Thinking Outside The Box

It it common for organizations to use brainstorming as a method for generating new ideas, but it’s not the best way to be original. Brainstorming certainly captures a lot of excitement and intrigue. It’s fun to do and people like it. But it’s really just a bias-making exercise inherent to the way it’s structured.

Choice Mapping is recommended to replace brainstorming.  

Choose The Problem - The first step is to choose a problem to solve. It is simple but most of the problem may not be self-evident. The problem may be that you need to be aware of potential disruptive technologies. Or you may want to know how to make your current product lineup more carbon neutral.

Break It Down - Break down the problem into subproblems. You may identify several but choose no more than five. Subproblems are a piece of the larger puzzle. If you were to solve these, you’ll solve about 90% of the problem. Breaking down the problem into subproblems becomes a thought exercise. The more meaningful and deliberate you are in the process, the better your results will be.3. COMPARE WANTS

Compare Wants - Determine what you want to feel when you solve the problem. “Most of the time when people say, ‘What do you want to achieve? What are your goals? What are your metrics?’ it becomes very objective. Humans are not objective creatures. Instead, it’s about ‘How do you want to feel? Everybody’s got some feeling, and you might as well just surface that because that is ultimately going to serve as your selection criteria. And if it doesn’t serve as your selection criteria, you’re never going to be motivated to take that idea.

Search In & Out The Box - Create a structured process for gathering relevant information by creating a matrix. With the problem broken down into five subproblems, find two examples of how the subproblem has been solved within your industry and three examples of how it’s been solved outside of your industry. Typically, when someone has a problem, they go look at what their competitors have done and they study their own area of expertise. On a choice map, only 20% is dedicated to industry expertise. If you want out-of-the-box solutions, you have to look at what exists in other boxes.

Create A Choice - The fifth step is choice mapping. Take one option per subproblem and determine how you could combine them to create a new solution. You have so many possible options that you can be combining. No two people imagine the same thing given the same materials. Look at the choices separately, not in the same room. That’s how you’re going to get real diversity

Third Eye Test - Choice mapping can create thousands of unique solutions. Compare your wants to get a big picture score, then use your big picture score to identify your top five different ideas. 

Brainstorming is the golden child for coming up with ideas, but most ideas suck. “Instead, you need to teach people how to come up with good quality ideas, and in particular, how to evaluate them. The key is creating choices. Multiple choices don’t come from giving people pure freedom. You get your best choices through structure and constraints.