The aim of my role at work is to set up projects for success. I have enjoyed the initiation stage of team formation. I think establishing good practice and structure at the early stage will help us throughout the delivery process.
This week I have set up a FigJam white board space for the team to collaborate. I do not have experience using FigJam but so far I have found the interface easy and similar to other tools I have used. I have started the mind-mapping as a jumping off point for the Rapid Ideation. I have added headline information for the development of the Rapid Ideation Plan. I have also added a Team Names posts it’s so we can all contribute and dot vote.
I have outlined the terms of engagement for team rapid ideation:
Talk to add value.
Be an active listener.
Be kind – be respectful of all opinions.
Decision should be made if the team meets 80% agreement. The member who disagrees has an opportunity to explain why.
Be supportive – help team members if they are stuck or need a sounding board.
Carry out research into rapid ideation best practice, tools and techniques.
The focus should be uncritical to produce many ideas as possible.
Reading about Ideation techniques they fall in to 2 categories which is a blank slate or improving upon an existing (concept/product idea). I think that I will recommend to the team that we use a combination of the two.
As well as the techniques another consideration if the nature of the problem and solution. Cohen asserts that ideas students come up with can be myopic and reflect problems that they in their daily lives, more experienced practitioners can draw on wider experiences. (Cohen, 2021).
SCAMPER: used to improve upon existing solutions or to fix issues. Substitute, combine, adapt, modify, put to another use, eliminate, reverse. Devised as a checklist by Bob Eberie.(Luenendonk, 2015)
Brainstorming: Is in my experiencing brain storming is a largely well understood and practiced in educational and work settings. The benefits of a brainstorm is that it can generate a high volume of ideas and can be conducted individually or as a group. A limitation of the technique is not assigning the ideas (Luenendonk, 2015).
Mind-mapping: This is similar to brainstorming but participants use linier connections to build relationships between ideas (Luenendonk,2015).
Forced Relationships: Participants join different unrelated ideas to create an entirely new concept (Luenendonk,2015).
Crazy 8s: Is coming up with 8 concepts or design ideas in 8 minutes. These can be hand-drawn or digital (Luenendonk,2015).
As the team that I am working with only has a limited time for meeting each week could be a good approach.
Initiate team rapid ideation
The plan is to use our first team meeting to kick off the Rapid Ideation. I am looking forward to collaborating and getting creative with the team.
Sources:
M. Luenendonk, (2015). 18 Best Idea Generation Techniques [Online]. Cleverism . Available at: http://www.cleverism.com/18-best-idea-generation-techniques/ (Accessed: 8 June 2021).
Cohen, D., Jones, P., Katz, J., Pollack, J., and White, R. (2021). What I have learned about teaching entrepreneurship: perspectives of five master educators. In Annals of Entrepreneurship Education and Pedagogy – 2021, Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Available From: Elgar Online: The online content platform for Edward Elgar Publishing<https://doi.org/10.4337/9781789904468.00009> [Accessed 08 June 2021]
(2020). Crazy Eights method for brainstorming & design sprints [Template & guide] [Online]. Conceptboard. Available at: conceptboard.com/blog/crazy-8s-brainstorming-template/ (Accessed: 8 June 2021).
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