Best Practices for Driving Collaborative Innovation, Remotely: Part 1
For entrepreneurs, corporate innovation teams and university student teams that normally collaborate in-person, distance can seem to disrupt your collective creative process, business process and product process making innovation seem impossible, remotely.
I’m here to tell you it can be done. For the past two decades, I’ve garnered great success across corporate, community, country, and startup innovation teams spread globally. While the tools have advanced, focusing on people, process, technology, data, culture has been the core to my team’s successes.
At humble ventures, my partners and I were able to manage such amazing performance, remotely, because we structured our digital and physical environments based on the better part of a couple decade’s worth of research around accelerated knowledge convergence through computer-supported collaborative learning that resulted in innovation.
“…the only sustainable edge in the future will come from accelerated capability building — creating the conditions to enable people to learn faster by working together.” – Lang Davidson, Power of Pull review, HBR
This requires the “community” value to be articulated and the environment to be continuously shaped by participant interactions — whether for work or leisure — across structures & technologies, performance, and culture.
Anyone interested in geeking out about knowledge & social inclusion, technological enhancements, and participation feel free hitting me up direct.
However, the purpose of this post is in sharing my shortlist of best practices for those innovating remotely, but even more specifically for those (like university student teams) that are collaborating in a teaming environment rather than as a functioning team. You may wonder what I mean by “teaming”. Harvard Business School professor, Amy Edmondson says with teaming, “You have to get different expertise at different times, you don’t have fixed roles, you don’t have fixed deliverables, you’re going to be doing a lot of things that have never been done before, and you can’t do it in a stable team.”
This is the environment my team at SCADpro faces every quarter. As these unique collaborative design studio engagements between diverse design students and industry partners are taken online, these best practices will help us manage continuous innovation through scaled, inclusive idea generation and intentional design. We’ll kick off the week with best practices related to structures & technologies.
Best Practices: Structures & Technologies
Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) is typically organized as a grid in two dimensions.
Make sure you address risks associated with your remote (distributed) team, considering time zones, individual boundaries (personal and professional), independence, and social balance. With many going remote for the first time due to COVID-19, isolation is your worst enemy. Isolation can easily deteriorate morale. I recommend you intentionally make time to get to know one another through shared remote engagement. Interactive games are a great way to facilitate this (i.e. interactive PC-based, video charades, Pictionary, etc.). Book clubs and podcast clubs also enrich personal and professional relationships.
Adopt sprint-based structure:
- Understand/Empathize
- Define
- Ideate/Develop
- Package & Prep for Co-Creation
- Decide
- Prototype
- Test/Validate
- Package & Prep for Presentation
- Deliver
Adopt the “best” idea wins attitude. Pride in ownership can get in the way of innovation. Inclusive communication is key to surfacing the best ideas.
Below are recommendations on remote workspace tools I use. They are only as good as your understanding of your workflows.
domain-specific tools: These are tools to facilitate collaboration over a specific activity or domain, such as narrative design, wireframing, coding, or drafting. Recommend:
- Google Docs or Etherpad (writing)
- Figma and Principle (UX/UI prototyping)
- SolidWorks, Rhino, or Keyshot (3D modeling)
project management tools: These are tools that help everyone keep track of any project and all the tasks associated with it. Recommend:
- Monday or Google Sheets Gantt
communication tools: Tools to help your team communicate better. Recommend:
scheduling tools: Tools to deconflict and align availability. Recommend:
- Doodle and/or Shared Google Calendar
collaboration platform tools (synchronous and asynchronous): I suggest Mural for sprint facilitation and documentation. Choose your tools for each sprint phase. The following recommendations are from Mural’s (8) dropdown templates. I also import my own tools such as Running Lean’s Lean Canvas and Designing for Growth’s Storytelling mad-lib exercise and Bring-Build-Buy map.
- Reflect on your teams process. Recommend:
- Team kickoff template
2. Ice Breakers and Team builders. Recommend:
- Broken picture telephone template
- Team canvas
3. Plan a sprint or project. Recommend:
- Project planning template
- Roadmap
- Managing stakeholder expectations
- Workshop planning
4. Learn more about the problem(s). Recommend:
- Scenario map
- Assumptions grid
- Cause and effect fishbone
- 5 Whys worksheet
- Research: user interviews worksheet
- Design studio template
- Rose, thorn, bud affinity clusters template
5. Understand who you’re designing for. Recommend:
- Hero’s quest
- Empathy map canvas
- Persona profile
- Jobs-to-be-done worksheet
- Design studio template
- Assessing stories (leverage Storytelling mad-lib narrative)
6. Brainstorm ideas with team. Recommend:
- Round robin
- Consumer trends canvas
- Future headlines template
Note: One of my mentors, Chic Thompson, stresses to remember there are three levels of brainstorming:
- Level 1: sharing of facts and experiences
- Level 2: after everything is shared and realized, we acknowledge something new and different is needed
- Level 3: don’t know where the main idea came from, where reframing came from, or where the process is going
7. Design and evaluate solution(s). Recommend:
- Ideate: brainstorm and idea prioritize
- Storyboarding
- Really big idea sketchpad
- Really big idea critique pad
- Risk wall
- Business Model Canvas (I prefer the lean canvas)
- SWOT analysis template
- Mind maps template
- Design critique template
8. Agile. Recommend
- Wall of Work
Many of these tools will initially be used to capture assumptions. Make note to revisit them as data collection tools to evaluate as you prove/disprove assumptions. Make sure you’re operating in a continuous ideate, build, measure, learn loop.
There are additional amazing tools to leverage from Gamestorming. Facilitators need a diverse bag of tools to consider based on the people, atmosphere, challenge, etc. Recommend downloading The definitive guide to facilitating remote workshops. For session management, I recommend reading What I’ve learned from facilitating over 100 remote collaborative workshops, Tips for remote facilitation, and 8 Ways to Build a Culture of Trust Based on Harvard’s Neuroscience Research. Also watch Chic Thompson’s What’s your never?. I’ve been using the “opposites method” for years. It works!
For those on the new business generation side, I’d also recommend reading Harry Alford’s, How To Apply Design Thinking To Customer Development. He’s a great resource of knowledge on the latest, greatest to drive custom development success.
