The ideation process involved brainstorming solutions to our curated set of insights. The following summarizes what came of our ideation brainstorming sessions, and valuable lessons learned in the process.
Outcomes
Our first brainstorming session attempted to find a way to accommodate for our target market’s on-the-go lifestyle, as they are young traveling millennials. Our ideas were ranked on two metrics: cost and social impact. We, of course, made low-cost, high-social impact a priority. Unfortunately, everything in that quadrant resembled a co-living idea, and we wanted to try to move away from that since it seemed to be the more “obvious” solution. The next time we brainstormed ideas, we chose an insight that was based on creating work-life balance at home. These ideas were much easier to create, as there were more tangible things to bring up when thinking about personal balance and wellbeing, such as “mood” rooms and building initiatives. Ultimately, we organized our ideas by cost and level of balance, and chose a subset of these features to create a building concept with a list of useful features and innovative social initiatives.
Lessons about brainstorming
Focus the subject of brainstorming
When we began to brainstorm, we ended up creating a concept that we had excitedly discussed early on in the semester. But we were not satisfied with that. It seemed that we almost stalled on coming up with innovative solutions. Performing a second brainstorming session with a focus on balanced lifestyle was extremely helpful in pushing our creativity and coming up with more concepts. This is partially due to properly defining the subject. When we began, we described our need as “accommodations for an on-the-go lifestyle.” The problem there was that the concept was too vague. “On-the-go” is not a lifestyle unique to our segment, and it does not imply any specific area for innovation either. Our ideas were addressing issues that are inherent to an on-the-go lifestyle, without necessarily stating what issues they were, and how important those issues are to our target segment. For example, a solution that involves a concept to incorporate built-in organizational tools like whiteboards is great, but does not necessarily relate to our market because our segment is more digitally inclined and tend to use mobile devices for organization. Instead, our next brainstorming session focused on a balanced lifestyle, which more easily related to concepts that affected our target market. For example, research revealed that our market has issues with eating healthy food and finding healthy choices during their travels. So we thought of a community that includes a potluck event to get residents more home-cooked meals. In general, it was far easier to come up with good ideas with a well-defined, focused problem statement.
Organize ideas based on segment-related metrics
In our first brainstorming session, we chose to organize our ideas by cost and social impact. This was helpful because we could easily see which quadrant would be the most beneficial. We wanted to bring the advantage of a low-cost, high-impact product. The second brainstorming session involved metrics on cost and level of balance. This time, we knew we wanted high balance, but we were excited about some of the high-cost ideas as well. One of those ideas included a cafe/lounge inside a residential building. We know that these metrics are specifically relevant to our target, and we have spent a lot time trying to think and understand like our target market does. So it was helpful to put metrics that are relevant because we could begin to make certain compromises on behalf of our market. For example, we felt our target would be okay with paying a premium to enjoy some stimulating social benefits of a great building. Of course, we eliminated a lot of ideas due to cost. But we definitely were inspired to incorporate a few concepts simply based on our excitement and understanding of our target market.
Challenge the norm of ideation
I think the normal concept of brainstorming involves a group of people announcing ideas, discussing them, judging, editing, and revising. Brainstorming in this class has shown me the value of avoiding a lot of these practices. The first, and most important, is to suspend judgment. Suspending judgment allowed team members to write freely about ideas. Even if those ideas were not necessarily “useful,” they were certainly, “productive.” I mean to say that they helped contribute to the creation of other ideas. For example, a teammate wrote down a concept loosely based on sharing, which inspired an idea of co-living. The other use trick we used is to write down the absurd ideas. In this class and the class last semester, the most radical ideas were the ones that actually generated the best concept. It’s also kind of a relief because it gives everyone a chance to say, “Well, someone said it.” And once the idea is out there, the responsibility to understand shifts from the individual who conceived of the concept to the rest of the group. These processes challenge the norm of ideation, and they are extremely useful in bringing out the best ideas of a group.