Innovation Proposals and Activities
Introduction to Module 5
In this module we will look at why traditional ideation tools are not good at generating iVision ideas; why you want to build ideas and innovation proposals rather than capture ideas; tools for building ideas and relevant innovation proposals; and how to test and tweak those tools.
Pre-questions (questions to think about before moving forward):
- Close your eyes, think about the term "capture ideas" and try to visualise it. What do you see?
- Try to remember back to your childhood. Imagine your parents have bought a new washing machine and have given you and your friends the box to play with. How would have decided what to do with it?
Design Idea Building Actions that Feed the Innovation Process
You know of what kind of ideas generate the most value − iVision pushers and supporters − and you have a documented innovation process that focuses on implementation. The next step is to design idea building actions that output ideas in the right format for the relevant innovation process − let's call that format an innovation proposal. If a business case is necessary, then your innovation proposal should be a business case. If an innovation process requires a project proposal, then your innovation proposal should be a well formatted project proposal. When you do this, your proposals feed into established processes for implementing ideas and this makes it much, much easier to actually implement ideas.
Building Ideas into Innovation Proposals
You may have noticed that I use the term "building ideas" rather than the usual term "capturing ideas" which is often used in business innovation where ideas are, indeed, captured. A captured idea implies that it is imprisoned and unlikely to grow or thrive. Clearly, that is not what you want. Instead you want to build ideas into innovation proposals. This requires a different approach to innovation tools, techniques and methods than you are probably used to.
Why Traditional Ideation Tools are Not Good for iVision Ideas
Most innovation initiatives have some kind of suggestion or idea management software which is used for capturing ideas from across the enterprise. Innovation initiatives also tend to host brainstorms and similar activities designed to generate lots of ideas. If you have been an innovation manager for any length of time, you will have found that these methods tend to be good for collecting large numbers of small, incremental improvement ideas (ie, useful, non-iVision ideas), too few of which are implemented. That's because these methods are designed for capturing simple ideas. An idea shouted out in a brainstorm, scribbled onto a Post-It note or submitted into a small form on a web based application is by nature, a simple, undetailed one. IVision ideas, however, need to be further developed into innovation proposals.
Tools and Techniques that Can Work for IVision Ideas
This does not mean that innovation software is useless. In the next lesson, we will look at how you can set up an almost automatic ideation system with innovation software. However, most innovation software is not designed to build iVision ideas that feed into your innovation processes. So, let us look at methods that can work for your initiative.
Innovation Proposal competitions
Design (in collaboration with the relevant decision maker) competitions in which teams or individuals prepare and submit innovation proposals, which meet the needs of the relevant innovation process. For example, at least one of your innovation processes probably involves the preparation of a business case or something similar. If so, run a business case competition in which teams are invited to develop bold ideas into business cases (or whatever format is suitable to the relevant innovation process). The teams who submitted the winning entry or entries get approval and budget to develop their proposal.
The advantage to this approach is that ideas are developed into proposals that are fed directly into the innovation process and so are far more likely to be implemented than are simple ideas that come out of a typical brainstorm. Moreover, this activity disciplines people into thinking about the process of implementing ideas, which helps them build better ideas in the future.
The disadvantage is that competitions usually mean a few submissions are accepted and a number are rejected. This can be demotivating for the submitters of the rejected ideas.
Why the "Best" Ideas Are Not Wanted
Incidentally, if you want to encourage innovative thinking, then do not tell participants that the "best" ideas will win. Instead, tell them that the "most innovative", "most creative" or "most outrageous" ideas will win. "Best" implies comparison to the status quo. It tells people to come up with the usual kind of ideas, but make them a bit better. It does not encourage divergent thinking. It does not encourage outrageous thinking. It encourages status quo thinking. On the other hand, if the "most creative" or "most outrageous" submissions will win, you are encouraging people to diverge from the status quo and think creatively.
Ongoing innovation proposal submission
An alternative to a competition is to set up a system in which teams or individuals can submit innovation proposals at any time, rather than limiting submission to a competition. Depending on the flow of submissions, you can review with the relevant manager each proposal as it comes in or you can have regular meetings to review proposals. In either case, I suggest you invite the teams in to present their cases and answer questions.
Detailed rejections
Keeping in mind the amount of effort teams will put into innovation proposals and the fact that you want to help them learn to innovate better, rejections should be detailed and helpful. I recommend, rejections include:
- Compliments. Start by discussing what you like about their proposal.
- Why it was rejected. Explain why the proposal was rejected.
- What the team has learned. Ask the team what they have learned from the rejection.
- Next steps. Discuss next steps, if any. Can the proposal be fixed up and resubmitted? Will there be future events they can participate in?
Detailed rejections should be done in person and are time consuming. But, they teach team members a great deal about submitting proposals that are likely to be accepted in the future; hence detailed rejection reports and/or meetings are a worthwhile investment in time and effort on your part.
Innovation Proposal Workshops
Consider running innovation proposal workshops that train people about the mechanics of preparing an innovative proposal that suit your processes. Such workshops need not take much time, but can lead to a much higher standard of innovation proposal. This is particularly useful if your innovation processes require particularly detailed or complex proposals.
In addition to preparing innovation proposals for competitions and on-going submissions, there are some other activities that promote more developed innovative thinking. Let us look at three of them.
Prototyping
In my experience, a great way to sell an idea within an organisation or even to external organisations, is to build a prototype and demonstrate it. A prototype makes an idea real. It is something you can touch. You can play with. You can identify flaws. You can improve upon the initial prototype. For decision makers, you save them the trouble of having to visualise your idea and you make it easy for them to start thinking about the next steps of implementing the idea.
Workshops or events, in which teams build prototypes according to a set of specifications, are great innovation activities. In these workshops, prototypes need not be sophisticated. Give teams Lego building bricks, wooden building blocks, craft-making materials (eg: paper, cardboard, glue, scissors, markers, etc), Barbie dolls or any set of materials that is conducive to the kind of prototypes that are needed. Then let them build.
Building things together encourages higher level of collaboration than talking about ideas. In the former, everyone can work at the same time, while in the latter, everyone needs to stop and listen to the person speaking. Moreover, in my experience, introverted people (who are often very creative) are much more comfortable with prototyping workshops than with brainstorms and similar.
Prototype workshops are obviously more suited to physical ideas, like products, packaging and facilities, but processes can also be prototyped − at least sometimes. Building blocks or Lego bricks, ideally with humanlike figures, can be used to represent processes. Role-plays can also represent processes.
The completed prototypes can be presented, discussed and improved. Any additional documentation, necessary for your innovation process can also be prepared and the proposals submitted to the appropriate decision makers, ideally in a meeting in which stakeholders and other interested parties can participate.
If you do not have experience facilitating events of this nature, it would be a good idea to hire an external facilitator to help. Many creativity and innovation facilitators will have experience with this kind of workshop.
Prototyping Rooms
In addition to prototyping events, consider providing a space, perhaps an innovation room, with materials for putting together simple prototypes. This would allow people with ideas, to produce prototypes at any time.
Hackathons
The hackathon is a concept developed by the programming community. It invites a group of programmers and others involved in software development meet up to hack together a particular kind of software, an application or a solution to a particular problem.
Although hackathons were originally conceived for programmers, there is no reason why you cannot hack the concept and create a hackathon to design a prototype, a process, a service or anything else. You can find more information about how to run Hackathons at Hackathon.guide.
Play
A growing number of consultants and trainers are offering workshops based around play as a means for building ideas. Many of these are similar to the prototyping workshop described above, but some go in other directions. Play is the basis of creativity and well organised play events can produce very innovative ideas. See what is available in your area or contact me.
Anticonventional Thinking
Anticonventional thinking (ACT) is an alternative to brainstorming that is designed to build a single, innovative and well developed idea rather than a long list of shallow ideas. ACT is based on scientific research into how the brain works as well as how groups collaborate and is modelled after the way artists, writers, composers and other highly creative people have thought and collaborated for centuries. As such, it is not so much a new process. Rather, it adopts the fluid thinking approach of highly creative people and turns it into an easy-to-follow structured method.
You can learn more about ACT here.
Successful Idea Building Events
There are several factors that lead to the success of idea building events.
Outside the office: I strongly recommend that you hold facilitated events − such as prototyping workshops, hackathons, anticonventional thinking workshops or similar − outside your office. In my long experience of facilitating such events, the result are significantly better when they are held offsite. People are less likely to be called out of your workshop, they pay better attention and they feel more free to be creative when they are away from their usual working environment.
In addition to the usual hotels, a growing number of co-working spaces offer unusual and inspiring places for creative meetings.
Communicate restrictions: it is important to communicate the restrictions at the beginning of an idea building event. You may think this will stifle creativity, but the opposite is true. When people know the boundaries of what they can do, it empowers creativity. Moreover, if people build ideas with restrictions in mind, the end results are more likely to be relevant, iVision supporter ideas.
Criticise ideas: Because brainstorming famously prohibits the criticism of ideas, many people believe that all creativity events should prohibit criticism. This is wrong. Indeed, it has been proven that when people are allowed to criticise ideas in ideation events, the results tend to be more creative. This is also my own experience. Moreover, when it comes to building ideas, you need to criticise weaknesses so you can strengthen them; you need to identify flaws so you can fix them; you need to push people to be more creative by criticising uninspiring ideas. To encourage respectful criticism in anticonventional thinking, there are four rules:
- Always criticise boring ideas.
- Criticise the idea, not the person. It's okay to say, "Your idea is boring." It is not okay to say, "You are boring."
- After criticising an idea, you must be quiet and allow the idea originator or anyone else in the group to defend the idea.
- As much as possible, be constructive in your criticism. If an idea is flawed, propose a better way.
Feed results into your processes: Do not forget, these innovation activities are not necessarily designed to feed ideas directly into your innovation processes, so you may need to add steps to an activity so that the results conform to the processes. But, do not be afraid to be creative. If an innovation proposal requires a business case, create the business case, but submit it along with the prototype or photos of the prototype.
Professional Facilitators: If neither you nor others on your team have experience facilitating creativity events, it is a good idea to hire an external, professional facilitator to oversee them while you and your colleagues focus on innovative thinking. Many creativity facilitators have experience with these and similar methods.
Needless-to-say, I am an experience innovation facilitator. But, there are many other talented professionals in the field. If you are already working with an external innovation facilitator, trainer or consultant, ask her about such events.
Review iVision Assumptions
With your innovation team or with colleagues from various divisions and ideally people from outside your organisation, make a list of assumptions related to your iVision. List as many as possible and be sure to list basic, fundamental assumptions. If there are outsiders on the team, be sure to get their inputs; they are likely to see assumptions you do not.
From time to time, choose one of these assumptions, ask yourself three questions:
- Is it still valid?
- Is it likely to remain valid for the foreseeable future?
- What could we do if the assumption were proven false?
Companies such as Kodak, Nokia and travel agencies have all discovered that when assumptions collapse, the cost is immense. On the other hand, companies such as Apple, Samsung, Kayak, image sensor manufacturers and others have benefitted greatly be the collapse of assumptions. Clearly, you want to be a benefitter rather than a victim! So, review and question assumptions regularly.
Test and Tweak
As with any new system, the ones you build may very well not work as well as they should when you start sending proposals through the innovation processes you have devised. If few proposals are being implemented, then you must check the system, identify the blockage and address it. Is the issue at your end? If so, how do you need to change things?
If proposals are going to the decision maker and are either being rejected or ignored, you will probably need to visit the decision maker again to determine what the problem is. Are the proposals too bold? Are they improperly prepared? Are they too timid? Once you understand why proposals are being rejected, you can modify how you communicate to your colleagues so that submissions are more likely to be well received.
The most challenging response you may have to deal with is a decision maker who claims to be too busy to review proposals. In this scenario, there are three options. The first is to determine if there is an alternative path such proposals could take so that they are reviewed by another, more amenable decision maker. The second is to find a way to ease the process for the decision maker. Perhaps a trusted direct report of the decision maker could be empowered to review and approve innovation proposals so that the decision maker need only sign them off to authorise them. The third option is the least attractive: stop actions that lead to proposals to this decision maker − at least temporarily. Before you actually do this, tell the decision maker that you sympathise with her busy schedule and rather than have a lot of people invest time and effort into proposals that she and her team do not have time to review, it would be better to close this line of innovation, at least temporarily. She may realise that stopping innovation in her area is not a good thing and find a way to find time. If not, plan to check up with her every three months or so in order to see if she and her team have the wherewithal to review innovation proposals. If you are succeeding with other decision makers, she will be motivated to find a way to work with you.
Worksheet Questions
Download the worksheet: | OpenOffice format | MS Word format |
- What are the assumptions you (and others) make in relation to your iVision?
- Describe how you could apply some of the above activities to your innovation processes.
