Method
Generating ideas: Unexpected meeting
Obstacle
How to go further than the ideas resulting from a brainstorming session, which are often limited to promote the real construction of ideas.
Solution
This technique allows new ideas to be found and facilitates divergence (openness, absence and meandering of the mind).
It simply completes the brainstorming or mental map that opens the doors to "creative challenges" that lead to innovation.
Benefits
1. Invites you to go outside the conventional verbal language
2. Multi-language, it combines elements from different universes
3. Stimulates the imagination necessary for innovation.
Steps
1
Choose the subject, the object
Determine the subject, the question, the problem,... From which you want to find ideas for transformations, answers, suggestions... Write it very roughly on a board so that the whole group can see it and read it aloud.
2
Choose unlikely dating partners (unexpected)
Each member of the team comes to the meeting with a picture, an object, a book, that he or she likes and is rather unusual. They then become partners in improbable encounters of the subject to be treated.
3
Table of meetings
Download the table of meetings and write the topic to be dealt with in the box provided for that: this is the topic that will be met by unexpected partners.
4
Characteristics of the dating partner
A member of the team presents his or her first element, an image for example. All the members of the team express what they think about this image by using their perception and imagination. The one who presented the element in question (here an image) writes everything that is said in the box provided on the meetings table.
5
Meeting between the subject and their first improbable partner
All the members of the team suggest ideas regarding the meeting between - the subject, the question... roughly written - the words inspired by the 1st partner: the image (in our example) - For this, everyone comes to paste post-its of all the ideas suggested by the meeting. Dare to even come up with absurd ideas.
6
Continue with the presentation of the partner
Ask another team member to present a second element that will change the genre, such as the object, etc. All team members express themselves on this object by letting themselves use their perceptions and imaginations. The one who presents his or her element writes down everything that is said in the box provided on the meeting table. Continue by changing the one who presents and the type of "partner".
7
Continue the meeting process
Stop presentations and meetings when all team members have presented at least one "unlikely partner".
8
Select the ideas born from the meetings
Scroll through the post-it ideas and each of you select 3 ideas that, in your opinion, seem to offer the 3 best pathways to explore in order to answer the question asked, enrich the subject... Your criteria will be feasibility and interest.
9
History of encounters
Everyone tells their choice and explains this choice by saying "what I like from my first idea is..., from my second idea is..., from my third idea is..." etc.
10
Decision
Of all the stories, the team will choose the most relevant novelties to be implemented or deepened by another approach.
