Ideation, or if you prefer, brainstorming, is a structured activity with many degrees of freedom within that structure. When leading sessions, I emphasize divergent, generative thinking, and ask participants to defer evaluation and prioritization. Defer, not disregard. Of course we need to bring convergence into the process, but not until later. As you'd expect, much of the energy and focus for these ideation sessions is on the creation of good ideas. But there's an interesting important role for bad ideas to play.
In my team of user researchers, we deliver not only a report (you can see an example from a few years ago here, but also an ideation workshop. In this session, we pass the baton to our client team. Together, we not only generate a broad set of things for the business to make, sell or do, but the team really takes ownership of the research insights by repeatedly applying them. The act of repeatedly translating insights into possible actions builds up a neural pathway, where the implications of those insights become burnt into their thinking. Bad ideas serve both masters, as sacrificial elements that lead to breakthroughs and as pitches for insight batting practice.
Creative activities often follow a double-hump model. At first you'll hit all the obvious ideas. These aren't a waste of time; sometimes the obvious ideas have been neglected and you can treat those as low-hanging fruit: obvious, easy to implement, incremental improvement. But you'll find that you run out of steam with those ideas. Like the false ending in a '80s rock song, don't think this fadeout means it's time to start applauding. There's still more. Push on, and this is when you get to the transgressive, weird, crazy and sometimes innovative ideas. That's the place you want to get to, where you are truly butting up against the edges of what's allowable.
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