This post is contains excerpts from my upcoming book, “The New Rules of Ideation” which is coming out later this year.
Rule: There are many ways to the truth
There are hundreds of ideation and creativity methods. Some of them may seem stupid. Some of them actually are stupid. If you can tell from reading the description that you won’t like it, choose another.
Rule: Parody is the best friend of ideation
While making fun of another’s idea is a no-no, parody of the subject is not. Go ahead, Make fun of the topic you’re supposed to ideate on. You’ll find that if you jokingly come up with the worst possible idea, the opposite of that is probably the right thing to do.
Rule: All ideas are good, but some ideas are better
We know that in ideation sessions, more is better. That we are not to focus on quality. True, but at some point, we need to narrow down to the best ideas. This means choosing a group of experts from your team or your client’s team, and determining which ideas show the most potential. So some ideas are better than other ideas. And that’s OK.
Rule: Process is not the enemy of creativity
Many creatives feel that process kills creativity. Not true. It actually keeps creativity on track and focused. More importantly, it ensures that ideas make it out off the whiteboard and into production. Without process, ideas remain on the Post-It notes, stacked up, gathering dust.
Rule: Constraints make for better ideas
Again, we have creatives to blame for this. They will scream that constraints make it harder to ideate. This is completely unfounded. Ever stared at a blank canvas? Exactly.
Constraints don’t prevent ideas — rather, they give you a starting point, and a box to work within. No more blank canvas.
Rule: Creatives rarely generate the most ideas
This is surprising (and perhaps blasphemous), and flies in the face of logic. They’re creatives, for gawd’s sake! But it’s true. I’ve moderated and participated in hundreds of ideation sessions since the late 1990s.
Guess which job role continually outperforms creatives in these sessions? Developers. Yes, the folks everyone claims are “too left-brained,” outperform everyone when it comes to ideation.
I’m not 100% sure why, but my own observations (and yes, I know the plural of anecdote is not data) would indicate creatives fall in love with their ideas. As a result, their ideas tend to be more fleshed out, more detailed, and fewer in number. Rather the opposite of what these sessions are about.
Rule: The best ideas can come from anywhere, anyone
There’s a very good reason companies that excel at ideation (like IDEO) insist on having a diverse array of participants in an ideation session. Because you never know who had the right combination of life experiences to come up with the next big idea.
Rule: Quantity first, quality second, implementation third
We know that it’s quantity of ideas first. But the second act is to narrow those down and pick which ones can be used or combined into a useful strategy.
Where many companies go wrong is they come up with the ideas, but fail to vote down to a usable path. Instead, they become so enamored of the mass of ideas that they present all of them to their board. You can guess what happens next. “These are great! So, we’re doing all of these, right?
This leads me to the third part. Prioritize. You must prioritize the ideas that you choose (and the ones you didn’t, if time permits) before executing them.
Rule: Anyone can have a great idea–even that annoying coworker
“Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” — Albert Einstein
When I was Director of Interactive at Campbell Ewald, one of our biggest clients was the United States Postal Service. We presented the idea to make some official mailboxes look like R2D2.
It was a stroke of genius and ended up in the Louvre. Thousands of people photographed them, many cosplayed as Princess Leia, recreating the famous scene from Star Wars.
Guess who came up with that idea? Not the Creative Director. Not the Art Director.
The intern.
I repeat, Anyone can have the next Big Idea. Destroy your preconceptions of others’ abilities to ideate. They’re wrong, judgmental, and preventing you from seeing the genius in others.
Go re-read that Einstein quote. I’ll wait.
Next time you’re in one of these sessions, try to remain objective when the person you have little respect for comes top with an idea. Forget the person and see the idea for its own merit.
If you’re interested in reading the rest of this, email me. The first 10 to contact me will get a free, autographed copy. —Dave
