14a. Generating New Concepts by Making Connections

The first Chapter on Concept Generation was all about divergent thinking and the Opportunity-Solution tree.

But those aren’t the only two methods of creating new product concepts during product development. Let’s keep this train a’rollin and discuss a few more techniques.

In this chapter, we’ll go beyond divergent thinking and cover Associative Thinking. That’s when you think like a desperate Hollywood writer pitching a new idea to a studio. We’ll distill specific methods that can be used to enhance associative thinking skills (yes, anyone can develop creativity — it is a skill).

There’s also a section on cross-pollination, which is when you mix people from different backgrounds together.

Finally, we’ll distill some ideas from the book ‘Where Good Ideas Come From.’ Yeah, a promising title, right? That book describes how you go about creating an environment where good ideas emerge.

Off we go . . .

An Idea (or product concept) is a Connection

An idea is a connection.

When someone invents an infant incubator for the third-world that’s made out of spare car parts, they are really connecting a network of ideas: how incubators work, how car engines work, and the design constraints presented by the developing world.

The final solution couldn’t have come about without knowledge of those various ideas. In many ways, new ideas emerge from connecting existing ideas.

Even fundamental technologies like the radio or the light-bulb connect many scientific theories into one “new idea.”

When someone develops a product that uses existing technology to better serve a customer’s needs, they are also connecting solutions to problems.

So, as we think about generating good concepts for products, we should really be focusing on making new connections. Keep this concept of connections (and networks, because a bunch of connections form a network) as you read on about product concept generation.

14b. Associative Thinking

Clayton Christensen (yeah, the disruption guy) defines innovation as connecting seemingly unrelated ideas.

Steve Jobs said, “Creativity is just connecting things.”

Let’s talk about connecting things.

Associative Thinking

“Associating happens as the brain tries to synthesize and make sense of novel inputs. It helps innovators discover new directions by making connections across seemingly unrelated questions, problems, or ideas.” — Clayton Christensen, The Innovator’s DNA

Associative thinking is about making new combinations.

The Hollywood Pitch

“Image we take The Avengers and set it in a future dystopia like Blade Runner and then introduce a zombie apocalypse like The Walking Dead.” — Some new show probably coming to AMC next year.

Hollywood pitches are rife with associative thinking. Take whatever disparate ideas are making money — say, superhero movies and zombies — and then just combine them.

The terrible example I mention might not actually be that innovative, but don’t let that undermine the theory that associative thinking works. Hollywood surely abuses it, but they do so for a reason: it works.

How To Think Associatively. Or Associationally. Whatever the Word Is.

Christensen mentions four activities that promote associative thinking:

Questioning

Observing

Networking

Experimenting

“The key skill for generating innovative ideas is the cognitive skill of associational thinking. The reason that some people generate more associations than others is partly that their brains are just wired that way. But a more critical reason is that they more frequently engage in the behavioral skills of questioning, observing, networking, and experimenting. These are the catalysts for associational thinking.” Christensen, Clayton The Innovator’s DNA

Questioning; Observing; Networking; Experimenting; these skills should look pretty familiar — especially questioning and observing, both of which are voice-of-the-customer type activities we’ve discussed already.

Source

Since this is the Distillery, I’m simply going to list some core activities within each of those behavioral skills.

Questioning

Don’t worry about looking stupid

Ask, “what causes that?”

Use the 5 Whys

Ask “what if” questions to eliminate constraints

Question storming (a lot like brainstorming but just asking questions; it’s fun, try it.)

Observing

Be an anthropologist; get out in the wild

Look for the Job to be Done (sound familiar?)

Watch what other companies are doing and reverse engineering their thinking

Networking

Tap outside experts and events (seminars, TED talks, whatever)

Start a creative community, or find one

Build your network

Experimenting

Travel

Prototype and engage

Learn new skills in different disciplines

In Summary

Creative thinking is about connecting the dots. Better product concepts come from creative thinking; creativity is about connections; associative thinking promotes creativity.

And as shown above, there are a shit-ton of ways to promote associative thinking. It’s a skill, and it can be developed and improved.

To really dive into these methods, read more at The Innovator’s DNA or check out this good slideshow on the book.

14c. Cross-Pollination

In agriculture, cross-pollination is when pollen from one flower or crop mixes with a different crop or flower, leading to new, hybrid flowers.

Or something like that. I don’t really know; I’m not a Marine Biologist.

What I can say is that cross-pollination — within the context of product development — is about mixing ideas from different disciplines.

A cross-pollination is a form of associative thinking where ideas from different walks of life come together and mingle.

Good ideas are rarely industry- or application-specific. A good idea for getting people around town via a smartphone app (Uber) might also work to get meals around town (UberEATS). Or perhaps something used for digital communication (email) can be repurposed to help educate and share information (my Distillery newsletter!).

Cross-pollination is everywhere. One of the more innovative companies in the world has it right in their mission statement: “We believe in deep collaboration and cross-pollination of our groups, which allow us to innovate in a way that others cannot.” — Apple Mission Statement

If it’s working for Apple, cross-pollination might just be right for you.

Steve Jobs Liked Cross-Pollination So It Must Be Cool

Steve Jobs said that what made the original Macintosh computer great is that the people working on it were “musicians, and poets, and artists, and zoologists, and historians, who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.”

Apple took inspiration from their knowledge of these diverse fields to create something that was completely novel.

“The key to creativity is to expose yourself ‘to the best things that humans have done and then to bring those things into what you are doing.’” — Steve Jobs as quoted in The Innovator’s DNA

Why It Works

Why does cross-pollination create good ideas? The answer lies in the fact that new ideas are born out of other ideas. As Steven Johnson put it, “Ideas are born in networks.”

If you put together the right network of people, new ideas will emerge.

Rarely is a new idea so completely original that it’s completely unrelated to another idea that existed before. As such, you can think of existing ideas as the fuel for new ideas, much like existing flowers are the fuel for future flowers. If you want to create a great new flower, mix two plants together in a unique way. (See how I came full circle on that analogy?)

How to Cross-pollinate

How do you design an environment that promotes the interaction of diverse people? Step one is to get diverse people. Step two is to get them to interact.

A diverse group. Whether it be your team at work or the people you mingle with on the weekends, the diversity of the people you surround yourself with will drive the diversity of the ideas you are exposed to. Bringing people from different backgrounds and life experiences together is the most obvious way to ensure exposure to different ideas.

A case study on team diversity: One study from the early 2000’s examined the innovation output of different teams at various companies. When controlled for the diversity of the team (whether the team members had a similar or diverse background from one another), the researchers found that the potential for breakthrough ideas was highest when the team was most diverse.

It’s not a universal causation type of situation, but it’s fair to say that the potential for truly new ideas is correlated with the diversity of a team.

Mixing. Simply being around people with a wide range of backgrounds is not enough. There has to be interaction. This can be accomplished organically, but more often, it needs to be nudged, encouraged, or downright forced.

Mechanisms to encourage the mixing of teams include deliberately random seating arrangements, pulling people together in meetings or activities, or even just getting people together for lunch. I find if free food is involved, people will do pretty much anything.

Apple’s newest headquarters building, which looks like a giant flying saucer, was designed to promote people running into each other. The water cooler effect is real.

Let It Happen

Another thing that helps cross-pollination is to give people the flexibility and freedom to explore — exploring new ideas, exploring new interactions, etc. Easier said than done.

Source

Summary

Cross-pollination exposes you to different ideas and perspectives. This provides unique opportunities for new combinations of ideas to come together. Ideas are born in networks, so design your network and your environment carefully.

14d. Where Good Ideas Come From — The Book

New Product Concepts are basically just “good ideas” for solving problems. So where do good ideas come from? Maybe the book “Where Good Ideas Come From” has some answers.

Here are some distilled notes from Steven Johnson’s well-respected book.

Error

A lot of good ideas come from error. Making a mistake is a fantastic and rather common way to stumble upon a new idea or a new way of looking at something. The discovery of Penicillin is the classic example of this (link to that story . . .spoiler; it was discovered by accident).

The challenge is how to encourage or teach people to make errors because, after all, nobody deliberately tries to make mistakes. “Be less careful” is kind of weird advice; it might lead to more errors, but is it really a good approach?

The better advice: don’t be an asshole when someone does make a mistake, especially if that someone is you.

Johnson talks about creating an environment where mistakes are not only accepted, but they are celebrated. Innovative companies spend time talking about mistakes in a positive manner — asking questions, reflecting, and ultimately learning lessons for the future.

If you burn the ice cream, don’t freak out…learn from it.

Exaptation

Exaptation is a term in biology that refers to a feature developing for one purpose being then adapted to another purpose. A classic example is that animals may have developed feathers for warmth, only to then exapt them for flight.

Johnson talks about how Gutenberg invented the printing press by using a screw technology stolen from wine pressing. “He took a machine designed to get people drunk and turned it into an engine for mass communication.”

G-berg feeling pretty swaggy about exapting that screw.

Taking an idea from one thing and applying it to another is extremely effective for creating wholly new concepts, ideas, and innovations.

People do it all the time. “This is the uber of dog walking.” “This is the stitch-fix of dog stuff.” “This is Facebook for dogs.” (I made that one up.)

P.S. Exaptation is not all that different from associative thinking.

Survival of the Fittest

We’re going to talk a lot about prototyping in upcoming chapters. Prototyping and iterating on ideas isn’t exactly “concept generation” per se, but it does lead to new insights and new ideas. So in a sense, it is very relevant to concept generation.

Johnson draws many parallels between the way evolution happens in nature to the way that ideas evolve through prototyping and testing.

Biological Survival of the Fittest:Mutations + Environment = Evolution

Product Survival of the Fittest: Prototypes + Testing = Learning

Prototyping is not only an effective way to drive your product forward; it should also be a source of new ideas.

If you’re not finding yourself coming out of a prototype test with news ideas, you should consider getting closer to the action, or getting a better “view” of your customers.

In Summary

Johnson’s book really underscores the notion that ideas are connections, and that the key to finding good ideas is building the right environments.

This includes environments where the error is celebrated, where ideas from one application can find new purpose in another application, and where ideas are tested and evolved.

He has a really cool quote on this, but I’ll make you wait till the next section to read it.

(Link to Steven Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From)

14e. Concept Generation Recap

Let’s recap this whole topic.

Concept generation is about coming up with the seeds of future products during a new product development process. It’s not necessary to think of fully-formed solutions.

In a big way, the voice-of-customer methods that help you understand the problem space will lead you directly to solution concepts. Identifying the critical customer needs — and the underserved outcomes that users are experiencing with their current solutions — is really 90% of the battle.

Divergent thinking is necessary for concept generation. Use techniques like brainstorming, question-storming, ideation, and outside inspiration to come up with concepts.

But don’t just think wide . . . think about new connections. Associative thinking is the act of bringing ideas together. When you do this across people from different backgrounds, it’s called cross-pollination.

Don’t be a jerk. Embrace failure. It’s necessary for prototyping, and mistakes can also sometimes lead to a new idea.

And don’t lose sight of the overall goal here: developing a product that delivers new value to the customer. Value typically comes from:

Meeting customer needs

Helping customers get the job done (Jobs to be Done)

Achieving better outcomes (Outcome-Driven Innovation)

A Tangled Bank

Johnson ends Where Good Ideas Come From with a badass quote. Chuck Darwin used the term “tangled bank” to describe the amazing interconnectedness of an ecosystem (as in the bank of a river). Johnson keys in on this term and wraps up his book as follows:

“. . . You can create comparable environments on the scale of everyday life: in the workplaces you inhabit; in the way you consume media; in the way, you augment your memory. The patterns are simple but followed together, they make for a whole that is wider than the sum of its parts. Go for a walk; cultivate hunches; write everything down, but keep your folders messy; embrace serendipity make generative mistakes; take on multiple hobbies; frequent coffeehouses and other liquid networks; follow the links; let others build on your ideas; borrow, recycle, reinvent. Build a tangled bank.”

This is the image that comes up when you google Charles Darwin Tangled Bank. Makes you want to design some cool products, doesn’t it?

Post Scriptum: A Gigantic, Unmanageable List of ‘Concept Generation Methods’

I stumbled across this enormous list of “Concept Generation Methods” in an academic paper. Here’s the link.

It’s a super long list, and while I would normally distill something like this down to its essence, maybe it’s useful to include here in full. Enjoy!

“1. Role-Playing: Role-playing involves designers acting out scenarios. These scenarios are often ones that the designers observed during the research phase of the design process when they participated in user research. This technique is a tool for both team-based ideation and communication to users and/or clients.

2. Active Search: Active search refers to designers hunting for a particular solution. This hunt could range from a web search for images of current vacuum cleaners to searching through books, magazines, newspapers, etc. to find the demographics of a particular population.
3. Attribute List: Attribute listing refers to taking an existing product or system, breaking it into parts, and then recombining these to identify new forms of the product or system.
4. Brainstorm: Brainstorming involves generating a large number of solutions to a problem (idea) with a focus on the quantity of ideas. During this process, no ideas are evaluated; in fact unusual ideas are welcomed. Ideas are often combined to form a single good idea as suggested by the slogan “1+1=3” [12]. Brainstorming can be used by groups as well as individuals. Since brainstorming was the first idea generation technique created it is often referred to as, “the mother of all idea generation techniques.”
5. Collaborate: Collaboration refers to two or more people working together towards a common goal [51]. Designers often work in groups and co-create during the entire creative process.
6. Concrete Stimuli: Concrete stimuli are used when designers want to gain new perspectives on a problem by manipulating physical materials. This could be looking at paint chips, feeling different material textures or physically maneuvering objects.
7. Critique: Critique refers to receiving input on current design ideas. This could be collaborative such as receiving a design critique from a colleague or individuals critiquing their own ideas (either systematically or intrinsically). This technique often spurs new thought by finding solutions to design flaws within current concepts.
8. Documenting: Documenting refers to designers writing down ideas (physically or electronically). This includes journaling, writing stories, and taking notes.
9. Expert Opinion: Designers often elicit opinions from experts to identify potential problems with products or services before more comprehensive evaluations. This occurs when they are looking for an answer to a problem that is outside their domain knowledge or when they want to test a new idea.
10. Empathy/User Research: User research requires the designer to observe people in everyday situations in order to develop empathy for them. The methods used to conduct this type of research is founded in ethnographic research methods such as observations, field studies and rapid ethnography.
11. Encompass: Encompassing is an inspirational technique which involves designers immersing themselves in information relevant to the current project.
12. Forced Analogy: Forced analogy involves comparing the current problem with something else that has little or nothing in common in order to gain new insights and results. This technique often generates ideas for new areas of research.
13. Incubate: Incubation refers to stepping back from the problem to let the subconscious mind work.
14. Passive Searching: Passive searching refers to designers looking through material (web, magazines, books) for inspiration without searching for a particular solution to a problem. They are simply looking for inspiration.
15. Prototyping: Prototyping, in this study, refers to a low fidelity model of an idea. These models can be created with any type of material (paper, clay, etc.) as they are only used to conceptualize a thought. 16.Reflect: Reflection occurs when designers review their previous work (sketches, documents, prototypes, etc.)
16. Sketching: Sketching refers to a rough drawing of an idea.
17. Socializing: Socializing refers to talking with others about topics unrelated to the current project.
18. Storyboards: Storyboards are a way for designers to represent information gained in the research phase of the design process. Quotes from the user, pictures, and other relative information are placed on cork board, or a similar surface, to represent a scenario and to help understand the relationships between design ideas. Designers often post information about users using as little detail as possible to allow for interpretation of information.”