Facilitating creativity

The search for “out of the box” thinking

Eric Morrow
Nov 6 · 4 min read

A commonly requested outcome from a design thinking workshop is creative ideas. This type of question is frequently asked:

“How do you get folks to think outside of the box when it comes to the ‘innovation/prototyping/solutioning’ part of the workshop? Are there exercises, tools or the like to facilitate thinking outside of the box and creativity?

I think about creativity from a few different perspectives.

  1. Is it worth it? In a corporate environment, strange or creative ideas are often killed quickly and people learn to be more conventional. So step 1 in encouraging creativity is to think about the lifecycle of creative ideas. Do they get put into practice? Are they celebrated? Creating rituals around coming up with out of the box ideas is useful. As is allowing people to pursue unusual ideas for a bit before sharing out any results.

2) Do I feel creative? The environment where people work is important. Brainstorming in the space you work everyday is likely to lead to conventional ideas, especially if the office environment is a cubicle farm from the 70s. Spaces that are filled with windows and light, whiteboards and post-its, and art are often more inspiring. I live in Colorado and try as much as possible to have workshop participants think creatively while on a hike. Something about being outside in nature, away from tech and the normal trappings of work, is quite inspiring.

3) How am I being asked to be creative? I think about this from a methods perspective. When people are in a workshop environment, how are they being asked to generate ideas? A typical (and unhelpful) format is for the team leader to ask “anyone have good ideas?” Instead, I think creative brainstorming should be guided. One activity I like a lot is to assign people new personalities. For example, someone roleplays Elon Musk or Katrina Lake — people associated with being creative and out of the box. Now it’s no longer what “Jill from IT” would do, but instead they get to be creative with superpowers. Another technique is to give people the power of the Force or a magic wand from Harry Potter or the science of Star Trek. Once freed from everyday limits, you may get some truly magical ideas.

4) Selection Criteria — This is where the rubber hits the road and where creative ideas start to grow up. When selecting ideas to move forward into a prototyping phase, the selection criteria matter. Ask people to choose, for example, “One idea that you think will work and one idea that won’t” or “One idea that you love and one idea that you don’t.”

Considering these questions can help you structure a workshop that brings out the best in your team. Start by making sure creative ideas aren’t explicitly punished, as you work towards rewarding less conventional ideas. Then bring your team to a physical space (or emotional space, if online), that provides a lively backdrop for creativity. I prefer the mountains! Then guide your team through a handful of exercises that are intentionally designed to promote creativity. Finally, choose from the ideas using tools other than dot voting. Try asking people to choose the one idea they love.

Have fun designing the future!

If you are interested in bringing workshops involving creativity or out-of-the-box problem solving to your team or organization, please get in touch through StaircaseStrategy.com

Eric Morrow

Written by

Director, Design Thinking and Strategy with ConsenSys

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