Beyond Brainstorming

A Social Network for Innovators

One of the core principles behind MetaMemes and ThinkCube is to bring people and ideas together. I have been meaning to start a social network around ThinkCube for over a year. We finally have it up and running, check it out:
http://thinkcube.ning.com/

We developed this on Ning (www.ning.com), which is a great platform for creating social networks. It is very easy to get up and running quickly. Brendan O’Keefe was the graphic designer behind making the network look professional. I wanted to formally thank him for such a nice job and that he managed to fit it in around getting married – congratulations Brendan and thanks for the help! He is a great designer and as he describes himself as a ‘creative generalist’. Check out his website at:
http://www.planetbok.com/

Here are some of the goals behind the ThinkCube social network:
• Bring people that are interested in innovation together.
• Facilitate the fans of ThinkCube to share their ideas, tips and examples with others.
• Provide a venue for training, videos, discussions about innovation and ThinkCube.
• Get feedback and suggestions for future expansions.
• Get news about up coming events, competitions and seminars etc.

Building a community around ThinkCube has always been my goal. The best ideas come at the intersections of domains and sometime the best way to find these intersections is connect with people from all walks of life.

People, Ideas… you are formally introduced.

Come join us and start sharing your ideas.

Innovation in Surprising Places

Name 3 innovative organizations. Google, IDEO, or Apple might come to mind, but I can almost guarantee you wouldn’t say the United States Navy. Last month, Kes and I spent a morning with the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Strategic Studies Group (SSG) talking about innovative processes and ThinkCubation. We were surprised to discover that the Navy might just have a leg up on corporate America when it comes to innovation.

The SSG is comprised of a diverse group of Navy, Marine, and Coast Guard officers who are hand-picked by the Chief of Naval Operations. During their 1-2 year rotation in the program, the officers are asked to trade in their uniforms and rank for business attire and an equalizing title of Fellow. They bring together unique skill sets from all levels of their respective organizations in an environment conducive to collaboration and creativity.

The mere existence of this think tank within the Navy is impressive, but their program goes far beyond setting the stage.

Innovation Training.
The Fellows begin the program with 6 weeks of intensive training on innovation, teamwork, and conceptual thinking. Experts are brought in from military, business, and academia. They also visit places like Pixar Animation Studios where creativity abounds. This immersion in all things creative and innovative is just what these officers need to switch gears and succeed at the task at hand.

Structured but Flexible Process.
After training is complete, the SSG embarks on the Conceptualization Phase of the Process for Naval Warfare Innovation (hit cancel at login prompt). At the end of each year, the SSG presents the CNO with a written report of their work.

Implementation.
After review and approval by the CNO, the SSG’s work is handed off to the Navy Warfare Development Command (NWDC), who in turn, prototypes and demonstrates the concepts for eventual use in the Naval Fleet. The SSG and NWDC are co-located at the Naval War College in Newport, RI which enables close collaboration between the groups at all stages of the innovation process.

Kes and I feel privileged to have contributed to this program. We had the opportunity to watch a presentation from last year’s group, and while we’re not at liberty to share the details, we can assure you their model produces results. Most companies would say it’s easy when you’re not reporting to shareholders and you can remove ROI from the equation. I say you don’t have to replicate their model exactly. Try it on a smaller scale and you might just be surprised at what your organization is capable of.

Results of Brainstorming Competition

2 weeks ago I posted a brainstorm challenge on a new online brainstorming website www.brainreactions.com 

I posted the following challenge to generate new ideas for promoting ThinkCube:

Innovation Competition: How can you promote / market a new innovative product: Generate ideas to promote and market a new innovation product, ThinkCube. More information - www.metamemes.com - Ideas are specific and actionable - Ideas require minimal budget End Date: 10/19/2007 Prize: Free ThinkCube ($100 value).

We got 30 new ideas posted in response the challenge. I had a hard time narrowing down the short list to the following (note these are not in order):

1. Become a facilitator for live brainstorms on here - or in a chat room or a facility on your own site - and, if possible, use the ThinkCube as a guide to aid you in prompting participants. Have a different challenge each week. Log all the best ideas on your website. – UKJohn

2. Use ThinkCube to create ideas for bloggers and compile these ideas on a blog post: something like "500 great ideas to improve your blog". Bloggers will link to the article and the article would state that ideas were generated with ThinkCube. You could also do "500 ideas to improve your website" etc. – UKJohn

3. As a tv concept: the Apprentice tv show usually favours people and situations that will produce conflict. Why not create a more positive Apprentice type show that uses ThinkCube to approach challenges and thus acts as a tutorial to viewers? "Apprentice with brains instead of conflict". – UKJohn

4. Give Think Cube's to professor's in the business dept. at a major university. Encourage professor's to speak about the product and potentially utilize the product as part of a class project. – Jmunchies

5. Host an event where either student run businesses or student groups can participate for free. Each group will have to use the Think Cube to solve a major issue their business/group faces frequently. A cash contribution could then be made to the group that solves their issue most effectively through the use of the Think Cube. – Jmunchies

6. Donate ThinkCube to non-profit organizations to help them develop innovative ideas. – glitter

7. Generate teams from local universities or businesses to "play" against or with each other. – glitter

8. Put a video of people playing the game and coming up with great ideas on YouTube.com – anandvc

All of these are great ideas and some of these ideas we had already come up with on our own, but some of these were new and inspiring. Since I initially created the shortlist, I allowed Sue to choose the final winner. She decided that there were 2 ideas she really liked:

1. Donate ThinkCube to non-profit organizations to help them develop innovative ideas. – glitter

2. Become a facilitator for live brainstorms on here - or in a chat room or a facility on your own site - and, if possible, use the ThinkCube as a guide to aid you in prompting participants. Have a different challenge each week. Log all the best ideas on your website. – UKJohn

These ideas were chosen because they are both ideas we can put into practice very easily and we feel would be very effective.

Thank you to everyone that entered. We will be contacting both ‘glitter’ and ‘UKJohn’ about sending them their free ThinkCubes.

I will be putting into action UKJohn’s live brainstorming proposal in the next couple of weeks. I will post a brainstorm challenge this week on selecting a ‘problem’ for the live brainstorm.

Thanks and Happy ThinkCubating,

Playful Innovation, Part 2

Building on my last post, let’s explore some more complex examples of combining existing ideas to form new ideas. Again we will use example cards from the ThinkCube Idea Library. These examples use a mixture of words (red), ideas (blue), and action verbs (green). They are ordered by level of difficulty, with the most challenging type of combination, idea + idea, appearing last.

We tried to think of unique "new" ideas for our examples, but I'll give the caveat that we are not claiming these ideas to be original to us. I also don't claim these to be the best combinations for these particular cards/ideas/words. That's one of the great things about combinatory play. No 2 people will see exactly the same connection between 2 existing ideas. Our life experiences and backgrounds play a large role in how we form new ideas.

You can try an exercise like this on your own using a mix of 6 or so words and ideas. Pick a few words that relate to your industry or a topic you are currently interested in. Then add in a few action verbs like exaggerate, stretch, remove, etc. and then maybe a few random, totally unrelated words. Once you give it a go on your own, try the same exercise with a friend. It's usually worth a few good laughs and you might even come up with a great idea while you're at it!

   

Playful Innovation, Part 1

As Kes said in a previous post, combinatory play is one of the most important mental skills to develop for creativity and innovation. On a basic level, combinatory play involves combining 2 or more concepts together to form new connections and ideas. Albert Einstein once said, “Combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought.” But long before Einstein discussed it, Gutenberg used combinatory play in practice, combining the ideas of a wine press, coin punch, and die stamps to invent the printing press.

Let’s look at how to actively use combinatory play to generate new, useful ideas. Starting with a simple example, we’ll combine 2 words. The words I’ve selected for this example are “Maze” and “Story”, which happen to appear in our ThinkCube Idea Library.

First, you always want to break down the concept (or word in this case) into its properties, related terms, and other meanings. This can be done in your head or on paper. You might break down one of our example words, Story, as we’ve done with a mind map:

Once you’ve broken down both words in this fashion, there are a number of methods for combining. Below is a sampling of methods, ordered from simplest to most complex. The best ideas often come from the complex techniques, but don’t dismiss a simple method that could lead to a breakthrough idea! In addition to describing each method, I’ve provided examples using our sample cards, Maze and Story.

1. Conceptual Mapping – combining compatible properties of 2 concepts.
        Example: A story that includes traversing a maze.
        Example: A story of a famous maze.

2. Property Mapping – Taking a single property from one concept and combining it with another concept; this includes incompatible properties.
        Example: Twisty plot of a story.
        Example: The story of a building that is a maze.

3. Relationship Mapping – Combining 2 concepts through a relationship or related term.
        Example: Using Adventure as the relationship – An adventure story where a maze has to be solved by the hero.

4. Structural Mapping - Mapping structural elements or patterns from one concept to another.
        Example: The story is a complex maze of interacting story elements i.e. text based adventure game
        Example: The Maze’s structure is created in the white-space of the story in a book

In Part 2 on combinatory play, we'll practice these basic skills on a collection of more complex ideas.

Online Brainstorming & Innovation Competition

I have been toying with the idea of creating a brainstorming forum for a while. I haven’t been impressed with the interface for most forums. A brainstorming forum should be structured a little differently to a standard forum:

-         ability to define brainstorming goals, instead of topics

-         ability to add new ideas quickly and easily to facilitate how people generate ideas

-         ability to vote on ideas and brainstormers

-         ability to have private brainstorming/chat ‘rooms’

-          real time and asynchronous brainstorming should be allowed

-         interactive and visual (see great example http://humanbraincloud.com/)

-         ability to summarize goals and top ideas – using mind maps

Well I just stumbled across this new Brainstorming forum that meets many of my original specifications. I am very impressed with forum and the thought that has gone into designing it.

http://www.brainreactions.net/

I just created a new ‘brainstorm’ on the forum to see how it would work to generate ideas for real business problems. I created a competition on the forum to generate ideas for promotion and marketing ideas for ThinkCube:

http://www.brainreactions.net/brainstorms/1820

The winner will receive a FREE ThinkCube. I will announce the winner on this blog on Monday 10/22/2007.

 

Innovations in Customer Experience

Have you ever approached a grocery meat counter on a Saturday afternoon? If the store doesn’t have numbers (like some deli counters) you have to quickly scan the crowd to find your place in the proverbial line. As it nears what you think is your turn, the butcher calls, “Who’s next?” You assertively raise your hand so as not to be passed over. And just when you think your long, annoying wait is over… the gal next to you shouts, “I was here before you!” It’s not the most comfortable situation even for someone well equipped at handling confrontation. You would think in this day and age, with all the technology that exists, someone would stop the meat counter madness.

The reality is that most people think new products are the only way to innovate. But innovation in customer experience is a growing trend. Whether your customer interacts with you in a brick and mortar store, on a website, or in a doctor’s office, the bottom line will benefit if you make that experience worth remarking about.

Imagine a grocery store optimized for the shopper’s experience, rather than overrun with strategically placed end caps and center aisle displays aimed to force an impulse buy. Ok, the store owner might loose a few dollars in impulse buys. But I think that store might gain an even larger number of dedicated shoppers who would travel for miles and pay a premium for a more relaxing and enjoyable Saturday afternoon shopping trip.

When Kes and I used to live in northern VA, we shopped at a Wegman’s. We loved this store and told all of our friends and family about it. The aisles were wide enough that you could actually maneuver your cart without fear of running someone’s toes over. Just inside the main entrance was a large café with tasty food made right there with products you could buy inside the store. This was a nice feature because instead of overbuying out of starvation, you could have a quick meal in the loft-style dining area before starting your shop. What paid for lunch there probably equaled the amount by which we would have over bought, but it was fun.

Wegman's also had a supervised children’s play area. After a child was checked-in, tagged and kissed bye-bye, the parent received a buzzer in case he/she was needed. Parents loved it because they could focus on the shopping. Kids loved it because they could play instead of being strapped into an uncomfortable shopping cart. Childless shoppers benefited from the absence of crying.

Get to know your customers and ask how you can improve their experience. It might just lead to a profitable innovation.

   

Forget Book Clubs, Start a Brainstorming Club

Seth Godin had a great post a couple of weeks ago about his first year at the Stanford MBA program.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/09/random-acts-of-.html

He talked about a fellow student called Chip Conley that picked 4 other students to join a weekly brainstorming session where they brainstormed ideas for new entrepreneurial ventures. In 1 year they generated over 500 great ideas and learned a lot about business. Seth explains that he probably learned more in those brainstorming session than he did in the rest of his MBA program! Chip went on to run one of the largest independent hotel chains in California and Seth went on to start a number of companies and become a marketing guru.

Over my career I have formed many informal groups of friends where we brainstormed ideas for new businesses, games and other ideas. ThinkCube grew out of my desire to develop a tool that would not only help people come up with ideas, but also to spark a trend in brainstorming clubs. Forget book clubs; I know there are many people like me that would love to join a group to brainstorm ideas. I hear of these groups every now and again but I really want this to be as big as book clubs one day!

I realize most people don’t really know how to organize a brainstorming club and I was hoping having a tool like ThinkCube that provides a process, a library of ideas and creative techniques would allow these people to start their own groups. ThinkCube is a brainstorming club in a box (or cube), just add friends – laughter, ideas and companies will follow.

Do you belong to a brainstorming club? If not, go on, start a brainstorming (ThinkCubation) Club today!! Whether it’s at work or with a group of friends, brainstorming clubs can help generate lots of ideas. Perhaps you could come up with a great idea that could turn into a company or product; or maybe just allow you and your friends to have some brain stimulating fun.

If you already belong to a brainstorming club, write to me and tell me about it. I really believe that ‘Brainstorming Clubs’ could be as big as book clubs one day. Help me spread the word, let’s start an idea revolution!

InnovationTools Gives ThinkCube 5-Stars

Chuck Frey’s website, InnovationTools, is the go-to place for corporate innovation resources. The site’s audience spans the globe and consists of innovators and creative types at all levels of business.

We are, of course, thrilled that ThinkCube received 5 out of 5 stars in its recent review! InnovationTools recommends ThinkCube and summarizes it as, “a terrific addition to any knowledge worker's creativity arsenal."

The entire article can be found on the InnovationTools website.

Random Word Competition

Katie Konrath has some great posts on the creative technique of using ‘random words’. Her first post is a competition on using her ‘Random Word’ generator to come up with ‘fresh ways to improve cars’:

http://www.getfreshminds.com/2007/07/your-challenge-.html

The random word I got was ‘Sail’, here was my submission:

SAIL + CAR

Sails allow you to harness the power of the wind. There is a lot of research into using renewable energy to power cars and reduce our dependency on gas. Designing cars with sails is an interesting way of using another renewable energy, the wind.

There are also solar sails; this was an idea I read about from Eric Drexler (Nanotechnology inventor) where he worked on using solar sails for powering spacecrafts. This could create ‘sails’ for cars with a dual power source, both capturing wind and/or sun. Now rainy days is always going to be the challenge!

Taking a slightly different angle and using ‘sail’ as a verb, you get the picture of smooth sailing. Cars could be put into a ‘sail mode’ where they use less fuel and move at a constant speed. This makes me think of the research into creating lanes where cars go into auto-pilot and are guided by a rail. This uses far less fuel and stops a lot of traffic congestion. Less stressful and saves the environment.

Proposed Idea

The idea I propose is the combination wind and solar sail for cars that combined with some of the current fuel cell technology could create some pretty eco-friendly cars. Free sail lanes, where cars equipped with this technology could use these special lanes free of charge, and everyone else with less eco-friendly cars have to pay a toll. Brings a new meaning to the phrase I sailed through traffic today.

Her second post is on 'Should you be making connections, or breaking them?' as she describes – ‘The Random Word is actually about escaping current connections to search for new ones.’

http://www.getfreshminds.com/2007/07/making-connecti.html

This is a great explanation of how our brains are great at associative thinking (making associations and seeing connections). The challenge is our brains get wired to associate in a certain way; cultural and other factors play into this. We create some very strong associations and as we learn more, we build more of these associations which in general is good, but we also start building associative barriers as we start to neatly ‘chunk up’ the world. This makes our brains much faster at thinking on a day-to-day basis. Children don't have as many barriers as adults and hence seem to be far more fluid at making interesting connections and asking really tough questions.

The challenge comes is when you want to solve some unique problems or come up with new ideas; our brain’s natural tendency to build these barriers and strong associations stop us from breaking out of our A to B thinking. This is where we need to force connections between disparate domains and break down some of these associative barriers. The random word technique is a great technique for forcing connections sometimes across these barriers. If you practice this technique you will become better at breaking down these associations and seeing connections between unrelated ideas, concepts and domains. This technique is a kind of combinatory play that is used by some of our greatest thinkers e.g. Einstein, Poincare. Being able to make connections and associations between disparate domains, fields and concepts allows you to solve problems that initially seem impossible when we see it in the bounded associative world we live in.