“Our model at Method is that being weird and different is good. Weird changes the world, and Detroit could use a little more of weird in terms of creative ideas.”

- Eric Ryan, Method Products Co-Founder (AdAge)

I’ve been into the idea of weird lately. It feels like odd and peculiar themes are increasingly breaking through and holding the public’s attention. Somehow, today’s world of endless choice still offers us an oversupply of sameness; so we’re almost begging for non-conformity. If you look to popular culture, the not-so-weak signals are everywhere. Austin’s “Keep [City] Weird” support-local movement is spreading across the US.  The world’s number one pop artist wears clothing made of meat. The LA Lakers’ starting Small Forward is changing his name to Meta World Peace. It seems the novelty of of the unconventional is pushing us to the edges of our relative notions of comfort. And we are liking it.

Unlikely friends have benefits.

One of my more specific interests around weirdness is the uncharted space that odd combinations can lead us to. I realize cultural mash-ups are not a new idea. And yes, they can be excruciatingly bad (think Rap-Rock). But they can also be hugely interesting, inventive and inspiring.

Artists, of course, have been fearlessly blending ideas for centuries. But in the business world we seem more hesitant to look beyond category borders for experimentation and learning. The recent emphasis on Design Thinking and Innovation has more key players preaching the merits of cross-disciplinary collaboration, but in practice this approach is still barely visible.

Recently I stumbled upon Grant McCracken’s Culturematic posts proposing the need for more culture-smashing tools. I think we’re likely to see an explosion of similar Oblique Strategies over the next few years. You can only imagine the fruits of a Large Hadron Cultural Collider. Or an event series that promotes weird cross-industry collaborations like Food & Psychology or Comedy & Finance (call it Funny Money).

A weird little brand case.

One of my favorite new local brands is a microbrew out of Barrie, Ontario. Flying Monkey produces a roster of delicious craft brews like Hoptical Illusion and Netherworld Cascadian Dark. The brand is not just a nod to oddity, it’s built on the idea. Their tagline “normal is weird” is a pledge to the peculiar, and everything they do serves to honour that pledge. The glassware, for example, is littered with little bits of unusual magic like the “Reorder Line” (photo below). The brand purpose extends to its people as well, as is evident in this excerpt from an article on a hot new little Toronto snack spot:

“Peter Aitchison, a salesman with Flying Monkeys Craft Brewery in Barrie, told us that he could sculpt anything. So we said, ‘OK, let’s see you make a draft tap out of a telephone pole.’ And he did, over a span of 12 hours with a chisel.”

Their website also keeps it surreal. Upon arrival you’re unsure if you’ve landed on the brewery’s mainpage or if you’re embarking on a journey to the fantastical underground of the early internets.

Things could (and should) get weird.

The Age of Weird is arriving. The business world is already playing catch-up. We know creative advantage is more crucial now than ever before. Firms willing to move beyond their core comforts, embrace their cultural quirks, and experiment on the fringes will be best positioned for innovation. Yes, this will be a difficult transition for many. But it also promises to be fun, enlightening, and potentially lucrative for those wiling to get a little freaky.

Stay tuned for some IC weird-play in the coming months.

That’s a big question that I don’t think the world of crowdsourcing community has quite figured out yet.

Cause Marketing is Not CSR

Here’s an important level-set in the discussion of these platforms – branded cause competitions are a form of cause marketing, not CSR (corporate social responsibility). The difference is small but significant. Cause marketing is a marketing relationship where there is an expected brand benefit, where CSR plays in the realm of philanthropy. In cause marketing, it’s corporate first, cause second.

One of the big debates against these programs is that, “If these companies are doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, they shouldn’t make people work for it”. This is a classic example of confusing CSR with CM. I couldn’t disagree more. Cause marketing is not a replacement for existing CSR programs. These programs aren’t just a re-allocation of philanthropy dollars, they result of net new new dollars being contributed to causes from a marketing budget. There needs to be positive brand return, or the program will disappear. So if a little charity work means a lot of new dollars being made available for causes, I’m all for it.

So why does CSR vs. CM matter?

Beyond executing against a program’s rules, cause marketing initiatives have no real responsibility to go any further than giving away a stated prize. Community idea competitions usually result in hundreds or even thousands of new ideas being submitted. Some of those ideas are unnecessary or impossible to implement, but many others represent a bottom up voice for what’s needed in the community.Whether intentional or not, these platforms have given a voice to ignored communities, marginalized populations, and scrappy causes. They have the ability to bring attention to there needs in ways that used to be reserved for behemoth not for profit organizations.

But as with any competition, there are winners and losers. Cause marketing idea competitions make plenty of ideas come to fruition. As a marketing competition, it can’t be reasonably expected that the marketer take responsibility to manage and push forward every idea submitted. In the case of the Aviva Community Fund, we partnered with Benevity in 2010 so that registered charities can use the platform to connect donations as a way to migrate from CM to CSR platform and to let the ideas live on. But we can’t expect that a soft drink or credit card company follow up on every idea – it’s not good business.

The result is that many important ideas get forgotten once the next round of voting starts.

Government and community idea competitions
Idea platforms showcase community needs. So nothing could be worse than a community need being flagged in a competition, then going unfulfilled or un-evaluated. The crowdsourcing competition model uses voting as a way of making idea evaluation manageable, but just because an idea isn’t popular or because the idea creator doesn’t know how to use facebook doesn’t mean that it isn’t a good idea.

In a previous blog post about classifying crowdsourcing platforms, I introduced a concept called Crowdsourcing Researching -using crowdsourcing as a tool to articulate previously unknown or unmet needs. These ideas platforms are an amazing Crowdsourcing Researching tool to understand community needs. FixMyStreet is a great example of how this can work in government, and with many municipalities moving towards philosophies of open government, listing to the crowd has to be a vertical of activity.

My hope (dream, aspiration) is that in the long term, these competitions find ways to formalize their relationships with government as a way to ensure that all ideas receive the attention they deserve. For the winning ideas, they get a fast-track to implementation under the Cause Marketing program rules. But for all other ideas, they find a formalized way to be reviewed by government agencies to ensure there’s an opportunity for implementation. Idealized, yes I know, but important.

What are your thoughts?

Having spent the better part of the last two years working on the  Aviva Community Fund and MIT Global Challenge platforms, and working on ways to see ideas live beyond the length of a competition, I can tell you that this new form of bottom up innovation represents an important evolution in how problems are solved in the world. And as long as they continue to be brand building powerhouses, private organizations are going to continue to collect important community ideas. What do you think should happen to private competition ideas?

Organizations are increasingly turning to open innovation platforms as their source of innovation.

Open innovation platforms (or crowdsourcing platforms) are a way to involve consumers in the process of innovation. Here at IC, we have built examples pretty amazing open innovation platforms – the Aviva Community fund and the MIT Ideas Challenge that are helping prove the case. You can also check out Open Innovators for dozens of other examples of programs that work. As our fearless leader Idris Mootee recently wrote in his article What you don’t know about Crowdsourcing and why they often fail, it’s not a silver bullet for innovation. But when used in a defined way as part of the research and development process, they can be quite successful.

Solving the worlds problems one 2×2 at a time

A lot of organizations struggle to wrap their heads around open innovation platforms because they toil with their purpose in the innovation cycle – what is the role of the platform within the innovation pipeline. With that in mind, I’ve spent a bit of time sketching an organizational principal for open innovation platforms. Obviously an organization can choose to involve external parties at any point in the innovation process – but the emphasis of this thinking is focused on what would be classically viewed as research through development (as opposed to the commercialization).

Do you have a problem? X AXIS
The first decision criteria is “Is there a defined problem”.

On one side of the equation, many organizations are submitting or asking explicit questions to the audience for solving – they have a defined problem to be solved. For example, Innovation Exchange solicits “Challenges” (specific problems to solve) from major corporations. I call this “innovation inspired by the business” – the key driver of creativity is based off of a fundamental business-side need or problem.

On the other side, some organizations just want good ideas that align with their brands – they have undefined problems and look to the crowd to both explicitly state challenges and opportunities. In short, they hope the crowd both provides both self identifies the problem and articulates a solution to the problem. An example of this would be the over-mentioned “my Starbucks ideas”. I call this “inspired by invention”, as it often manifests itself through the creative ingenuity of the crowd. It could just as easily be called “Innovation inspired by needs”.

When can the crowd play? Y AXIS
The second decision criteria is “When do you involve the crowd”?

On one side of the equation, organizations involve external participants early in the innovation process. Involving customers early results in raw, often messy ideas that may or not reflect any possible reality. I think of this as a platform for actively soliciting feedback for “opportunity collection” because there tend to be a lot of undefined directions that can be pursued or that can inspire lateral thinking.

On the other side, organizations can involve participants late in the innovation process. At this point, organizations are often looking for full concepts, designs, or solutions that represent a full solution to a problem. Examples of this would be Google’s Lunar Prize, where the criteria for winning is to “successfully land a privately funded craft on the lunar surface and survive long enough to complete the mission goals of roaming about the lunar surface for at least 500 meters and sending a defined data package, called a “Mooncast”, back to Earth.”. This is an example of “solution collection” – getting many external participants to come up with multiple, well articulated solutions.

The quadrants of organization-led open innovation platforms

Based on this model for understanding open innovation platforms, there are four primary opportunities for organizations to use open innovation platforms to drive the innovation process internally.

Defined Problem + Early Involvement = Crowdstorming. Articulating a specific problem to consumers and asking for many raw responses. This is pretty much like a massive brainstorm, and works as a way to stock the innovation pipeline early. Output: Lots of raw solutions to a specific problem with varying quality. Example: Fiat Mio

Undefined Problem + Early Involvement = Researching. Ask consumers to come up with solutions to undefined problems. The real value here is the articulation of previously unknown or unmet needs, collected through the initial articulation of customer problems used as a rationale for the solution. Output: Explanation or justification of previously unarticulated consumer challenges or needs with a small number of solutions of varying quality. Example: Dell Idea Storm

Defined Problem + Late Involvement = Prototyping. When you involve the consumer at this point, you’re really asking for a specific designed solution to a problem. Depending on how late in the innovation process they are involved, the output can be anything from concept sketches to fully-functioning prototypes. Output: Depending on how late the challenge is put to the crowd, and how defined the solution must be, expect a small number of solutions. Example: Supdaroo or one of my favorite sites, threadless.

Undefined Problem + Late Involvement = Adopting. Some organizations choose to build idea orphanages, allowing external participants to submit fully thought-out and conceptualized product concepts that may or may not align with their interests. Would-be inventors can submit their concepts with the hope of the organization moving on their idea. Output: Well thought out ideas that may or may not be relevant to the organization. Example: Lego Design By Me

Yes, no maybe so?

Obviously open innovation platforms differ in terms of where they play in an organization’s innovation cycle. In practice, each of the quadrants of the open innovation platform classification isn’t mutually exclusive. But in terms of understanding where their value lies, I think it’s a good starting point.

So what do you think? Agree with the classification? Have any recommendations on how to make it better? Have any great examples of crowdsourcing applications that I’ve missed? Join the comment thread and let me know. Also, if you’re interested in Open Innovation and the Virtuous Cycle, be sure to read Henry Chesbrough’s epic book Open Innovation.

Creativity is something that designers crave. We feel the need to be creative, and anything that tethers us and keeps us from expressing that creativity is almost assuredly negative. Many designers see boundaries and ‘inside the box’ thinking for those whose minds cannot handle the life without constraints, those who lack the ability to see the world like they do. However, designers are required to see the world through many different eyes, not just their own, and be able to interpret what they see from all those viewpoints. Their single viewpoint is not the only ‘correct’ viewpoint. Quite the contrary, in that, most designers see the world in a vastly different manner from others, and to create products and ideas based solely on their viewpoint would be to exclude a huge segment of the population.

So designers try to interpolate all the data and the viewpoints, and create an innovative product, idea, service, etc., and understandably someone putting limitations on what can and cannot occur can cause tremendous frustration. However, it does not have to be so. Boundaries and standards are not in place to simply stifle the creativity of designers and those trying to be innovative, but rather they are in place because they serve a purpose. That notion specifically is what many designers seem to quickly forget and become frustrated with. As people we are irritated by what we don’t understand, and that should be all the motivation we need (though it rarely is). As designers, it is incredibly important to understand the boundaries that are put in place, and not to give in to our instincts to fight those standards. We have to be willing to put in the time and effort to create a product that is innovative and creative, but that still lies within the outlined standards. It is not so much about always thinking outside the box, but sometimes thinking creatively inside that box. We cannot always (or in fact, rarely) control the circumstances regarding the situations we find ourselves in, or the standards surrounding products we are involved with, so we have to do our best to use those as steps towards a truly unique and innovative product.

As designers we often spend too much time swimming upstream and refusing to compromise our ‘vision’, and that energy could be better used towards creating a better product overall regardless of boundaries and standards. Sometimes our stubbornness can be something that propels us forward, takes us through tough times, but sometimes it can be something that holds us back and causes us to stay focused on the wrong thing. They key to successfully recognizing the differences and reacting accordingly is to understand the reasons for these perceived limitations in the first place. When that is understood, it is much easier to accept them for what they are, and that is merely pieces of a puzzle that you, the designer, needs to arrange properly. When the product, follows the process, is creative, innovative, and unique, not one person is going to care about, or even notice that you had some ‘limitations’ presented to you at the project start.

However, yesterday I stumbled upon an application that, while fitting into an incredibly niche market, shows just how useful a tool such a device can be. The ‘Test Rides’ application lets one attempt a sort of virtual test fit of how a bicycle will fit a person. It requires one to take a picture from a profile view in such a manner that the arms and legs are showing. The user is then required to map out the specific joints on the picture so that the application can then use that information to extrapolate measurements and using that anthropometric data will then inform the user of whether or not a certain bike is a good fit or not. In its current state, the application is still in its infancy, and thus fairly limited.

TestRides iPhone App

It requires the user to know certain bike measurements, many of which can be found online with some searching, but is still not readily available at one easy to find source (and some are not able to be found at all). Still, the potential for such an application is unquestionable, if extremely niche. While starting small as they have, it could blossom into an application that houses a database of extensive bicycle information with regards to ergonomics and user fit.

It does not take much for such applications to quickly bloom and become so much more. With the ability for users to submit data and help create a working database of parts and measurements, the Test Rides app could evolve from a primitive amoeba of an application, to a fleshed out, encyclopedic brain on the topic. The creative journey does not have to end at that junction either, as there are many branching off points that the application could take. It could become a resource for those who need replacement parts for a discontinued vendor/manufacturer, helping to prolong lifecycles of bicycles and keeping them out of landfills. Expanding outside of the bicycle market, a similar application could make significant impact in the snowboarding industry as well.

Snowboarding with poorly fitting bindings and boots can cause extreme fatigue early on in a person’s day, causing them to cut short their on-hill activities. Thus having a good fit is essential to having a good day on the hill. Ill fitting boots can cause problems turning on the hill (they drag in the snow as you edge on your toes and heels to turn) as well as causing general foot pain. In addition, not all brands of bindings fit each boot ideally (because of material choice, overall shape and stance

options). What if then, a similar app to Test Rides could be created from manufacturers’ data? Try this scenario: I walk into a snowboard shop and see a pair of bindings I really like and purchase them. But then I go home and use the internet and find a pair of boots that I would like to purchase but can’t find them in any retail stores to try them on and ensure a proper fit. What if I could pull out my iPhone, take a picture of my foot (both profile and from underneath to ensure arch and any other vitals are taken into account) and look up the compatibility of both my foot to the boot, and the boot to the binding.

In a few minutes, I have saved myself money from buying an ill fitting boot, or reassured myself that when I purchase those boots online, they will fit as perfectly as they can. Since clothing and shoes in particular are becoming one of the fastest growing sectors of the e-commerce/online shopping markets, it makes sense that the same principles could be ported over to shoe designers/manufacturers. The effect that such an application could have could be tremendous.

Initially, the Apple App store was mostly filled with either very functional things like organizers and calendars, to the less useful but entertaining games, and the very useless apps like the iPint (you hold your iPhone up as if it were a glass and drink virtual beer). But as people became more familiar and really sought out to create apps that had purpose and thought behind them, apps like Test Rides were born. Apps that may seem niche and useless to some (if not most), but will spawn ideas in another’s head to apply those same creative principles to another area, which keeps the ball rolling. What ideas will be sparked is impossible to say, but it is exciting to see just what new avenues people will take us on.

Like 75% of the world, I’m a visual thinker, and I need sketching as part of my tool kit to describe the problems I face and iterate on the solutions I ideate. The sad part is, as a business graduate, no one ever told me that this was a skill I needed. For some, sketching comes naturally. For others, a little inspiration is needed.

As a strategist and experience architect, sketching solutions is one of the most important tools I have available to me. While we’ve been trained over the years to believe that sketching is an artist-only skill, the reality is that any problem solving process, no matter what field it falls under, can be improved through the infusion of pen, paper and design thinking.

A wife, a thesis and a drawing

My wife is currently finishing her PHD in child psychology from McGill University and spends most of her free time analyzing the data associated with her dissertation. Over the weekend, I passed by her desk and saw the following sketch:

What you’re looking at is Meredith’s use of sketching to describe, understand and test the relationship between the variables in her survey data set.  The visualization of this information allowed her to better understand the systems of her data and progress her understanding of the problem at hand. My mind was blown.

A Sketching Definition
From the words of the always wise Wikipedia:

A sketch is a rapidly executed freehand drawing that is not intended as a finished work. A sketch is a quick way to record an idea for later use. Artist’s sketches primarily serve as a way to try out different ideas and establish a composition before undertaking a more finished work, especially when the finished work is expensive and time consuming. Sketching sharpens an artist’s ability to focus on the most important elements of a subject and is a prescribed part of artistic development for students.

While this definition clearly leans towards the realm of artistic sketching, there are a number of important takeaways:

• Sketching is freehand. If you can put pen to paper, you can sketch. You do not need an artdegree, an expensive set of tools, or the ability to draw the perfect straight line. There is no barrier to using sketching as part of your tool set other than your own lack of self-confidence.
• Sketching is not intended as finished work. For some reason, non-designers feel the need to be perfect the first time. Sketching is not the same as a final marketing strategy, information architecture, project proposal or whitepaper. Your sketch will go through dozens of iterations before it’s done, so it should be treated as disposable.
• Sketching is a tool to try out different ideas. The old saying the first answer is usually the right one is an unfortunate one. Imagine how unsuccessful brainstorming sessions would be if you stopped after the first idea was delivered. When you sketch, there is a low investment required to try other avenues. Sketching is an opportunity to explore dozens of different directions with no consequences.
• Sketching lets you focus on the most important elements. It’s amazing how communicating through sketching can cause you to completely reframe the nature of your problem. By forcing yourself to communicate ideas visually, sketching can enlighten your problem solving process.

Sketching in the wild
When brought outside the domain of designers, sketching is a communications tool to help organize and socialize ideas. Literally, it’s using our innate drawing abilities to organize information in a way that goes beyond pure verbal communication. In this context, sketching is less a piece of design than it is an aid to thought. Sketching provides us with insight into our own definition of a problem, and the better we can define the problem we’re trying to solve, the better the solution.

While rougher sketches require more imagination as a tool to facilitate discussion, the bigger point is that using sketching as a descriptive tool rather than relying on verbal communication enhances our understanding of a problem.

Any problem.

Sure, sketching is a tool to visualize the solution,but it’s also useful in defining a system, organizing ideas and prototyping thought-based solutions. When we (business people) solve a problem based only on verbal queues, very seldom do we take the time to define the scope of a problem. The greatest benefit of sketching is that it forces us engage with an idea in new ways.

The reality is we blessed with the innate problem solving skills of my wife. I learned that sketching was necessary to describing the context of a problem after many painful client meetings facing tough questions that never even crossed my mind. For business people, sketching can enhance your understanding of a problem and allow you to try variations rather than settle on the first answer we think of.

There is no risk in sketching, other than uncovering some input you should have thought of long ago. So go ahead, be sketchy, and take your problem solving skills to the next level.

Coordinating colors can be completely confounding. Do the curtains match the carpet? Will the backsplash compliment the dishes? Is the bedding in-sync with the bedroom walls? To attempt to answer these difficult décor questions, most consumers rely on collecting piles of fabric swatches, paint chips, magazine clippings and even a favorite plate or bowl to mix and match them until the secret of personal style is finally revealed. Then, the challenge truly begins: braving a series of separate stores across the city to actually find those items that, in theory and from that pile, really do work together to conjure color coordination. Failure is frequent, and usually by a hue or two.

Color Concierge By Crate & Barrel solves this challenge by packing the style skills of a professional interior designer into a single, easy to use iPhone application. With reliable, robust and dynamic brainpower, it uses intelligent logic driven by color theory, an archive of best practices and pattern recognition of user activities to take a photo of a room or item, extract the color palette, refine color harmonies and generate the perfect product combinations. Then, to make shopping easier, it acquires instant product details, displays color and fabric options, receives smart recommendations from other brands that align to your project and personality, and accesses special offers available only through Color Concierge.

Houndstooth Pattern in Parking Lot, at Disney World, FL by Alex MacLean

Aesthetically, the impervious asphalt surface lacks dimension; a visual void of white lines on a graying black canvas, it is splashed with a temporary palette of colors during business and shopping hours only. Culturally, the business of automobile storage squanders social space; vacant for all but the most shallow of interactions, it is a transitional zone designed to send people out rather than draw them in. A few innovations in vertical parking exist today. Others meant to green the ground-level void are underway. And there is talk of some cities developing municipal ordinances and review processes to refashion the parking lots of the future. In the meantime, citizens of the cities and suburbs need an immediate innovation in reclamation.

Painted Parking by Benjamin Moore changes the aesthetic of parking lots. Drawing on its network of 4000 independent retailers across North America and their relationships with local customers, it partners the world’s leading paint manufacturer with home-owners, artists, community centers, schools, Boy Scouts, Girl Guides, architects, contractors and designers to take back and transform the asphalt. For urban and suburban communities, Painted Parking becomes a collaborative space where people gather on weekends to interact, explore the arts, express themselves and improve their neighborhood one parking space at a time. For cities, malls, parking management firms and land developers, Painted Parking is a quick, cultural solution to the aesthetic blight of squandered space.

For global brands and local businesses, Painted Parking presents a new opportunity to engage consumers in the creation of customized advertising – one that might pave new avenues for CSR should those businesses and brands financially reward community centers, schools, Boy Scouts and Girl Guides for their artistic efforts. And for Benjamin Moore, it offers more than simply an opportunity to educate consumers on product uses, colors and innovations. Painted Parking is a natural extension of a brand philosophy that believes paint and painting have the power to create beauty and to invoke transformation with every brush stroke.

On Lateral Thinking

I understand why some people are so afraid of brainstorming. Coming up with ideas that no one else has thought of before is an intimidating task. But a large part of the intimidation comes from the belief that coming up with amazing ideas is a serendipitous experience.

It’s not by the way. But for some reason, no one ever tells you that.

Brainstorming is a process. Coming up with the ideas during a brainstorm is attributed to a creative method called lateral thinking, which is the polar opposite of the logic-driven vertical thinking that we use to get us through the day. Lateral thinking is about identifying ideas that are not immediately obvious – they can’t be reached by using step-by-step logic. Lateral thinking is about finding connections between previously unrelated ideas or concepts in order to break out of old patterns and stimulate new lines of thinking. It’s a network model on overdrive.

So what sparks imaginative lateral thinking? In my opinion, it’s unexpected stimuli (auditory, verbal, visual, it doesn’t matter). The lateral thinking secret is that if you don’t have new stimuli, you can’t make new connections. Sit around the IC office for an afternoon and you’ll start to realize why this group is so capable at this type of thinking – our interests are so divergent that we continuously generate new and diverse types of stimuli. From sociology to human factors, film noir to robots, graffiti to gaming, and academia to ambient computing, this is an eclectic crowd with a very, very wide set interests.

The Problem with Dandelions

A (brief) moment of honesty – I used to be a really bad at brainstorming. Even worse, I thought I was phenomenal at it. If all you ever knew were dandelions, you wouldn’t realize your were missing out orchids. And when you work in an organization without a disciplined approach to great ideation, you lose the context that allowed you to discern what an original, quality idea looks like.

I used to be into dandelions in a serious way.

Please don’t take this the wrong way, but if your organization brainstorms infrequently, you are probably dandelion-lovers. If you only talk about your own business during these ideation sessions, you dig the yellow weeds. If the only people who attend your ideation sessions are senior managers – dandelions. And if you all reach consensus in the first twenty minutes of your brainstorms, you guessed it – dandelions.

Dandelions are what keep organizations from coming up with breakthrough ideas. And unfortunately, when you don’t know realize that you’re missing out, you’re unlikely to change. I recognize that a single post isn’t going to convince anyone that their organization’s brainstorming practices are flawed, but perhaps I can appeal to your sense of logic. Mastery is an elusive goal that requires practice and dedication. If you agree, then I think you’ll be willing to believe that there’s room for improvement in your brainstorming methods.

Get Stimulated

For experienced lateral thinkers, drawing on a lifetime of diverse experiences and interests to provide that stimuli that inspire creative ideas is natural. For those of us who aren’t quite as renaissance, a little help is always appreciated. It took some serious help from my good friend Matt Milan of Normative and a little orange box.

If lateral thinking is about connecting previously unrelated concepts, then the more concepts you can draw on the less expected the ideas. Teasing experiences out of our subconscious for use as stimuli is not always easy – especially when our peers, managers and clients are all (secretly) judging the quality of our ideas. Working with Matthew, I was taught that it’s okay to use external tools as stimuli in lieu drawing on past experiences to make connections.

And with this, an amazing thing happened – I relaxed, I experienced flow, and I saw orchids for the first time.

Where to Find Inspiration

I’ll re-iterate. Use external stimuli to brainstorm better. Even if you think you’re phenomenal at ideation, I guarantee that drawing from unexpected places will make you better. Don’t be shy or embarrassed about using external tools. Your team will forgive you quickly if you come up with a game-changing idea.

Here are three sources I regularly use when I need some brainstorming stimuli:

Use a randomized list of words. The little orange box I mentioned earlier is what I describe as my brainstorming crutch – a tool called ThinkCube. What is valuable about this tool is that it uses a curated set of words to spark connections (the dictionary is always another more laborious option). Terms like ‘Story’, technologies like ‘RFID’, and concepts like ‘Biomimicry’ injected at an appropriate time can spark completely new lines of thinking. During a previous ideation session, a card that said ‘Puzzle’ allowed my team to completely re-imagine how financial services products are sold.

Use images to spark your imagination. If you’re luck enough to have gotten your hands on our book No One Works Here, you’ll see some of the photographs that have inspired the Idea Couture team while problem solving. If you don’t have a copy, head over to Flickr, use a generic search term like ‘Unexpected‘ in slide show mode.

Crowdsource your stimulus needs. Wikipedia has consolidated the world’s knowledge into one location and introduced the killer lateral thinking tool – ‘Random Article‘. Visit Wikipedia with a problem and use whatever random content they provide as inspiration.

Lateral thinking is a skill that requires practice and inputs. Regardless of how good we think we are at it, there is always room for improvement. People who generate masses of truly original ideas are really just experts at accessing their historical experience. Using external tools featuring words, ideas and images can help level the playing field and help spark unknown connections.

We don’t all start out as ideation experts. If we’re willing to admit there is room for improvement, then we can begin to break out of old patterns of thinking and come up with the brilliant ideas that we are all capable of.  Explore new ways of making connections and shed your dandelion complex.

Creativity needs imagination. Creative economies value innovation and entrepreneurial imagination. Invention and innovation are what progress is made of; they are not the life-blood of creation. Progress stumbles on ideals, suggestions that there is a program or a way that moves society forward; creativity hunts a vision. Progress is pedantic; creativity, on the other hand, owns imagination. It commands the allegiance and love of the creative person as a way of being, living and thinking. The imagination that comes of that allegiance is powerful, self-renewing and tireless in delight. It permeates all aspects of civic life. It is the only limitless resource. But creativity is not enough for innovation.

Any powerful new idea can kick around unused in a company for years, not because its merits are not recognized but because nobody has assumed responsibility constructing the case that will convert the idea into a business opportunity.  Ideas are useless unless they are executed. The proof of their value is only in their implementation and adoption. Innovation is essentially the application of high creativity. It needs not be restricted to products; it applies to services and employee attitude, and across all levels of an organization. Innovation is a fundamental mindset pursued seriously by an organization. It is imperative to imbibe the culture of innovation.

The curse of the focus group is in part to blame for a lack of innovation. The focus group is the last place on earth where you can expect an innovative idea to be expressed. When Toyota was planning to launch the Prius, people in focus groups were asked what they thought of it. Everyone said the same thing: “It’s a niche product.” In focus groups, people are often asked how much they would pay for a 10% improvement in fuel efficiency. Funny that it’s always a small number. But you’re never going to learn about latent demands in focus groups. Toyota didn’t introduce the Prius because of findings in a focus group. It was convinced that the auto industry needed to change.  In fact, most of the innovation ideas that come from focus groups are incremental at best.

Organizations that rely on focus groups do so for a number of reasons. Some are good(ish): when your product is a hidden one or you have legal restrictions surrounding research, there aren’t too many other ways you can concept test. Your best bet here is to bring in a “facilitator” who offers an alternative way of processing what focus group respondents say. The conversation might be similar, but the song does not remain the same. Hiring an erudite listener or someone with experience in socio-linguistics can give you a real edge on delving into an understanding of what talk means to your product, service, business or brand. Before you go that route, however, know one thing: a focus group is not a test, it is a focus group. People looking at sexy pictures of your next big product offering and telling you they love the idea is not the same as people spending their hard earned money on that product when it comes to market only to find out that it is, in fact, a total piece of rubbish that they would never buy again. Some reasons for using focus groups are bad: when you decide to ‘test’ your advertising or marketing campaigns through focus groups you are living in La La Land.

There are a host of other reasons why innovative businesses are shying away from the focus groups these days, including:

Focus groups are safe. Organizations have been using them for decades and, as a result, their research departments have become lazy. When the big boss isn’t familiar with the methodology or value of another research approach, why suggest another? It’s easy to ship another Executive Summary report up to the wood-paneled office when you know the suit occupying it has already bought into the process.

Focus groups are quick and dirty. Some organizations are unwilling to make a real investment in research, so the prospect of throwing together a bunch of people in a room to provide some basic learning appeals to those that just want to get feedback on the cheap.  But you get what you pay for,right?

Focus groups are often lab-rattish. While an odd thing often happens in the presence of a camera – many people tend to ignore it after 20 minutes or so – the suggestion that feedback of any real value can be generated in front of a two-way mirror is a hop, skip and a jump away from ludicrous. It’s like being in the principal’s office: suspicious and nervous, participants often get their backs up against the wall.

Focus groups are ammunition for egos. Often, when one or two subjects tell you how great a product concept is there’s one young stud in an organization quick to use those reports to convince his boss that his idea is a runaway hit. Next thing you know you’ve invested a million dollars in grape flavored soap. Mmmmmm, grape flavored soap.

Focus groups are socio-generative. That is, when you put a group of people into a room for an hour or so, feed them, offer them drinks and then engage them in a conversation or an exercise, you’re temporarily birthing a transient micro community. As is the case in all communities, people take on particular social roles: the non-participator (just there for the sandwiches and $100); the exaggerator (who offers the equivalent of the consumer fishing story); the conversation dominator (who, if you can’t control him, makes you wonder why you spent $600 for $100 worth of feedback); the roll-over (who agrees to agree with everyone else); the challenger (the one who reports on how everything sucks and advertising or marketing doesn’t influence him); and, perhaps most confounding of  all, the focus group junkie (who tours the consumer feedback tour circuit like a rock star because your recruiting agency isn’t getting paid enough to find new people not well versed in what to say for $100). If the focus group was  a representation of society as a whole, a trained anthropologist might be able to make sense of these social roles and how their feedback can inform the client. But it’s not, so the data that emerges is often better suited to a white paper on the social dynamics of focus groups that an Executive Summary on whether or not to put almonds or peanuts into your chocolate bar.

Just because a company is spending tons of money on research and asking customers what they think or what they’d do doesn’t mean it will get innovation. As is the case with marketing, organizational development and other investments, innovation depends on the quality of the investment as much as the amount of resources put into it. New innovations create needs and performance gaps only once customers start using them and get turned on to the possibilities.

Businesses need to bring their customers into the innovation process as early as possible. They need to know that there is a large enough market to proceed. They need to have the mechanisms to capture value. They need to speak and listen in both the technology voice and the business voice. And they need to make sure that the features and performativity of new products or services are properly prioritized. Creativity and imagination are not enough. Balance is the key to successful innovation. This is where B-school meets D-school.