The 8 deadly sins of 48hr innovation challenges 8 deadly sins of 48hr innovation challenges - how to spot them and how to avoid them My background - divergent + Global Service Jam 2011 & 2012 Seen fair share of successes and failures when it comes to innovating within a tight time frame
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The 8 deadly sins of 48hr innovation challenges
8 deadly sins of 48hr innovation challenges - how to spot them and how to avoid them
My background - divergent + Global Service Jam 2011 & 2012
Seen fair share of successes and failures when it comes to innovating within a tight time frame
no fun & play
Be wary of a lack of fun and play.
• take it all very seriously sucks the life out of your team
• restricts creativity
• guarantees boredom and bad outcomes
Instead, inject as much play as possible, with focus on the job at hand - “purposeful play”
• Playfulness encourages creativity and teamwork.
• and helps people have a memorable and fun time.
ideas not made tangible
If all you’re doing is talking about and writing about your ideas they wont be tangible and your team and the judges will likely have a hard time getting the concept and being engaged and excited by it.
Instead, always be making - make something, part of your idea, a whole concept, anything
share it with others and test it
learn about it’s strengthes and weaknesses quickly and cheaply
adopt a “build to think” mindset - use making to resolve debates, answer questions and explore options.
limited collaboration
If you’re team starts to look a bit like this you might be in trouble. If one person’s giving all the instructions and the rest are just following you might be missing out on the collective power of the group to innovate.
A lack of egalitarian collaboration discourages new ideas and different thinking and this all helps ensure a run of the mill result.
Instead, get everyone involvedutilize the diverse skills and perspectives of the team, encourage contributionsa point about collaboration - it’s not consultation, “here’s my idea what do you think of it?” it’s come and work with me to generate some ideas and test them out”.
Don’t need to hear any more, if you think it’s great
then I’m sure our customers will too.
Yep that’s how we do it in the Ivory
Tower.
I’ve got this great idea that you’re just
gonna love...
no customer input
This is a biggie. If you here these kinds of comments in your team, raise the alarm! Developing something without customer input means you run the risk of your idea not having any value to the people that might use it, and this just ain’t good business.
Image: Anneli Salo http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Annelis
So instead, hit the streets, pick up the phone... get authentic input from real potential customers to help you find out about the strengthes and weaknesses of your ideas and even inspiration for totally new ideas.
Don’t fall into the trap of just designing for yourselves and assuming your customers will love it too.
Image: Keith Allison http://www.flickr.com/photos/27003603@N00/3634076249
be wary of too much love for the status quo, you can tell this is happening when:
• wild ideas are getting squashed quickly
• the focus is on why something won’t work vs how it might
• people are recommending doing things they way they’ve always been done.
Too much love for the status quo ensures breakthrough ideas don’t see the light of day, and I’m reasonably sure the judges aren’t looking for status quo ideas on Monday.
Instead, try new things, run experiments, encourage wild ideas and give them a chance.
Focus on how something might work rather than how it couldn’t. Use questions like “What if?” and “How might we?”
no fun & playideas not made tangible
limited collaborationno customer input
talking over doing and making
going for a hole in one
over-focusing on technology
loving the status quoSo 8 deadly sins or things to be wary of when trying to innovate in 48hrs:- lack of fun & play > inject purposeful play into everything we do- ideas not being made tangible > make ideas tangible- no collaboration > intense collaboration- no customer input > continuous customer input- talking over doing and making > a bias for doing and making- going for a hole in one > exploring a wide range of ideas - over-focusing on technology > focus on the customer- loving the status quo > try new things and favour wild ideas