How many times do you have an idea that you don’t think is good enough to share with your team? The IA Team examines why you should never be afraid to share your ideas, even the lackluster ones.
Episode Transcript:
A huge roadblock in thinking futuristically is evaluating ideas prematurely.
Your best idea is never going to be your first idea. But, that first idea might help you reach other ideas that become game changers.
When ideating with your team, you want to avoid judging any ideas at the start. As The Innovator’s Advantage co-author Ron Price likes to say, “That’s an idea—great!”
Instead, try to focus on creating a sense of urgency to brainstorm a large number of ideas in a short amount of time—perhaps, 20 ideas in five minutes around a specific topic. This exercise helps to turn off that part of your brain that wants to evaluate ideas right away and brings you closer to a state of childhood creativity.
Ron shared a story where he once did this exercise with an R&D group for a major, global beverage company. After a day simply spent playing games, he introduced some of the problems and opportunities that were currently evident in the business for teams to develop solutions around. During the presentations of their ideas, one of the senior engineers leaned over to Ron and said, “They just solved a problem we’ve been trying to solve for 20 years.”
That just goes to show how abandoning judgment while ideating with your team can lead to solutions you never would have even thought of.
Learn more about growing your futuristic thinking skills in this 90 Seconds of Innovation series here or by subscribing on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts so you don’t miss an episode. Tweet your innovation questions to @ebaiya. | Header Photo by Gary Barnes via Pexels.
