Hack #3: How Can “Condoms” Increase My Sales?
Use random stimulation to break free from conventional thinking and discover creative solutions to your most persistent problems.
Welcome to the 3rd post in our #Hacks series where we provide you with all the tools you need to solve your most stubborn challenges in 2 hours (or less).
What is Random Stimulation?
Many lateral thinking techniques involve the restructuring of existing information to generate new ideas. Random stimulation is different. Random stimulation promotes the introduction of completely new (and unrelated) information. This is in stark contrast to conventional vertical thinking which deals exclusively with the relevant and completely discounts the irrelevant.
Random stimulation generates new ideas by combining concepts that have nothing in common to see what emerges. The beauty of this technique is that the brain cannot hold irrelevant items in isolation for long. The brain makes sense of the unfamiliar by combining it with the familiar to maintain order. You have no choice but to think differently about your challenge. In fact, I’ve yet to find a problem that doesn’t work with random stimulation, it’s my go-to technique when I’m struggling to solve a really tough challenge.
So, How Does It Work?
There are many ways to forcibly introduce random information into our thought process. You can select random words from dictionaries or magazine articles, you can ask a stranger the first word that comes into their head, you can go into a supermarket and identify the first blue item you see. The only rule is that your selection process has to be random.
The following process outlines the introduction of random information and the steps necessary to associate it with your challenge and discover creative solutions (check out the template in the section to see how it all fits together):
1. Select a random word
Simply open a dictionary, shut your eyes and point your finger on the page. The word you point to represents the random stimulant. Purists would suggest it’s the first word you find. Personally, I’ve found this exercise works better with nouns, so I repeat the exercise until I point to the first noun, but it’s really up to you. The best words are simple and familiar — words that you can visualize and describe vividly.
2. Build random word attributes
Next, we develop a list of attributes associated with the random word. These can be related nouns, feelings, verbs, whatever comes to mind. If your random word is beer, your attributes may be relaxation, pint, hops, staggering, headache or dancing. The objective is to increase the number of random words available to associate with the challenge.
3. Identify challenge attributes
Now, we identify the challenge attributes. These are words that sit at the core of the challenge. For example, if your challenge was “how can we improve the experience in our doctor’s waiting room?”, then your attributes may be time, bored, magazines, pain or nervous. Here, you are setting the stage by building a pool of words that can be directly linked with the random word attributes.
4. Build association equations
Next, it’s time to bring everything together by building associated equations. By this time, you may have equations already formed in your mind. If so, just write them out. If not, randomly combine words to form equations and see if they provide any inspiration. As an example, you might form the following equation using random word and challenge attributes:
Relaxation = Pain + Magazines
From this, your idea may be to read through your magazines prior to placing them in the waiting room to ensure there’s nothing written about pain in order to help your patients relax.
5. Elaborate on your ideas
The final stage is to take your most promising equations and elaborate to form new and creative solutions to your challenge.
Example: How Can “Condoms” Increase My Sales?
We previously worked with a company in Colombia that built and installed green walls. These are the plant-based walls that you see in fancy hotels and high-end corporate offices. The founders felt like they were exhausting sales to their traditional customers and wanted to discover new markets for their products. We employed the technique of random stimulation to help them identify new target markets for their products. We used the word “Condom” to inspire divergent thinking about the challenge, our ideas are illustrated in the ideation sheet below:
Condom >> Pregnancy + Health >> Pregnancy Clinics
The first word we associated with condom was “pregnancy” — I think the link is pretty obvious :) Our discussion on pregnancy led to a discussion of mother and baby health (the second word identified). Specifically, that pregnant women should care most about air quality as this is the only time that somebody is breathing for two. We agreed that pregnancy clinics would be a very logical market for the air-cleansing quality of the plant wall installations (as would lung clinics in hospitals too).
Condom >> Cheating >> Emission Cheats
Another word we associated with condoms was “cheating” based on our assumption that people who are cheating on their partners are more likely to use condoms. The word “cheating” inspired us to think of emission cheats. Perhaps, companies found guilty of cheating emission targets would be prime target markets as the air-cleansing properties of installations would help reverse the damage done and improve the public relations aftermath.
Condom >> 99.9% + Disease >> Statistical Displays
The third and fourth words we associated with condom were “99.9%” and “disease”. 99.9% represented the safety rating of condoms. From 99.9% we moved on to a discussion of statistics. “Disease” started a discussion about the benefits of installations on disease reduction in places of poor air quality. We combined those concepts to suggest building real-time statistics demonstrating disease reduction (rather than meaningless statistics like lbs of carbon saved) into installations and selling to facilities associated with poor air quality such as airports, bus terminals and other heavy-traffic areas.
Wrapping Up (no pun intended)
I was really skeptical when I first learned about this technique a few years back. It goes against everything we’ve been taught about solving challenges. Who in their right mind would ever start introducing random words to help solve a challenge? It sounds crazy, right? However, for those stubborn challenges that are proving difficult to solve, we have no alternative but to inject new life into our thought processes. Nothing suggests “new” better than “random”. The next time you’re struggling for a solution, check out random stimulation, just like me you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the results.
