Category: Innovation Studio

By Tamara Bertram

There are two types of thinking to solve any problem: divergent and convergent.

Generally speaking, divergent thinking is all about brainstorming and generating many ideas, while convergent thinking narrows down ideas to come to a final solution.

Most brainstorming sessions do not produce the results you hope for because they blend idea generation and critique in the same conversation. This stifles creativity and leaves valuable ideas unspoken. In fact, 38% of employees hesitate to take initiative because they fear their ideas won’t be fully explored. 

Here’s a simple yet effective strategy to boost creativity and morale:

Educate Your Team: Help them understand the difference between convergent and divergent thinking.

Idea-Generation Meetings: Dedicate specific sessions solely to brainstorming big ideas, without any immediate critique.

Evaluation Meetings: Reconvene or hold critique until later so you can assess ideas against your project goals and constraints.

This approach allows for uninhibited creativity followed by focused analysis, ensuring all ideas get the consideration they deserve.

By Tamara Bertram

Finding out what your goals really are, the reasons behind them, and what’s stopping you from achieving them is crucial. This exercise brings together teams and stakeholders to gain a shared understanding of their goals, drivers, and barriers. You can discover what is slowing you down or if the purpose or goals are not quite right. Here’s how you can do it:

The Sailboat Exercise

1. Prepare Your Whiteboard:

On a whiteboard, draw a boat out at sea. This boat represents your team or project. Next, draw an island in the distance, which represents your goal.

2. Identify Goals:

Ask the group to write down what they believe the team or project’s goals are on sticky notes. Each person should contribute their thoughts.

3. Share and Organize:

Have each team member share what they have written. Sort the sticky notes around themes near the island. This helps in clustering similar goals and identifying common themes.

4. Identify Drivers:

Draw a sail on your boat. This sail represents what is driving you towards your goal. Ask the group to write down the drivers (factors that are helping achieve the goal) on sticky notes. Share and discuss these drivers, and place them on the sail.

5. Identify Barriers:

Draw an anchor on the boat. This anchor represents the barriers to the goals. Ask the group to write down what’s slowing or stopping you from achieving these goals on sticky notes. Share these barriers and place them around the anchor.

6. Prioritize Goals and Problems:

Finally, give each team member two dot stickers. Ask them to put a vote on the board for the goal they believe is most important to work towards and another dot for the problem they believe is most important to solve. This helps in prioritizing the goals and identifying the most critical barriers to address.

Benefits of the Sailboat Exercise

• Shared Understanding: Aligns the team on common goals and barriers.
• Clear Drivers: Highlights what is propelling the team forward.
• Identified Barriers: Clearly identifies obstacles that need to be addressed.
• Prioritization: Helps in focusing on the most important goals and problems.

This exercise can be a powerful tool in both business and personal settings to ensure that everyone is aligned and working towards the same objectives with a clear understanding of the factors influencing their success.

Source: Workshop Tactics, Pip Decks (2022)

by Tamara Bertram

The Empathy Map is a powerful tool used in Design Thinking to better understand users’ needs, behaviors, and experiences. This tool helps businesses and individuals step into the shoes of their users or customers to create more user-centered solutions.

How to Use the Empathy Map:

1. Define Your User. Clearly identify the user or customer segment you are focusing on. Create a persona to represent this user.
2. Divide the Map into Sections. The Empathy Map is divided into four quadrants:
   1. Says: What does the customer say out loud in interviews or public?Thinks: What does the customer think about, but might not say out loud? Consider their worries and aspirations.Does: What actions and behaviors does the customer exhibit?
   2. Feels: What emotions is the customer experiencing?
3. Collect Data. Use various methods such as interviews, surveys, observations, and user feedback to gather information about your customer.
4. Identify Pain Points and Opportunities. Analyze the Empathy Map to identify the customer’s pain points, frustrations, needs, and desires. Look for patterns and insights that can inform your business or marketing.

Benefits of the Empathy Map:

• Deeper Understanding: Provides a comprehensive view of the customer’s experience.
• User-Centered Solutions: Helps create solutions that are more aligned with the customer’s actual needs and emotions.
• Enhanced Communication: Facilitates better communication and understanding among team members by providing a shared reference point.
• Innovative Thinking: Encourages thinking beyond traditional solutions by focusing on the customer’s perspective.

Applying the Empathy Map in Business and Life:

In Business:

• Product Development: Use the Empathy Map to design products that better meet user needs.
• Customer Service: Improve customer service strategies by understanding customer emotions and behaviors.
• Marketing: Create marketing messages that resonate with the target audience’s feelings and thoughts.

In Life:

• Personal Relationships: Gain insights into the thoughts and feelings of friends and family to improve communication and empathy.
• Problem-Solving: Approach personal challenges by understanding your own thoughts, feelings, actions, and spoken words.
• Career Planning: Reflect on your own experiences and aspirations to make informed career decisions.

The Empathy Map is a versatile tool that can be adapted to various contexts, helping both businesses and individuals develop deeper insights and more effective solutions.

When it comes to solving complex business problems, many companies invest weeks, if not months, in extensive meetings, project planning, and strategy sessions. But in today’s fast-paced environment, businesses need results quickly—and that’s where Solution Sprints come in. In just two hours, you can go from challenge to actionable solutions, saving both time and money. Let’s dive into how this process works and why it’s more efficient than traditional methods.

What Is a Solution Sprint?
A Solution Sprint is a rapid, focused problem-solving session designed to deliver fast, practical solutions to your business challenges. In just two hours, your team moves through a structured process that includes defining the problem, brainstorming, prototyping, and creating a clear action plan. Unlike longer, traditional processes that can stretch for weeks, a Solution Sprint allows you to tackle specific issues quickly and efficiently.

How Does a Solution Sprint Save You Time?
Traditional problem-solving methods often require multiple rounds of meetings, discussions, and decision-making. This process can be slow, costly, and ineffective, especially for businesses that need fast solutions. In contrast, a Solution Sprint condenses the entire process into just two hours, helping teams get straight to the point without losing momentum.

Consider this:
Weeks vs. Hours: A typical strategic planning session might take days or weeks to complete, whereas a Solution Sprint delivers actionable results in just two hours. That’s a time savings of over 90%.
Rapid Decision-Making: Teams are forced to make quicker decisions during a sprint, leading to faster results. No more endless back-and-forth.

How Does a Solution Sprint Save You Money?
Every hour spent in meetings or deliberation costs money. Whether it’s the cost of pulling your team away from day-to-day tasks, the fees for external consultants, or the opportunity cost of delayed decisions, traditional problem-solving can be expensive. Here’s how a Solution Sprint saves you money:

Real-World Examples: Businesses Benefiting from Solution Sprints
Many businesses have already turned to Solution Sprints for their problem-solving needs and seen impressive results. Here are a few examples:

TruHome Property Solutions: TruHome faced a challenge getting employees to engage with their software platform and CRM system. Through a Solution Sprint, the team developed a strategy to educate employees on the benefits of the CRM, block time on their calendars for using it, and empower staff with more autonomy. They also identified informal influencers within the company to promote adoption. As a result, TruHome saw a significant increase in employee engagement with the CRM, improving overall productivity.

Techguru: Techguru struggled with the onboarding of new employees, and their previous process felt disjointed and time-consuming. The Solution Sprint helped them design a streamlined, engaging training platform with videos that made onboarding fun and efficient. The outcome? New hires were onboarded faster and with a much more positive experience, reducing time spent in the orientation phase and increasing early employee engagement.

A Faster, More Efficient Way to Solve Problems
Time is money, and in today’s competitive business landscape, both are precious resources. By investing in a two-hour Solution Sprint, you can quickly solve pressing challenges, get your team back to work, and see results sooner. Whether you’re launching a new product, improving internal processes, or tackling a unique business challenge, Solution Sprints offer a faster, more cost-effective way to innovate.

Ready to save time and money with a Solution Sprint? Sign up now for an upcoming session!

Looking to come up with wild, breakthrough ideas? Try assumption reversal. Here’s how it works:

List your assumptions about a particular concept—say, restaurants.

Reverse those assumptions.

Use these new, flipped ideas to brainstorm a unique restaurant concept.

For example, if you assume restaurants are sit-down places with waitstaff, reverse it: what if there were no waitstaff, and customers served themselves in a high-tech, interactive space? Suddenly, you’re exploring fresh concepts that could revolutionize the dining experience.

Assumptions about Restaurants:

1. Consistent quality
2. Reasonable wait times
3. Menu variety
4. Convenient location

Now, let’s flip these assumptions for fresh ideas:

1. Inconsistent quality – What if every visit was intentionally different? A dynamic, rotating menu or surprise dish options could add excitement.
2. Slow service – Imagine a restaurant that makes waiting a feature, with engaging activities or mini-courses served during the wait.
3. Limited menu – What if the restaurant focused on just one or two specialty items, perfecting them rather than offering variety?
4. Unconventional location – How could a restaurant thrive in an unexpected place, like a pop-up in an industrial warehouse or a remote area with an exclusive shuttle service?

This approach challenges norms and could inspire innovative ideas for new dining experiences! You can use this method with any challenge you are facing and create a truly unique idea to help find a solution!