Switching to INTRIGUE

An elephant trap in innovation is judging new ideas too early.

Indeed one of my clients introduced a scheme whereby all the company’s thousands of employees were encouraged to submit ideas, which were then each immediately submitted to some basic screening questions.

Is the idea likely to sell over $x million? Is it a practical, implementable idea? Will it fit with existing systems and capabilities?

The consequence was efficiently to kill off at birth all the most exciting and ground-breaking ideas suggested. For, in the earliest stages, anything radical is highly likely to fall short when subjected to those innocent and sensible-sounding questions. .

A much better approach to ask is this question:

Is the idea INTRIGUING? If we were to devote time and attention to it, using our best creative problem-solving and design skills, might it turn into a real humdinger?

That way, breakthrough ideas get selected, developed and implemented. And it’s the paltry, incremental, time-wasting ideas that get discarded.

Brainstorming for breakthrough

One of the reasons that people feel that brainstorming doesn’t deliver is that, so often, when it comes to selecting which ideas to progress to the problem-solving stage, it’s the ones that seem most doable that get selected, rather than the ones that offer the potential to be breakthroughs.

It’s so natural to vote for ones you can see being implemented. But it’s the ones that have the tingle factor – if I knew how to do that, it would be amazing – these are the ones to go for.

So when I’m facilitating a brainstorming workshop, I spend a good deal of time and effort at the selection stage coaching the participants (and in particular their leader), so that they have the best possible chance of going for ideas that really intrigue them.

That’s how to get breakthroughs from brainstorms.

GSK and Dragon’s Den

I’m astounded that the massive drug company GSK is planning to assess and fund innovation projects by using a “Dragon’s Den” style of selection process. There’s said to be £1.1 billion ($1.75 billion) at stake.

I can see that the programme makes for good television.

But is there any evidence at all that this kind of approach produces winners?

At best it strikes me as amateurish. It obviously has the potential to be damaging and demeaning to the R&D scientists involved. And it’s likely to have 100% success in missing any innovation with really major potential.