Generating new ideas for Innovation through workshops
When working through the phases of defining Goals (OKRs), understanding them, framing the problem, generating ideas, evaluating and then deciding on the execution plan in some situations there comes a time to generate ideas first. Which in the technical world is what people call an Innovations workstream or workshop.
There are many innovation workshop methods out there and the list would probably go to the moon and back, but in my world there are only two methods that I use that are tried and true. They always seem to work, everyone understands the methods, they are easy to follow, and can be quite a lot of fun. Fun in these sessions is such a true enabler it relaxes the mind and surfaces topics and quite honestly tongues to flow a lot more.
The two workshops that have worked very well for me are using the MindMap exercise and the “How might we …” situation questions
MindMaps are great for note-taking because real topics are not linear. Mind mapping allows for thoughts to be connected to more than one connection point. A standard mind mapping process looks like this. Discover the central topic, it could be something like Increase Users or Speeding up the supply chain. The central topic is usually the business problem. Once identified you have decisions to make, “Do you want to segment out long-term ideas (strategy) from short-term (tactical). If you do then the top nodes from the central topic should be based on dates (E.G. Q1, 202X). If not then we can start defining top nodes. Based on many discovery sessions below are the nodes that I have used multiple that will achieve a full level of innovation development:
- Objectives
- Audience (Who)
- Deliverables(What)
- Operations/Services (How)
- Date/timeline (When)
- Milestones (Metrics)
- Risks
- Critical data elements
- Anticipated interventions (Stakeholders)
- Technical approach
- Talent required
Once the top nodes have been completed now its time to do the real work. Each node could have major categories and I’ll give a few examples. Risks could hive financial risks but there could be intangible risks as well. The audience could be different segments of your user base. A logistics company could have shippers, carriers, and end users.
Now we are really at the bottom levels which I call the child nodes and could also be known as the tasks nodes. This is where the events to make the top topic and top nodes happen become successful. So you might ask what if I can’t come up with these child nodes/tasks? Well, this is where the “How might we…” situation workshops come into play.
“How might we…” workshops help to reframe challenges as questions. A good exercise is to get out all the questions at once and listen to them without trying to solve them one by one. Once the questions are all listed group them into three buckets, we’ll call them the good, the meh, and no thanks. Target the good bucket and start to frame those into the events that would connect to your MindMap.
I would also like to bring up that the “How might we…” workshop can be used not only at the end of a mind map workshop but also at the very beginning or middle of the process if you are having problems defining your challenges. I have found that in quite a few situations it’s been used at the end and at the very beginning of an innovation workstream to help better define the business challenge/goal.
I quite enjoy running workshops like these! It’s amazing what a team can bring together and the ideas that can bring a spark to a new product or service. I will close with this, of course, there are other methods out there to have an ideation workshop. The main point in any of these is collaboration, the effect to listen, learn and provide a voice from your experience. No one has gone through the same journey, so find your path to innovation and discover these methods in your organization.
