Tag Archives: innovation

Deconstruction instead of brainstorming

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Brainstorming is taught as the primary tool for creative thinking.

The problem is it doesn’t work.

Don’t get me wrong. There are some who do it well. IDEO is legendary for their ability to brainstorm. They have rules painted on the walls. Everyone learns them. It works for them. They are the exception, not the rule We’ve all been in really bad brainstorming meetings. You know what I’m talking about – the ten minute burst of energy followed by the twenty minutes of crazy, useless ideas and the requisite eyerolling and explanations about “no bad ideas.”

I’ll let you in on a secret: there are bad ideas and brainstorming is one of them.

There are three reasons why brainstorming doesn’t work:

  1. People come unprepared to a meeting.
  2. Facilitating is not as easy as a (really good) facilitator makes it look.
  3. Brainstorming works on too big of a problem.

Here, try something with me. Get out a piece of paper and a pen and write down all of the innovations you can think of for a pencil. Take 60 seconds and list out as many as you can. (Not a very long list is it?) Okay, turn the sheet over.

We’re going to try a different approach — deconstruction. First, make bullet pointed answers to the following questions:

  1. Describe the pencil. What is it made of? What shape is it? How is it made?
  2. Tell me about its function. Who uses it? How is it used? To do what?

Second, take another 60 seconds and give me ideas for innovating the pencil. Work your way thru these individual elements (your answers to the two questions above) and list out your innovations. (cue 60 seconds of music) Finished?

Compare the two lists. Which one is longer? Which one has better, more novel ideas to pursue?

I call this tool deconstruction.

It’s based on the way that language works on our brain. When you see a pencil, your brain pulls together a host of past experiences and mental connections in order to let you know it is a pencil. This helps you get thru life easier than if every time you saw an 8 inch long, 1/4 inch thick hexagonal cedar tube filled with a thin cylinder of graphite and painted yellow you thought, “I wonder if this would be a good mark-making device?” You just simply know it’s a pencil, and that you can write or draw with it.

But this is a sizable problem for creative thinking and product innovation. It’s hard to see possibilities, and that’s the core of both creative thinking and innovation – finding new solutions, opportunities and possibilities.

So instead of just trying to invent a new version of the whole, we deconstruct the object. We break it down into its physical structure, its uses, its users or consumers, how it’s manufactured – even how it’s bought, sold, stored, shipped, etc. Innovations can come from any one of these elements – just by tweaking the right one (e.g. size, material, shape). A walk thru any office supply superstore will show you dozens of novel and useful iterations on the simple pencil.

Deconstruction can be used on nouns (i.e. things and stuff – places, too) but it also works on verbs – processes and methods. It’s simple to teach. It requires no prep work. And it puts a room in the right frame of mind for creative thinking and innovation.

So, next time you find yourself in a lame brainstorm. Stop and start deconstructing.

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How Ideas Take Shape

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Ideas do not come into the world fully formed. They take shape. This drawing is a model for bringing ideas to life. It is based on the acronym for Shape — See, Hear, Ask, Play, Engage. I used to hate acronyms until I studied the word. It is Greek and literally means the “tip of the word.” Some of the original acronyms were Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus, RADAR and LASER. So, those are cool words.

Here’s how the model works:

1. See & Hear. Observation and listening are key elements in idea hunting. They are the primary activities — not talking. We want to ask questions and we aren’t very good at it and our questions introduce bias. So, just watch and listen. When I worked at Saatchi, we would take executives shopping for their products in stores and just watch them. Many couldn’t find their own products on the shelf.

Anthropologists have been watching people in their cultures for years. It’s a great way to learn that I discovered firsthand. Before I was married, I worked at a greeting card company in product development. I got an assignment to create baby products. You know, first year books, calendar, etc. So, I invited all the Mom’s I knew to a meeting, and asked them to bring their baby books. It was a revelation. Watching them look through the books and listening to them tell stories to the other women. I realized that these books were a measure of motherhood, and it shaped our development of a whole suite of tools for mom’s to capture those early years. But I got those insights by seeing and hearing.

2. Ask & Play. These are the first and second activities. First you have to Ask, but not with your mouth. Ask with your eyes – watch intently, observe. Ask with your ears by listening to conversations and hearing what people are really saying. Like those mom’s telling me about a baby book, but really telling me about their desire to remember and mark milestones in their child’s lives and lacking both the tools and time to do so.

After you Ask, you Play. This is the creative part of the exercise, and it should not feel like work. If it does, then you are doing it work. Work and stress are flow killers and constrict ideas. I’ve got a great tool for ideation called Deconstruction. I’ll share it in another post.

3. Engage your idea with the world. Get feedback (n:1) from lots of people. How do they like it? Watch (see) them use it. Listen (hear) them talk about it as they use it. Insight. Insight. Insight. Harvest these learnings and go back into the Ask or Play phase again. Iterate until you are ready to Engage again. Then repeat until you have a winner — and your idea has taken shape.

The diagram is a matrix with See & Hear on the Y-Axis and Ask & Play on the X-Axis. This makes 4 distinct activities: Two in the Ask mode, and two in the Play mode. Only then do you engage your audience. Repeat as needed. It’s a total of 6 steps. To recap the process:

  1. See/Ask phase. Watch and observe.
  2. Hear/Ask phase. Listen and learn.
  3. See/Play phase. Work out the pattern.
  4. Hear/Play phase. Talk out ideas.
  5. Engage phase. Get it out into the world.
  6. Repeat. As needed.

We’ll spend time on this in other posts looking at how to execute these phases — best practices, etc.