Got any tried and trusted creative techniques to share?

(Pam) We've all got those creative exercises that work every time. Okay so we need to find new ones (partly the purpose of this blog), but what are the ones that you always use? One person's tried and trusted might be someone else's new technique.

Here's one: Related worlds: To get people to think about a problem from a new angle. Get people into teams of 3. They should each choose a completely unrelated brand to the problem (like The Army, iPod, Cillit Bang, BMW). Get each team to first list a whole page of reasons why that brand or product has succeeded, coming up with as many descriptive words as possible. Then using that list of words as inspiration, ask yourself the question "if I were Cillit Bang, how would I approach this problem?". This works well as it forces people to come at it from a new angle or using a different strategy. It's not wildly creative, and so is a safe and often easy way of getting people to think in fresh ways.

Do you have any others to share?

The Power of "I Don't Know"

Today I asked a colleague a question about how our partner network operates. He paused for a moment, and then began what felt like a never-ending monologue response. I tried to re-direct a couple of times, re-asking the question with different angles, but always the same wandering, generic response.

It was obvious that he did not know the answer to my question. But rather than say, "I don't know", he told me everything he DID know... just on topics completely irrelevant to my question. What he didn't realize is that it's good, no GREAT, to admit "I don't know".

Saying "I don't know" implies that there is an answer out there... that more curiosity, investigation, and imagination is needed. Conversely, mashed-up responses tend to confuse, contaminate and close-off the topic being discussed. it implies that the answer is known and no more exploration is needed - and that's bad for innovation, because it's the unknown answers that hide the best insights and ideas.

So, if you get asked a question to which you don't know the response, admit it. Don't wind down the conversation with a lengthy response, wind it up by saying "I don't know", let's think about how we can find an answer!

this is pam

this is a picture of me at a Super Group in Brazil, eating as usual!

got any funny stories about working in innovation?

(Pam) My friend Jackie works in project management for qualitative research. This morning she told me she had a client phone in to complain about the recruitment of the advertising testing groups last night. The group used advertising boards for various options of communicating about earth movers. Unfortunately one of the respondents that the recruiter sent was blind, and had a dog with him, so obviously couldn't help that much in the group! Of course the researcher was too kind to ask him to leave - and luckily the man had brought his friend with him to describe the boards, so that worked out okay.

When Penny heard Jackie's story she told us she'd had an in-home group where the hostess had her dog in the room as the group was taking place. Luckily the group was being videoed for the client, so when the dog did a huge poo on the carpet in front of the group, it was recorded for posterity.

Other stupid focus groups:
people who've turned up to groups on ice-cream who are allergic to dairy products

Ownership of ideas - is competition good or bad for creativity?

(Pam) one of the best ways to encourage people to take part in an idea generation process is to offer real rewards to the individuals who come up with the best ideas.

however, the best ideas are often created by a group of people who build on each other's ideas. a good creative process should make everyone feel like they created the ideas, and make it hard to attribute a good idea to just one person in the room.

does competition between those taking part get in the way of creativity because it stops people from building on each other's ideas?

How do you compete with "free"?

(Scott) Thought provoking question of the day: How would you market your product if the competition was giving theirs away for free? How would you capture consumer attention? How would you convince your customers that your product was worth the investment?

Or, just for kicks, you can also flip the question on its head: How would you market your product if the competition was charging ten times more than your price point?

The point is... rather than simply respond with your own pricing manipulation, how do you ensure your product is truly focused on differentiation? To compete effectively you MUST understand the most compelling components of your product's differentiation strategy. Answer the above questions and you'll have set out down the right path.

Welcome to the ROI

Hello there! Welcome to the "Return On Innovation" blog. If you're here it's probably because we share a similar philosophy on creativity. There's so much room to improve our return on innovation!

Too many great ideas go undiscovered. Too many killer concepts are left on the drawing board. Too few connections are made amongst people and ideas. The trouble is, we often don't know what techniques to apply to draw out the best ideas, nor how to bring high impact ideas to market. The intent of this blog is to fill those gaps.

So, it will be peppered with creativity tips and techniques, success stories and failures... all you need to learn and get inspired. And, rather than share the "usual suspects" (the same re-hashed idea generation exercises and examples that run rampant in the creative world) our objective is to develop new methods and materials.

Of course, sponges aren't all that creative, which is exactly why we expect you to contribute to the conversation: post comments, send us ideas, challenge our thinking. Let's grow this into a great resource... so that when you need a creativity exercise for a group of 5 or 500, or some insight into connecting diverse ideas, you can always turn to this space and get a great return on the time you invest.

Happy innovating!
Pamela Hamilton and Scott Buchanan.