Design a Better Business

Page 128

MASTER IDEATION

1 START YOUR (CREATIVE) ENGINES

Generating lots of ideas with a team is easy if you know how to do it. It all comes down to facilitation. This entails employing the right set of tools in the right atmosphere (space) with a creative mindset focused on accomplishing this one task. It’s also crucial to set a time limit for your ideation session. It would be counterproductive to generate ideas all day. Set a time bound and create within that space. And when you believe you’ve run out of gas, reshuffle the ideas in front of you and build off of them.

2 BUILD STEPPING-STONES

The more ideas you and your team put out there, the more chances you’ll have to make interesting connections and build ideas on top of other ideas. Moreover, just like when you build a path to the future, the shape of the stepping-stones is not as important as their number and arrangement.

3 CREATE A RITUAL

It takes a bit of time even for an experienced creative to shift mental gears and get the creative juices flowing. Consider creating some kind of ideation ritual, like a fire starter (discussed later in this chapter on page 144). With practice, you’ll learn how much time you need to get in the zone. Most important, plan for that time to be uninterrupted.

4 USE A TOOL

Don’t think you have to conquer the idea frontier all by yourself using only brainstorming techniques. There are lots of ideation tools, like the Business Model Canvas and Creative Matrix, that can help you and your team create ...