Eliminate three "stumbling blocks" on the Creative Road

Maybe a lot of people are thinking about how to turn business into ideas. In my opinion, first we have to accept the idea that we should discard all the old ideas. And what we're interested in is the subversive ideas that can make a big difference, and that's the kind of thinking that's a way to challenge the mind and inspire any possible creativity. However, in my personal experience, most of the ideas are not completely subversive.

In the process of creating subversive ideas, we usually encounter three of "stumbling blocks":

Stumbling block 1: the dilemma of being overwhelmed, aimless and unable to focus on thinking

As far as my experience is concerned, the traditional brainstorming approach is the direct cause of this consequence. In the 1930s, when The Advertiser Alex Fehni Osborne (Alex Faickney Osborn) launched his own book, Creative Imagination (applied imagination), the brainstorming approach to the bathroom began to become popular all over the world. But the traditional mind-storm approach ignores the key point, that is, there is a big difference between getting a lot of ideas and getting good ideas, so teams or organizations that use this mindset often get into a state of confusion and disorientation, and Beth, the GE Company's Konstock (Beth Comstock) has long been prescient: "Paralyzed by too much likelihood." "In short, if your creativity has any subversive features, then you need to ditch the brainstorming approach and turn to laser-focused subversive thinking," he said.

Stumbling 2: Dividing things into products, services, and information three parts

The Trinity of products, services and information requires a comprehensive consideration, and if this is not the case, you will be gradually passive in the market. Only by combining the three closely can we feel the benefits of subversive creativity. To help readers understand this point of view, here's a quote from Brousse Ster (Bruce Sterling) in his book, Shaping things: "This bottle Sangiovese Sangiovese (Sangiovese) Red wine may be called the classic red wine of the Mediterranean basin, but its wine bottle is just a common handmade product, but it is also regarded as a classic. ”

In other words, "classic" means that even a product as old as wine is no longer an independent, static product, but a dynamic product associated with something else. "A bottle of wine offers far more function than I can explore." "The purpose of this bottle is to teach me," said Stirling. Tempted me to explore the relevant knowledge, to understand the wine bottle and wine production process, let me become its free propagandist, wine critic, at the wine tasting meeting for it and for the sake of this bottle of wine to show off to all friends. ”

In the view of Stirling, the act of obtaining information about red wine (through his laptop) and the sudden intimacy between him and red wine is not boring or meaningless. Clearly, this requires a new way of thinking when thinking about creativity: the relationship between products, services, and information is more important than any single part of the trait.

Stumbling block 3: Most of the ideas just stay on the level of verbal discussion

When this happens, most subversive ideas are still in the mind, but not yet formed. The so-called lookers-on, we often hear customers say: "We do not need any creativity, there are too many ideas." "But when I asked for a look at a specific transcript, they started to say," We didn't write it down, but we often discussed it. " ”

You can make a statement about this problem and you can talk about it in a creative way, but it should be enough. Because the abstract discussion of a creative, it is difficult to understand, the idea is not deeply impressed. So in order to increase your chances of turning your ideas into reality, you need to stop talking and explain your ideas in a more straightforward way. "Draw it Out," Hartmut Esslinger, founder of Frog Design (Frog de-sign), often says (if his employees don't put the idea on paper, he won't listen to his employees). When an idea is expressed in visual or textual form, the idea becomes clearer.

The way to defeat the first stumbling block: What do you care about?

When you go to this step, you should already be able to determine that you have found an opportunity and can describe it. So, what you need to do now is to realize business opportunities through creativity. First, we split the opportunity into fragments and then use the new thinking methods to study each of these fragments. If you can't make use of all of the clips it doesn't matter, the key is to exercise your creativity.

An opportunity usually has three components: there is an opportunity for "who" to provide some kind of "advantage" to make up for some kind of "gap". In designing a company for one of the three big auto suppliers, we found a phenomenon that, in the words of Mike Lavigne, the head of the project, was: "People are not just driving when they're sitting in a car, they're doing a lot of other things," Mack Lavigny. "Mike and his design team have observed that car designers have only taken into account the needs of people driving while designing cars, ignoring other needs, for example, many people check emails in their cars, make phone calls or use laptops." In the case of this car, we may find such a business opportunity: "For the driver ' who ' offers a variety of non-driving function ' advantage ', and make driving safer, and thus improve the car experience" gap. ”

We can first focus on a small fragment of opportunity: The advantage part of the opportunity. The advantage of this case is partly to improve the efficiency of the driver. So, ask yourself a question, when will drivers use driving time to do things that are not driving to improve productivity? You may get the following answers:

When you are on a business trip, on the phone, when dealing with unexpected ideas (for example, when you need to take notes), after analyzing the advantages of the opportunity, then ask yourself questions about the gaps in the opportunity. These problems may be:

How to improve the way drivers can make phone calls in the car on the premise of safety?

Creative: Car cordless phone

How to improve the way drivers take notes in their cars while ensuring safety?

Creative: Automatic risk avoidance system

How to improve the way drivers provide entertainment to their children in the car on the premise of ensuring safety?

Creative: Car DVD player

After splitting an opportunity, ask a question, provide as many answers as possible to each question, and the answer can be either obvious or absurd. Remember, don't easily negate any answers quickly. After splitting the opportunity into fragments, you have plenty of time to evaluate the ideas you get.

Focus on the relationship between products and other things

Groundbreaking ideas are often inspired by ideas that are commonplace, seemingly repetitive, but not noticed. As Thomas Friedman, a columnist for The New York Times, Friedman: "With the development and creativity of the knowledge field, more products will emerge that break the traditional values; New hot products combined with services will continue to emerge, although in people's minds, such a product mix is so unimaginable. ”

Let's recall the case of Nintendo's Wii game. The experience of Nintendo's design is that the inspiration for the handle is not based on the control of other gaming devices, but on the field that is irrelevant to the game-the accelerator chip that controls the airbag in the car.

Here's another example, proving that seemingly unrelated ideas combine to inspire a new way of looking at the problem. One morning, a designer hopped into a frog design company and said, "I know why everyone says the ipod looks clean!" You know, if you ask anyone, why do you think the ipod design is so appealing to you? As expected, everyone would say, "I like the ipod because I think it looks clean." ”

Of course, this may be due to the extremely concise design style of the ipod player and the simple intuitive interface and neutral color. But the only features are far from explaining why everyone feels that ipod players are so clean and elegant. There must be a deeper reason for this, so if a designer claims he knows the reason, we are all ears. "Cough!" The designer cleared his throat and said, "This morning, as I sat on the toilet, I noticed the shiny white porcelain in the tub and the reflective chrome on the sink faucet." It turned out that everyone thought the ipod looked clean because it was designed to refer to the bathroom material! "

The room was silent for a few seconds, then everyone burst into laughter. Of course not. He came to this conclusion because he sat on the toilet, but because we all know that Jonathan Vil, the designer of the ipod player, had worked for a design consultancy in London before he went to Apple, and he had designed a lot of sinks when he was working in London.

Is that a coincidence? But at least this example shows that anything, even if it has nothing to do with it, will inspire a new understanding of things when it is combined. Often the more irrelevant things, the greater the effect.

The way to defeat the second stumbling block: What can you fuse?

The ideas you get are not all valuable, so choose three ideas that you think are most promising. In other words, choose three of the most distinctive ideas that will bring maximum benefits to the consumer or your company. Why is it just three? Because three can guarantee you a choice in the next steps, experimenting with ideas, validating assumptions, and collecting consumer feedback. The caveat here is: Don't worry about how you can pick the most practical ideas, you should focus on the most disruptive ideas.

Refining three Ideas

After selecting three ideas, start refining your ideas to make them more complete and persuasive.

At this point, you may be confronted with the problem that many people still think that the products they offer to consumers are made up of three separate parts of products, services, and information.

However, only when the creative ability to integrate products, services and information into one of the three elements of real value, ignore any one element can not achieve creative success. For example, Apple's iphone takes care of products such as handsets with iphone OS OS, services (which provide itunes and App Store software downloads), and information networks (including wireless network providers, Google, Yahoo!, iphone developers, the relevant iphone social networking and forum communities, and handset manufacturers, and so on three major functions.

The following two perfect creative methods are very useful (this is the way I used to work with clients).

Inclusiveness: At the same time, products, services and information on three aspects of thinking. If you have an idea for a new product, what are the core services and information to support this product?

Balancing benefits: Keep in mind that unless you are in a very special situation, your creativity must benefit three main objects: collaborators, buyers, and users. If only one or two parties benefit, then it is necessary to find ways to balance the interests of the three parties to benefit. Otherwise, your ideas may not be realized because of conflicts of interest.

Write down the potential benefits of creativity, but don't just write about the obvious benefits, and then prepare to make some changes to make those benefits clearer.

The way to defeat the third stumbling block: What is your subversive idea?

Compared to writing ideas on paper, verbal discussions can make ideas seem broad and abstract. In the display of your ideas, to find ways to be specific and clear, the only way to facilitate the target audience understanding and memory. Once you have perfected your ideas through "inclusive" and "balanced interests", you need to write each idea on a piece of paper or slide it, using the exact words or pictures to show the ideas. If you decide to make further changes to an idea to work out a corresponding marketing plan, using the way you just mentioned will make it easier for you to get important feedback from the consumer.