“Forty Uses For A Brick” - A Real World Example
Back in September I posted an example of how to use creative thinking techniques to proliferate ideas. “Forty Uses For A Brick” became one of my most popular articles. I promised to give an example of how to apply these same techniques to a real-life problem. This is taken from an actual project I worked on earlier in the year, revisiting the “Brick” techniques but also illustrating how to use the perspectives of others to illuminate and redefine the problems at hand.
As I posted a while back, I accompanied two scientists to the Institute for Systems Biology back in the spring. We had an opportunity to establish a similar operation focusing on synthetic biology and wanted to see how they used architecture and cross-disciplinary teamwork to create revolutionary innovation. My companions had to leave early but before they left I managed to sit them down long enough to conduct a five-minute meeting. Using blue slips and asking the standard set of questions I was able to capture their thoughts on what they saw, so that I could proliferate ideas later. The results of my five-minute meeting:
What CHALLENGES do we have moving forward with our program?
- Time (could take years and we need this now)
- Buy-in from program manager
- Secure construction funds
- Failure of similar programs to produce revolutionary results (damaging credibility)
- Need to produce revolutionary vs. evolutionary results
- Workforce - collaborate, open vs. turf-oriented, silos
- Senior researchers with tribal thinking (re: IP and ownership of resources)
- Sharing space (with academic and industry)
- Sharing IP collaboratively with partners
What OPPORTUNITIES do we have moving forward?
- Taking all of the new program
- Transforming scientific workforce to compete w/ and partner w/ private sector
- Thinking outside the box
- Leverage efforts of other organizations like ISB
- Leverage new program to go after NIH and other basic science funding sources w/ academic partners
- Believe that the program manager will be open to the ISB ‘open lab’ approach
- Program manager initially receptive to the our scientific approach to the program
- Friendlies more likely to support our concepts moving forward
- Positive experience from ISB visit re: collaboration
- Can learn from mistakes of similar failed programs
What NOVEL IDEAS do you have?
- New contracting approach
- Increase “leveraging” of similar ongoing construction efforts
- Determine interrelationships between people, infrastructure and producing revolutionary change
What has become CLEAR to you?
- Extent to which new architectural designs are being incorporated into labs
- This is a good idea which is achievable!!
- Future of our organization must be in alignment with these new concepts
- Everyone’s thinking needs to change if we want revolutionary change
What ACTIONS should we take in the near future?
- Develop architectural concept that we can use for PR
- Tour similar facilities
- Solidify lead as strategic partner for the new program
- Add construction of this facility to the program management proposal
- Determine at what points to bring the program manager in on our infrastructure concept
- Consider which of our current staff to bring into the program and energize them
As this was a five-minute meeting, all of this richly detailed input was collected in about FIVE MINUTES. I was able to rapidly capture and share the diverse perspectives of my colleagues, which gave me a lot more raw material to work with later on. We took a few minutes to discuss our thoughts. I then collected their blue slips and they went home. I continued a tour of the facility, met with a few senior staff to ask more questions, then later in the hotel room used all the information I had collected during the day to kick-start ideation.
From the results of the five-minute meeting I selected a handful of what I thought were the most pressing problems:
- How might we obtain buy-in from the program manager?
- How might we learn from others’ past mistakes in similar endeavors?
- How might we select the best current staff for this program?
I used this as the impetus for a first round of idea finding:
- Examine the facilities and processes used by the orgs failed in the past, see where they went wrong
- Ask program manager for their perspective on why other similar programs aren’t working out as planned
- Identify organizations that have successfully created highly innovative operations
- Gather industry evidence that cross-disciplinary research conducted in open, collaborative environments is more conducive to revolutionary change and innovation
- Use lessons learned from ISB – ‘this is how we would have done it if we could have started from scratch’
- Define makeup of collaborating entities – academia (from across the globe), industry, ISB, etc
- Concentrate on younger scientists and engineers
- Identify the core expertise onboard at ISB, then…
- Determine the range of core expertise needed to make the the new program work
At the time I didn’t establish an idea quota, but I went ahead and pressed on with random words. I selected five random words from the Thinkertoys list:
gasoline -energy dense, made from oil, getting scarce, powers vehicles, sold at pumps, needs refining, different octanes, obtained from many countries
road - made of asphalt, paved, dark, used by cars, used by trucks, used by motorcycles, paid for by taxes, tolls, create transportation network, rights-of-way shared by utility companies
garden - flowers, vegetables, rows of plants, similar veggies grouped together, needs water and sunlight, prone to attract pests/varmints, needs fertilizer, harvests food
jewels - many shapes and colors, valuable, found in rings and bracelets, refracts light, facets, necklaces, worn by women, make nice gifts, expensive
casino - attracts gamblers, games of chance, card games, place bets, cash for chips, hotels, Las Vegas, Atlantic City, organized crime, pit bosses, glamour, risk
It’s important to select the words totally at random - in that manner you force the most off-the-wall connections. In this case I was able to use the aspects of these random words to generate a new set of ideas (some of the connections were pretty abstract so you might have to think about it):
- Define the collaborate network (road)
- Show the value of the modular lab approach (jewels)
- Refine our presentation approach to directly integrate aspects of our unique approach and the open collaborative environment (gasoline)
- Show how others could ‘plug in’ to our capability – success breeds success, thus attracting more work (road)
- Link our approach to revolutionary change, while linking failed approaches to evolutionary change (casino)
- Convince program manager that our approach provides the best use of taxpayer money (road)
- “Divine Intervention” - Obtain an ‘endorsement’ from prominent PhDs in the field (I always include divine intervention)
- Invite program manager to be one of the collaborators (road)
- Propose that this be the ‘joint center’ for the new program – include other organizations as collaborators (gasoline)
- Invite international organizations to collaborate (gasoline)
- Show how the open collaborative approach mitigates risk (casino)
- Package our new facility as the ‘crown jewel of the new program’ (jewels)
- Leave no doubt that unless R&D is conducted in an open, collaborative, cross-disciplinary environment, IT WILL FAIL TO PRODUCE REVOLUTIONARY RESULTS (garden)
- Select people with a lot of energy and passion for doing things a new way (garden, casino)
- Create a mystique/glamour around the open collaborative method – “pioneer spirit,” voyage into the unknown (casino)
- Maximize participation of intuitive, abstract thinkers who proliferate novel ideas (jewels)
- Cultivate talent with new and different professional development model (garden)
- Keep the varmints out - remove non-collaborators (garden)
- Create a new reward structure for success (jewels)
Notice the addition of ‘divine intervention.’ This is a standard crazy idea I use for most ideation sessions. It forces us to think of who could help us achieve our goals - who could endorse us, who could enhance our credibility.
Between the initial ideation, random word selection, and forced connections I spent about an hour generating about 30 ideas. I could have selected more problem statements from the five-minute meeting results to generate even more. We were able to use this as a basis for a multi-tiered approach to secure operational control of the new program and convince the program manager that our approach was the best.
Later in November I will follow up by using these ideas to illustrate how to go from ideas to solutions.
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