A Technique for Producing Ideas that Stands the Test of Time
Throughout all my books and the online courses I’ve attended on the subjects of creative thinking and ideation, one particular book frequently gets a reference “A Technique for Producing Ideas” by James Webb Young.
For a small handbook with just 48 pages, it certainly packs a punch. What’s the saying “great things come in small packages”?!
Within it are 5 simple stages for producing ideas and the methodology is just as effective some 46 years after its initial publication. Indeed, I feel a sense of satisfaction that the methodology aligns with the Hack of Kindness® social hackathons I deliver alongside Martin Downes on behalf of the Start Something Good® project for Cwmpas. Below are the 5 stages and how we have adapted them in a social hackathon context:
1. Gather Raw Materials (specific and general)
James Webb Young references the Italian sociologist Pareto in his conclusion that an idea is nothing more nor less than a new combination of old elements. In this instance, Webb Young advocates the combination of materials (information, knowledge and understanding), of the problem at hand, with “a constant enrichment of your store of general knowledge”.
“There is no such thing as originality… ideas borrow, blend, subvert, develop, and bounce off other ideas (Hegarty on Creativity)
At our Start Something Good® hackathons, we begin each event by splitting attendees into small diverse teams. Upon doing so, they have come together to resolve a particular social problem (their specific interest), but our mandatory first exercise is always to share their combined assets (networks, experiences, roles etc — their general knowledge), to apply to the challenge at hand.
2. Working Over These Materials in Your Mind
This stage is all about finding the relationship between the “materials” that help resolve the final problem. When we get our participants to share their assets, they are all plotted on a very extensive ‘asset map’ comprising of their social assets (networks), human assets (knowledge, skills and passions), public assets (available public services and amenities), physical assets (physical items they have access to), and financial assets (financial support). By having all of these assets mapped on a single page it is much easier to digest and make relationships from a plan view. We then request that participants constantly refer to their asset map for all following exercises that further investigate the problem at hand, therefore amalgamating the general strengths with the specific problem.
3. Incubation
In other words “just forget about it!” Webb Young suggests that at this point you need to “turn the problem over to your unconscious mind and let it do the work when you sleep.” This is a difficult one for us to achieve within the hackathon context as we are on a very tight schedule (even though a number of people may have a vested interest in resolving a particular social issue, it’s always difficult to get a diverse group of people in a room for any specific length of time). However, we’ve come to this conclusion ourselves; we work intensively throughout our events to come up with ideas but also mention the caveat “We guarantee that you’ll dream tonight and you’ll wake up tomorrow with even more ideas!”. It also reminds me of a story I read a few weeks ago on the subject of focus where a sociologist discovered that the Mona Lisa painting only appears to smile when you focus away from her mouth and appears to stop smiling when you look directly at her mouth. Ironically, this realisation only came to the sociologist in question during her bike ride home while she was thinking about other things.
4. Idea Creation (The “Eureka” moment)
And just like that, an idea will pop into your head; in the bath, in the middle of the night, or while riding a bike (as per the previous example). At our hackathons, we always arrive at a point where we have multiple ideas but these are forced; conceived in a short space of time while we are fortunate enough to have multiple individuals from different perspectives working together and sharing both specific and general information with each other. However, we also stress that it would be pretty naïve of us to assume that we’ll arrive at the perfect solution within a 3 or 7-hour sprint of activities. At our hackathons, we use the event to bring people together with a common purpose, from different perspectives to give them the spark to create something special. If we can inspire them to continue their mission after the event and provide them with the resources to do so, then that’s “mission accomplished” from our perspective. Participants just need to recognise further action is required to turn the spark of the idea into reality …and that’s where stage 5 comes into play.
5. Final Shaping and Development
“In this stage, you have to take your little new-born idea out into the world of reality… submit it to the criticism of the judicious”. James Webb Young.
I think anyone would agree that it would be quite naïve if we thought the first idea we came up with was perfect. Ideas take time to formulate; Alan Turing came up with the idea of a computer in 1936 but it took another 10 years until one was built. Likewise, Alexander Flemming discovered penicillin in 1928 but it wasn’t in widespread use for another 15 years. As mentioned previously, our role is to ignite that spark of an idea or to spark enthusiasm for innovation. Even if the initial idea doesn’t work, it’s a step in the right direction: -
“START being wrong and suddenly anything is possible. You’re no longer trying to be infallible. You’re in the unknown. There’s no way of knowing what can happen, but there’s more chance of it being amazing than if you try to be right.” Paul Arden
At our Hack Of Kindness® events, we introduce the iteration process as best we can within our time constraints in order to provide the participants with the techniques and tools to engage in continuous development post-hack; once an idea is conceived, we 1) put the participants through a solutions mapping exercise where we ask them to research their idea in the context of what similar idea has been executed before; What has worked? What hasn’t? Who’s done something similar locally and who’s done something similar globally? 2) We then provide a long list of ways that their idea could potentially be manipulated for improvement (can it be refined, repurposed or combined with anything? etc). 3) We get the participants to create a prototype of their idea, whether that be a role play, a physical example or a storyboard, before 4), asking them to pitch their idea to the other teams for feedback, using “I like…”, “I wish…”, and What if…” feedback statements.
Finally, accepting that any ideas generated at a hackathon will continue to evolve after testing, feedback… and sleep, as part of our Start Something Good® service, we are also fortunate to be able to offer a follow-up support service as part of the Hack Of Kindness® event in the form of a Legacy Officer to help take ideas forward. Having ideas is one thing, but making them tangible is when the hard work starts.
“What is a good idea to some can be bad or boring to others. A good idea is a clever solution to a problem, one that I have never seen before. But if an idea is not taken up and used as a solution to a problem it has no value. It becomes a non-idea. Lying in a drawer it is useless. Worse than useless, it’s a complete waste of space. Ideas have to be applied before they are recognized as good ideas. “ Paul Arden
In conclusion, I’m pretty satisfied that without reading the book previously, albeit through constant iteration and our own reflections at Start Something Good®, we’ve recognised the stages required to create ideas and indeed, the methodology that James Webb Young conceived all those years ago on a Sunday afternoon for his Monday-morning class has stood the test of time.
I hope that you find these 5 stages useful and if you did want to know more about Start Something Good and our Hack Of Kindness events, please visit https://cwmpas.coop/start-something-good/
