The 8 deadly sins of 48hr innovation challenges

8 deadly sins of 48hr innovation challenges - how to spot them and how to avoid them

My background - divergent + Global Service Jam 2011 & 2012

Seen fair share of successes and failures when it comes to innovating within a tight time frame

no fun & play

Be wary of a lack of fun and play.

• take it all very seriously sucks the life out of your team

• restricts creativity

• guarantees boredom and bad outcomes

Instead, inject as much play as possible, with focus on the job at hand - “purposeful play”

• Playfulness encourages creativity and teamwork.

• and helps people have a memorable and fun time.

ideas not made tangible

If all you’re doing is talking about and writing about your ideas they wont be tangible and your team and the judges will likely have a hard time getting the concept and being engaged and excited by it.

Instead, always be making - make something, part of your idea, a whole concept, anything

share it with others and test it

learn about it’s strengthes and weaknesses quickly and cheaply

adopt a “build to think” mindset - use making to resolve debates, answer questions and explore options.

limited collaboration

If you’re team starts to look a bit like this you might be in trouble. If one person’s giving all the instructions and the rest are just following you might be missing out on the collective power of the group to innovate.

A lack of egalitarian collaboration discourages new ideas and different thinking and this all helps ensure a run of the mill result.

Instead, get everyone involvedutilize the diverse skills and perspectives of the team, encourage contributionsa point about collaboration - it’s not consultation, “here’s my idea what do you think of it?” it’s come and work with me to generate some ideas and test them out”.

Don’t need to hear any more, if you think it’s great

then I’m sure our customers will too.

Yep that’s how we do it in the Ivory

Tower.

I’ve got this great idea that you’re just

gonna love...

no customer input

This is a biggie. If you here these kinds of comments in your team, raise the alarm! Developing something without customer input means you run the risk of your idea not having any value to the people that might use it, and this just ain’t good business.

Image: Anneli Salo http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Annelis

So instead, hit the streets, pick up the phone... get authentic input from real potential customers to help you find out about the strengthes and weaknesses of your ideas and even inspiration for totally new ideas.

Don’t fall into the trap of just designing for yourselves and assuming your customers will love it too.

talking over doing and making

Image: Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net)

In a 48hr challenge this is the deadliest!

Nothing sinks a team faster than talking not doing!!

• talk goes around in circles

• talk stays in the abstract

• and talking can take up a lot of time for minimal return - you’ve only got 48hrs, there’s no time for talk talk talk

So instead of talking try doing and making, this makes ideas tangible and accessible - the brain learns via the hand

• helps you fail faster to succeed sooner

• is just plain fun!!

• different types of making - roleplaying, sketching, 3D prototypes, storyboards

going for a hole in one

It can be very tempting to go with your very first idea, you may even already have an idea you’re planning on running with.

Bottom line is it’s likely to be very average

• converging on one idea early ensures you don’t come up with better more innovative ideas

• and planning out your one great idea and hoping it’s a winner is a pretty big gamble to take.

Instead, start by generating and exploring lots of different ideas, especially wild ones :)

Place lots of small bets for just long enough to see what works

use an iterative approach to move quickly through repeated cycles of - make, test, refine, make, test, refine = rapid improvements

Through making and testing you can home in on the best ideas with confidence that you’re on the right track.

over-focusing on technology

Image: Florian Hirzinger www.fh-ap.com

It’s real easy to make technology your start point - “let’s do a smart phone app!” or “it’s gotta be online”. Starting with a technology perspective

• ensures overlooking or lip-service to user needs

• might work for business, might be greatest use of tech

• but if it doesn’t work for user it wont fly

Image: Roland Zh http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Roland_zh

instead focus on the user/customer, what problems do people have that we could solve? what needs do people have that we could meet?

Once you’ve got this clear then you can look at how best to maximise technology in solving that problem.

Start with people and you’ll have a much better chance of coming up with something that you can build a successful business around.

That’ll never work!No sorry, that’s

against the rules.

loving the status quo

We’ve tried that before...

Image: Keith Allison http://www.flickr.com/photos/27003603@N00/3634076249

be wary of too much love for the status quo, you can tell this is happening when:

• wild ideas are getting squashed quickly

• the focus is on why something won’t work vs how it might

• people are recommending doing things they way they’ve always been done.

Too much love for the status quo ensures breakthrough ideas don’t see the light of day, and I’m reasonably sure the judges aren’t looking for status quo ideas on Monday.

Instead, try new things, run experiments, encourage wild ideas and give them a chance.

Focus on how something might work rather than how it couldn’t. Use questions like “What if?” and “How might we?”

no fun & playideas not made tangible

limited collaborationno customer input

talking over doing and making

going for a hole in one

over-focusing on technology

loving the status quoSo 8 deadly sins or things to be wary of when trying to innovate in 48hrs:- lack of fun & play > inject purposeful play into everything we do- ideas not being made tangible > make ideas tangible- no collaboration > intense collaboration- no customer input > continuous customer input- talking over doing and making > a bias for doing and making- going for a hole in one > exploring a wide range of ideas - over-focusing on technology > focus on the customer- loving the status quo > try new things and favour wild ideas