Ken Miller Group

Brainstorming Etiquette: No “Bad Ideas”?

There are bad movies and bad meals.  Bad art and bad haircuts.  And yes, I’m afraid there are also bad ideas.  Where do you think all those bad movies come from?

I was recently invited to participate in a client brainstorming session dedicated to new package concepts.  The moderator (not me) began by outlining the “rules” of the session, one of which was that “there are no bad ideas.”  Each pearl would be duly recorded, discussed and evaluated.  Well, it was not my place to question this edict, and I know that it is a common guideline for brainstorming sessions.  But for this and other reasons, the team failed to achieve the goal of the session.  Stop me if you’ve heard this one…

My guess is that the “no bad ideas” rule came about to ensure the free flow of creative thinking and to encourage participation by all.  But I can’t help thinking that the genuine, proven reason for this practice is that we don’t want to undermine group dynamics and alienate team members in a hurtful critique of their ideas.  These are noble intentions, but they exact a high cost in productivity and even quality thinking.  Why?

Because the team ends up spending a lot of time in attempt to squeeze something meaningful from each kernel of wisdom.  Everyone in the room knows there’s often nothing to salvage, except for bad feelings.  Now, I’m not saying that team members are prone to dispensing worthless ideas.  Quite the contrary.  I think they are inclined toward brilliance…with the right focus.  But without that focus, it’s a crapshoot and there’s no reason to expect more good ideas than bad ones.  There’s not even a reason to believe we know what a good idea is.

So, how do these less than good ideas come about, and how are they best managed in the moment?  Certainly, team members are smart, capable and experienced.  But I believe that very often not enough pre-brainstorming preparation is done to frame up the problem, identify what the session is solving for, and define what a good idea really is.  Describing this process is not the subject of this little rant, but suffice it to say that everyone must be well versed in how the consumer defines expected performance (“utilities”), and the drivers of value.  These should be articulated in clean, clear, simple platforms that team members can be mindful of and refer to throughout the session.  I call this approach “Precision Ideation”, a topic for another day.

This approach has two positive impacts:  First, it allows team members to edit their ideas before exposing them to the group, saving time and distress.  Second, it encourages a powerful focus on solving for the key value drivers in very specific terms, ensuring all ideas are stronger.  When time, available resources and/or knowledge does not permit this approach, there is another rather simple method.  When I run such sessions, I like to break the team into subgroups for the most thought-intensive activities.  I think that the most cogent ideas often come from individuals, and that ideas that emanate from large teams tend to be watered down and meandering.  Therefore, small groups are the closest we can get to an environment that can best nurture a great idea in a brainstorming setting.  It’s also the most delicate arena for quashing a bad one.  That’s because a small group is informal, closely knit and non-confrontational.  So, there’s no risk of humiliation.  On the flip side, such a supportive, no-risk setting is just as likely to induce brilliance that may never have surfaced in a larger group.  Small groups can build and refine their idea set, present them to the larger group, and share all the recognition among them–both positive and negative.

It’s a win-win-win.  Ideas are better, forwarded in less time, with no personal recrimination.  In the end, acknowledging that there are, in fact, bad ideas out there helps to ensure that there are great ones, too.

Selling it In: Define, Develop and…Defend!

I’ve got a few issues with innovation processes.  Not because they are not effective in driving go-no-go decisions and speeding time to market.  But because I think they ignore  a critical cause of innovation project failure:  Unsuccessful sell-in to management.  There’s no real prescription for how to do this right.  I’ve seen more than a few solid business cases fall flat with management because the team couldn’t quite motivate and inspire the audience.  But, it’s not the team’s fault.  It’s all in the storytelling.

Many brand design firms like to talk about project “stages”.  They’re often some variation on “Define, Develop and Deliver”.  I would insert one more “D” word–”Defend”–between Define and Develop, as a way to standardize the sell-in process.  Defending a course of action is a key activity, but often the project review presentation is organized by sequential deliverables and their results.  But, a senior audience isn’t inspired by a chronological parade of facts and findings.  They want to visualize the opportunity.  They want to be told an engaging story.  They want to be sold.

A good story vividly demonstrates how key insights surfaced emotional and functional drivers of value for consumers.  And how those drivers were captured in a strategy and then translated into unique and exciting concepts.  Concepts that exceed consumer expectations and are mindful of internal constraints.

So, I’d love to hear about a business case that worried less about the chronology of a project and more about the progression of the thinking.  Just like really smart, intuitive kids,  I’d like to think management’s eyes brighten at the telling of a good story.

Concept Development: Mile Wide or Mile Deep?

I do a lot of work helping to focus creative energy in the development of new product or package concepts.  Many argue that creative teams should not be initially constrained in scope by specific consumer insights or internal parameters.  They think that truly “disruptive” innovation (if that’s the goal) comes from giving designers free reign, with minimal inspiration.  And that the “mile wide / inch deep” approach is best for the first round of concept development.

I disagree, and so do many designers I’ve worked with.  Creative teams must have latitude, for sure.  Design direction must not be so specific that their only remaining task is to draw a concept already formulated in words.  But many designers will welcome a narrowing of focus and an emphasis on the specific performance the new product needs to deliver.  They find that the “meter wide / mile deep” approach is richer and more challenging.  And, it’s more likely to drive concepts that are better integrated, better thought out and better at addressing consumer expectations.

The challenge is to present creatives with a design direction that addresses the key emotional, perceptual and functional utilities that drive value for consumers.  These come out of sound consumer research that captures these utilities and breaks them down into performance expectations and gaps.  Then, “Innovation Platforms” can be tackled individually, with the creative team drilling down into each to generate concepts that address just that criteria.  The concepts that best deliver on key utilities can then be integrated into a series of more cohesive concepts that do it all well.

This contrasts with the frequent practice of allowing the creative team to generate fully-featured concepts at the get-go to address all expectations.  The failure here is that each concept can’t possibly offer the best solution to each utility.  So, they must be dissected and reassembled once the best solutions from each are identified.  This takes longer, but most importantly, it leads to sub-optimal concepts that fail to meet some critical expectations.  Or, the attempted maximization of one or two concepts the team prefers.

In my experience, it’s much more effective to dig deep on consumer expectations and match the best solutions than it is to try and pick out and re-assemble the best scattershot ideas.