Page 93 - The Design Thinking Playbook

How can we get participants to break loose from their The actual search for ideas only begins in the second step. Peter en-
supposedly serious professionalism and open up to new and courages the participants to break out of their usual thought patterns
unconventional things? so they can come up with some “wild” ideas. He uses two specific
tricks; here’s how we implement them in our workshops:
Quite conventional ideas usually mark the beginning of a brainstorm-
ing session. Their novelty value is low. 1) When we moderate a workshop with several groups, we can shape
the search for ideas as an internal contest. We stop the brainstorming
Peter has had the experience of some of his colleagues coming to ev- session after halftime and request that the groups state the number
ery workshop with a fixed idea of how the solution might look. During of collected ideas.
the brainstorming session, it is hard to pull them away from these
fixed ideas, and they generate little that is new. For this reason, Peter For the individual teams, this is an incentive to catch up, so they will
always holds a first session at the beginning, which he refers to as inevitably have to venture in the direction of “wilder” ideas if they
the “brain dump.” All attendees have the opportunity in this session have undermatched the creative performance of the other groups. This
to dump their ideas so they are open to new things. approach allows us to see which group is wrestling with difficulties. If
one group is far behind in their number of ideas, we watch to find out
exactly what inhibits the team. Usually, it turns out this group has—
against instructions—begun to discuss and evaluate the ideas.

2) We have the groups present the two best and two dumbest
solutions they have generated. This moment is a valuable experience
for every group. First, the task will induce a few giggles, which is
quite a help for creating a positive atmosphere. Second, and far more
important, now a debate is launched on whether some of the ideas
are actually as dumb as had been assumed at first. Every dumb idea
has potential! When we know how to reverse the idea successfully
into something positive, we will gain valuable perspectives with a
guaranteed novelty value.

92