be wary of the fallacies of group work
- I.e. groupthink, convergent thinking – take time to think about how these psychological processes may be affecting your team
- The ideation process is never done
- Even when you think you’ve found a solution, there are still hundreds of more out there. Although it may not be practical to generate hundreds of solutions, at least take the time to generate as many as possible before selecting one
- Build off each other’s work
- Hearing other member’s ideas inspired so many other ideas. Even if the idea wasn’t well thought out, chances were that another group member could build off the initial thought to create something that was well thought out
- Get silly and have fun!
- The mood that you work in affects the ideas that flow out. Make the process fun with music, dances, getting silly; sometimes it is these places where the best ideas comes from