May 24, 2012 | By Michael Fruhling | Category: Best Practices

Corporate marketers are often skeptical of consumers' abilities to articulate new product opportunities. However, rather than lament consumers' limitations, it is better to appreciate that they often can be quite good at "connecting the dots" in response to creative stimulus. Shrewdly chosen props which apply select technologies adopted from other categories can dramatically communicate otherwise complicated concepts and even emotional components in an intuitive and elegant fashion.

I have devised a powerful creative method called "Practical Possibilities" with strong applicability to new product development. It applies prototypes as means of evoking consumer needs, that would otherwise be challenging to communicate. These "props" don't necessarily have to be "finished." However, they must be sufficiently functional to enable consumers to make the leap necessary to envision their application in context.
 
Consider the Listerine Breath Strip. It caught on with consumers in a category populated by chewing gum and mints because it offered a cool, discrete breath freshening product. Compare this with Camel Strips and Camel Orbs, a dissolving film and lozenge respectively, housed in a compact container. They deliver flavored tobacco actives to consumers who wish for a discrete alternative to cigarettes and chewing tobacco. Importantly, Strips and Orbs address several social inconveniences and dissatisfiers such as smoke, spit and litter.
 
One could have easily envisioned marketers using a version of the Listerine Breath Strip or Tic Tacs to communicate the Strips and Orbs concepts to consumers (and perhaps they did!). Again, it isn't critical that the physical executions be identical. However, they must be sufficiently similar to allow the concept's concise communication, including the important emotional components to the target customers.
 
Quite intriguingly, when Strips and Orbs were introduced, their maker was widely criticized by politicians, parent and anti-smoking groups because they perceived that they appeal to the same young audiences that were drawn to the breath freshener products. While I am not a proponent of tobacco use, and certainly not among young people, one could look at these vocal and heated criticisms as potent validation of my point: they perceived Orbs as being targeted to appeal to youths. 

While space limitations restrict me from doing so here, I can also provide relevant examples where this approach could be profitably applied in home and garden, personal care and food products. Importantly, "Practical Possibilities" isn't simply about translating technologies from one category to another. It is about carefully selecting the means to effectively communicate a product idea and often an emotional benefit through a well understood physical execution.

May 24, 2012 | By Chuck Frey | Category: Creativity Technique

This YouTube video produced by Disney borders on ridiculousness: Darth Vader sits in on a group brainstorming session. As you might imagine, he totally takes over with his obsession on destroying people and planets. Although it's very tongue in cheek, this video does make the point very clearly:

Strong personalities can totally derail your brainstorming sessions.

They tend to dominate the conversation, drowning out others' voices and forcing quieter participants into stunned silence. They also tend to be dismissive of the ideas of others - even though they expect their ideas to get a fair hearing. This often happens if you invite a domineering boss to the meeting. Subordinates are fearful of saying anything that will piss off their manager, so they withhold their ideas from the group.

It is the brainstorming facilitator's responsibility to select the right mix of people for the ideation session and to ensure that strong personalities are either not invited or are kept in check - so they don't pull a "Darth Vader" on the rest of the members of the group.

May 23, 2012 | By Chuck Frey | Category: Creativity Technique

Unusual or random stimuli can often serve as powerful catalysts for personal brainstorming. From picking random words out of a dictionary or magazine to environmental creativity - where objects and people in your immediate area are used as stimuli - there are numerous techniques to jump-start your lateral thinking capabilities.

By far one of the most unusual that I've uncovered lately can be found in Tom Wujec's excellent brainstorming book, Five Star Mind: Games and Puzzles to Stimulate Your Creativity and Imagination - hieroglyphics. That's right: Egyptian pictographs. They are rich with meaning and can really help to get your mind moving, Wujec says - and I have to agree. This is a simple, brilliant ideation technique.

Here's how to utilize this technique:

• Find an image of hieroglyphs (Google Image Search is a great start) or use the public domain PDF of typical characters that I found during my search for a suitable source for them.
• Use the pictographs to make up a story about your current creative challenge. What ideas come to mind from making these visual associations? How do these images lead your thinking in new directions.
• Alternatively, take a temporary "creative excursion away from your your situation for now. Wujec explains: "The figures of people can represent... clients. A wave pattern could represent assets or liabilities. Imagine how you might interpret these shapes if you were thinking about writing a mystery novel, starting a frozen yogurt business or making up an ad campaign for a new soup."
• Take what you've learned from this creative excursion and then try to apply it to solving your current challenge.

Why not give this unique ideation technique a try? I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by the results!

May 16, 2012 | By Michael Fruhling | Category: Best Practices

In business and in life, clear and accurate problem definition is an essential prerequisite for effective problem solving. This may sound obvious, or even trite, but this simple truth can be overlooked by those with pressing needs and a bias for action.
 
What do I mean by this? A very simple, dramatic example: Megan is preparing the family dinner when the phone rings. Though she is only momentarily away from the stove top, the sausage dish she is cooking bursts into flame. The fire frightens her and fearing it will quickly burn out of control, she grabs a pitcher of water to pour on it...and if she does it will be an enormous mistake. One must not use water on a grease fire. Doing so will cause the grease to splash, will likely create serious injury and will risk spreading the fire further. In effect, it will not solve her problem. Quite the contrary. It will likely create additional ones.
 
In this example, Megan did not correctly define her problem. Fortunately, most situations aren't this dire, and typically don't require split second decision making. We often have more time to reflect on our needs. Still, the stakes involved in proper problem definition can often be quite high. As a result, knowing how to properly articulate and communicate a problem and how to recognize what help looks like is very important. In the example provided, Megan needed to safely and quickly extinguish a grease fire. Understanding this, would likely lead to different solution options than a less precisely worded problem statement.
 
In business and in life, do you take time to understand and define your problems and your needs before you try to solve them? And when you do, do you recognize what help should look like for you?

May 15, 2012 | By Dana Wolcott | Category: Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing continues to be a good tool for innovation. And, you could participate on either the challenge end or the participant end (or, both of course). If your organization hasn't found a way to try it, here's a good example.

If you're a creative problem solver looking for a new challenge, here's an outlet for you!

"ChallengePost enables government agencies and software companies to invite the public to solve problems. Challenges increase awareness, foster participation, and generate innovation...ChallengePost provides full-service competition management and promotions services to guide clients throughout the entire challenge process. With more than 200 competitions under our belt, we have a built in community of 220,000+ developers, designers and technology enthusiasts who look to us for meaningful open government and software development challenges."

There are 43 active challenges on the website right now and while some only get you a pat on the back, there are a few with real money rewards such as The Royal Canadian Mint's offer of $52,700 for apps using their Mintchip digital money system or US Department of Energy's offer of $100,000 for an app to help utility consumers make the most of their Green Button electricity usage data.

As we know, the first step to an innovative solution is a well constructed problem statement and secondly, getting as many ideas as possible improves your odds for an outstanding solution. Challenger or challengee, how could your organization benefit from clear problem statements and crowdsourcing the solutions?

View a list of all posts

Link to the Innovation Weblog

NEW: Subscribe to the newsfeed for this Weblog!

Get even more insights by following me on Twitter

Sign up today for InnovationWeek, a once-a-week e-newsletter that includes a summary of the latest posts added to this Weblog.