Step by Step Instructions for Brainstorming your Innovation Team’s Next Project: AKA S.L.A.P. Brainstorming (I just made that up. SLAP.)
Background:
You have an innovation team that is 5-9 people, a mix of people with design, research, and development background, but all on the team because they are innovators. You have just wrapped up on your last big project (s) or milestones, and now it’s time to brainstorm about what’s next — either some cool/exciting new feature on an existing product, or the Next Big Thing related to the team’s domain of expertise.
Who to include:
- Innovators: A mix of design, research, and development from your work group. You probably already know who they are, but also ask around. Try to avoid including notorious nay-sayers at the brainstorming phase.
- Diverse ages: Include a range of ages, sometimes the youngest person on the team has the best idea of what’s cool/hot.
- Doers: Be sure to include a mix of the people who are likely to actually work on creating the next round of projects, especially if they are the type of person who is likely to take a lead.
- Manager? While it is desirable to have the team’s manager participate, avoid having the manager facilitate the session, this can overly inhibit/shape the direction of the brainstorming session. Tell the manager in advance to let others speak before voicing his or her ideas. Don’t worry, the team manager will naturally have a large influence on the final outcome, our goal is to work against this tendency so new and diverse ideas may emerge.
Part I: The S.L.A.P. session (2 hours)
The goal of the S.L.A.P. session is to bring to the forefront of people’s minds (“activate”) aspects of the team and the environment that should influence the idea generation session. This helps to focus the brainstorming discussion on projects that are feasible and likely to be implemented. Keep in mind though that both of these sessions are about *idea production* not *evaluation/criticism*. That comes later. Be sure to take notes for the SLAP analysis on a white board in the same room as the next session: you will find you frequently refer back to this.
- Scope (1/2 hour)
- Goals: define scope of project in terms of the goals each individual, the team, and the company. These will generally include: a) make money, b) have fun, c) be super cool, d) get published, e) do something in line with the company’s mission statement, f) be unique, g) appeal to target users, h) innovation for 2 years out, or 10 years out?
- Goal priority: discuss which goal(s) are most important
- Scope: define scope of project in concrete man hours, e.g., 1 project, 50% time for 3 people over 5 weeks, or 2 projects, each 10% time for 2 people over 6 months. Etc.
- Leverage (1/2 hour)
- Team: What unique skills/talents does the team have that can be leveraged? Go around, have each person describe their skills/talents.
- Company: What does the company have that can be leveraged?
- Other: What other aspects of the team can be leveraged? E.g., social connections, location, etc.
- Combinations: it is often the case that innovation arises from crossing two separate ideas
- Affordances (1/2 hour)
- The world is swarming with smart people, many of them smarter than you. As such, most existing markets have already been saturated with technologies. Often, opportunities for innovation occur where there are new affordances emerging that can be taken advantage of. Spend time brainstorming about what new technologies, environmental conditions, social conditions, etc., are affordances for innovative new technology in the next two to ten years? Recent examples would be the social networks as platforms, the iPhone, increasing expense of gas, penetration of Internet to 99% of americans in urban environments, increased prevalence of wi-fi hot spots, cheap/easy microcontrollers, global penetration of mobile tech, proliferation of social networks into mainstream consciousness (enterprise, older populations), Twitter usage. Etc.
- Passion (1/2 hour)
- A lot of innovative ideas are driven to the point of actualization because of someone’s passion. More innovative ideas never bear fruit because no one in the room really cares. It will be important to know/understand the team’s passions when making decisions about which projects to pursue, and who to give the “lead” role.
- Have each person describe what they are really passionate about, both at work and in their personal lives. Jogging? Electronics? Writing? Events? Best in class program management procedures? Again, you’ll be surprised what people geek out on. True innovators tend to have a few things going at any given time.
Part II: The Brainstorming — 2 hours
Now that you have completed the SLAP analysis, it is time for the brainstorming session. This brainstorming session is run much like others. As people generate ideas, be sure to write them down on a white board. Try to write similar ideas near each other but be deliberately non-linear. (Show pic of brainstorming white board here…). If the team spends too much time (more than five minutes) exploring a particular idea, wrap it up and move on to the next. You want to generate a lot of ideas here, not get too focused on one. Write down *each idea*, it is important to not evaluate/restrict at this point. If people start running out of ideas, use the SLAP analysis to instigate more conversation. Be sure to include five minutes for blue sky.
- Brainstorming (1.5 hours)
- “Pet projects” Have people start throwing out ideas of projects they would like the team to consider. Again, because these are innovators, they probably have something already in mind
- By goals: Review the goals, have people brainstorm around these
- By Leverage: Review the teams leverage, have people brainstorm around these
- By affordances: Review the affordances, and have people brainstorm around these
- By Passion: Review passions, and come up with ideas around these
- Blue Sky: if they could do anything in the world without any constraints, what would they do?
- Reduction (1/2 hours)
- first, while people take a break, use the whiteboard to collapse similar ideas into each other. Draw a circle around each unique idea
- When people are back in the room, go through each idea to remind everyone what’s up on the board.
- Spend a few minutes giving people to “advocate” an idea. Why do they think any particular one should be done and why?
- Then, have everyone go through and mark with a RED star the three ideas they think we *should do*, and with a GREEN start the three ideas they *want* to do.
- Erase all ideas that have no stars by them
- At this time, there will likely be about 2 ideas per person on the board. If you have more than that, it is too many, erase the ones with less stars. Erase ideas
- Assignment (5 minutes)
- Over the next week, one member of the team will take on the assignment of exploring one of the ideas. At this point, distribute the assignments so each person has one, maybe two. In some cases it may make sense to have two people take on one assignment.
- Each person’s task is to develop a ten minute power point presentation for EACH of their assigned brainstormed idea as outlined below.
Part III: The Homework — 8 hours, over 1 or 2 weeks
The goal of this section is to a) let ideas percolate in informal team conversations, and b) do some research exploring feasibility of particular ideas. A surprising amount of thought will or will not happen at this point for each idea, which is a good indication of the feasibility of the team taking the idea to fruition. Some presentations will be too vague, whereas others will be quite concrete and practically a spec. Also, at this point, some of the erased ideas will creep their way back in to people’s presentations because in that week or two it had a sleeper effect. It is important to accommodate this “sleeper effect”. If someone approaches the manager and says “actually, I really think we should revisit the X idea, can I do presentation on it” let them. (But they still have to do the assigned ideas.)
- Slide 1: Goal and brief description of idea/project
- Slide 2-3: Related research (or art if germane): what kind of research has already been done around this? Be sure to check out the ACM and IEEE digital libraries.
- Slide 4-5: Related existing technology: Does this essentially exist already? What are related technologies? Spend a lot of time on google for this and TAKE SCREENSHOTS.
- Slide 6: Market opportunity? (this depends on goals of company, if this slide is needed)
- Slide 7-9: First Stab at design: for key, unique aspect of technology
- sketch out user flow
- wireframe of main page/interaction
- Slide 10: Conclusion/Recommendation: do it , or not?
Part IV: Review and Decide — ~2 hours
You will often find at this point that most ideas have clear outcomes: it shouldn’t be done, or it should.
- Notes from last meeting: Briefly summarize highlights of past meeting: goals, ideas, who’s doing what
- Presentation: Ten minute presentations (ten minutes or less!) Ask questions at this point but avoid discussing too much
- Discussion: pros/cons of each? Which seems obvious to do? Which seem like they don’t sufficiently meet goals, are not crystalized enough, etc.?
- Have people address: If stack ranked against each other, which would you do?
- Pick (here, let manager take a more authoritarion role if that’s your company’s nature, but at this point every team member will feel like they were heard and “buy in” to the selected project)
Discussion
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