Ideation

Had a chance to receive some great training at the Leadership Network last week. Leadnet equips leaders, both in the church work and in the business world, to succeed. They hosted a conference here in Dallas called the Ideation Experience where church leaders from all over the world came to process ideas together for the future of the church in America. I was blessed to be able to go and work with some great people.

Our speaker, John Handy (former Design VP for Mattel) gave us tons of information about how to be more innovative. Here's the process:

1. Call to Adventure - some big, scary, wild challenge with a bold deadline
2. Inspiration - to be creative, you must continually have inspirational input. Empty your preconceived notions and take deep looks around you...explore bigger meanings, go inside the creator's mind, recognize the culture, and relate to yourself
3. Success Factors - clearly define what success would look like
4. Ideation - the actual brainstorming work: here you capture ALL ideas, build on other ideas, combine ideas, look for unexpected connections between ideas, ask "Why not" and say "Yes and" instead of "Yes but," and think BIG enough that people will get angry when you say your thoughts
5. Evaluation - do not slip into this before Ideation is done. Now you compare your ideas back to the success factors - don't start working on "How to" yet.
6. Presentation - take the idea away and sleep on it for a while, with everyone planning to reconvene later. By the time you come back together, the ideas should be fully fleshed out with a presentation that answers all the "how" questions
7. Implementation - do not fail this step. As soon as the group decides on an idea, take a couple of big steps immediately in order to commit yourself

Essential in the process of innovation is the Elevator Pitch. The problem with big ideas is that they take lots of people buying into the idea in order to make it work. Therefore you need to be able to sell your idea to other people in the space of time it takes you to ride up an elevator with someone. 60 seconds is the absolute maximum. In this elevator pitch, include:

• A hook to capture attention
• A clearly stated problem or opportunity
• An elegant and refreshingly bold solution - stay at a high level, don't overdo the details, stay simple and clearly understood
• Ask for a specific action, whether contact info exchange or follow-up meeting

Other teachings from the Ideation Experience:

• Live in the world of possibilities
• Can't just means that it hasn't been done yet
• No usually doesn't mean no - it means look for another way
• Know the difference between revolution and evolution - don't get trapped in evolution when a revolution is needed
• Imagine your new idea in the newspaper or on TV