Two Vastly Opposing Views on Brainstorming, Pt. II
In my first installment I discussed IDEO’s approach to brainstorming and how they incorporate it into their innovation processes. Now let’s take a look at someone who thinks brainstorming is a waste of time.
Larry Keeley of Doblin is a well-known innovation educator and consultant. Doblin has researched innovation extensively and discovered a great deal about what does and doesn’t work. Keeley’s unique perspective evolved over 20 years of field experience and forms the basis for Doblin’s innovation strategy. His pragmatic philosophy is reflected in Doblin’s Ten Types of Innovation. He believes that rather than waste time and effort on producing ideas that most likely have no value, people should focus their creativity on adapting the strategies proven elsewhere and combining their Ten Types in creative ways. A good overview of his philosophy can be found in this video (90 minutes):
Keeley believes in innovation effectiveness, which he now considers an emerging science until itself. His firm has gobs and gobs of research data on why innovation fails. At about the 15 minute mark of the video he launches into a dry, witty diatribe against brainstorming - which he portrays as a process in which management generates tons of ideas which never are put into action. He later says that brainstorming is ‘dangerous’ and produces far too many useless ideas. His data suggests that innovation fails (over 95 percent of the time) because people don’t do the most simple things - copy what the industry leaders are doing, and focus their creative efforts on the things that matter:
- Make money in a novel way
- Connect to the rest of the world
- Create lots of beneficial alliances with other companies
- Make a spiffy, memorable brand
- Focus on customer experience
Is there a place in Keeley’s model for novel ideas? Not really. Part of this is born from paranoia - the risk associated with implementing novel ideas, and the fact that the market punishes failure. He cites evidence that successful companies focus 98 percent of their effort on sustaining their existing products and services. Instead of generating tons of ideas for new stuff, Keeley recommends that upper level management focus on one or two ideas that combine the Ten Types in novel ways, then shepherd the ideas to fruition. Doing this, Keeley claims an effectiveness success rate of 35-70 percent. Thus Keeley’s approach uses extremely high-level strategic concepts to create a new perspective on what constitutes ‘doing things right,’ and as such should be a fundamental component of every business endeavor.
In my final installment I will smack the two opposing views together and see what breaks.
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4 Responses to “Two Vastly Opposing Views on Brainstorming, Pt. II”
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This is an incredible video, with valuable content in regards to “innovation”
People, and people skills, where we remain in that which is the thinking “inside” the box is often forgotten that these effective and continued effectiveness has been in my opinion the best communication skills and advancement occurs when we use some of the past foundations and fundumentals which have worked in the past and is still working to this day.
Confidence, communication with people in the real world, connecting with them “after using technology”
is still advancement in innovation, in being original by using some “old school” innovating ideas, and enhancing on what it is we already know, and know what works can be the biggest and best effective success results we could obtain.
I sure hopes that makes sense to some of you, it makes sense to me!
I like the “yoga” part in which you speak of, in regards to “innovation”
An excellent video!
regards,
Karin Hiebert
http://www.wordpress.com/karinhiebert
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