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Meet smarter, not harder!
On the dynamics of innovation
Wednesday, 30 November 2011
Edison famously said genius is 1% inspiration, and 99% perspiration. Let’s not waste all that good healthy sweat through poor tools and approaches for working together.
Daniel Cook has written an excellent article, Visualising the Creative Process. He summarises his ideas and extensive real world experience in developing computer games as follows:
From my perspective, this cyclical flow has striking similarities to the dynamics of facilitation. The “spark” is like the topic: the clearer that is, the more rigorous you can be with your ‘experiments’ and ‘culling criteria’.
Cook says clear criteria help you make an early call about whether or not to cull an idea. Value is generated and delivered by making many low cost experiments, culling ruthlessly (which maximises the good) and building as you go. So, being rigorous along the way enables much greater value to be delivered at the end.
Less obviously, a workshop process where you cluster ideas and name those clusters precisely follows the same dynamic. You have to be absolutely clear what common aspect of the topic the ideas are pointing to, and how they fit together as part of the whole.
Building agreement requires the same shared understanding of the agendas and values across a group – irrespective of whether it’s the application of the culling criteria, or the naming of a cluster. Value is delivered either way.
So, what’s your experience of facilitating innovation? Please, share your thoughts below.
Go well!
- Brainstorm: Create lots of low cost, real world experiments.
- Cull: Rigorously apply agreed upon culling criteria to weed out the weak ideas and reinvest in your most promising experiments.
- Cycle: Repeat the process until you generate meaningful value.
- Practice: Across multiple projects, practice all stages of the creative process so you constantly improve the myriad of skills involved in brainstorming, culling and cycling.
From my perspective, this cyclical flow has striking similarities to the dynamics of facilitation. The “spark” is like the topic: the clearer that is, the more rigorous you can be with your ‘experiments’ and ‘culling criteria’.
Cook says clear criteria help you make an early call about whether or not to cull an idea. Value is generated and delivered by making many low cost experiments, culling ruthlessly (which maximises the good) and building as you go. So, being rigorous along the way enables much greater value to be delivered at the end.
Less obviously, a workshop process where you cluster ideas and name those clusters precisely follows the same dynamic. You have to be absolutely clear what common aspect of the topic the ideas are pointing to, and how they fit together as part of the whole.
Building agreement requires the same shared understanding of the agendas and values across a group – irrespective of whether it’s the application of the culling criteria, or the naming of a cluster. Value is delivered either way.
So, what’s your experience of facilitating innovation? Please, share your thoughts below.
Go well!