Welcome back, this is Session #6. In Session #6, we're going to talk about creativity and teams. Sometimes, single people have great ideas. But sometimes, we need to work in a team on our ideas to develop them and make them happen. So, this is about an approach for doing that. How to work in teams, to develop creative ideas, and to take the best of all the ideas of a group of people. Not so easy, not so easy. I'd like to talk to you about about IDEO. IDEO is a Palo Alto-based design company, industrial design. They designed the whale in Free Willy. They designed the tooth brushes with a squishy handles. They're great at designing innovative things, beautiful innovative products. But it turns out that they're also great at the innovation process itself, at the process of coming up with creative ideas, creative designs. So, a little background about IDEO. IDEO was founded by a Stanford University engineering professor named Dave Kelley. And Professor Kelley had a tenured position at a great university. He had everything, but he took a risk. He was passionate about design and he felt that he could launch a design company that would do industrial design differently. So, left, started IDEO, a design company nearby in Palo Alto, California. And the rest is history. IDEO is now regarded as one of the leading industrial design companies. Kelley works with his brother, Tom, and a group of other talented people. And IDEO has branches in many parts of the world. On your screen you can see a URL, a website. A YouTube website you can download a interesting video about IDEO. And see IDEO in action as they take on a simulated project. How to redesign the shopping cart. Now, to save you a bit of time, I hope you will watch the video, but in any case, here are the key ideas that emerge for team-based ideation. Team-based creative idea creation at IDEO. And these are 13 principles, and we'll just review them quickly. Good to use these when you have a group of people and you're brainstorming. Because research has shown that brainstorming in terms of tossing ideas in the air without structure, just throwing ideas up in the air, brainstorming isn't too effective. We need some form of organization or structure, but not rigid structure that kills the freedom of creativity and ideation. Never shoot down an idea when it is just born, very important. When you're sitting around, people have ideas, listen to the ideas, stick them up on the wall, write them down, but let the idea be born. It's just a newborn baby. Don't kill the idea, let it be born, get them up there. And then later, go through the process of sifting through ideas. But first, let them be stated. Great ideas very often when they're first stated, they sound wild, impossible, crazy. So don't be hasty. Let the idea be born. Better to ask forgiveness than to seek permission. When you have an idea in a company, see if you can move it along a bit, even without asking formal permission to do so, so that you can create something that people have a better chance to understand what it's about. I have some cases and stories about examples of how that happens. And how that creates huge value for the world, when people with courage try things instead of getting permission. Fail often to succeed faster. We've talked about that, about failure. Try things. Try a lot of things. It'll get you to your goal much quicker. Celebrate success. When you're successful. But also celebrate failure, because someone had the courage to try something risky, unusual. Gather data, observation. Be an anthropologist. Really, really observe. Really look, really see things. Hierarchy doesn't work. It doesn't work when you have many levels. You have to have a level playing field. You have to have a flat organization because the boss doesn't always have the greatest ideas. So really, in an ideation setting, there really can't be a boss, there can be someone organizing, but not someone who gives orders. Focused chaos. You need an open framework, and open ambiance for ideation. But it has to be focused, people have to have goals, they have to have specific areas that they work on. And then someone has to organize this, a responsible adult, put all of it together. Prototyping is really important. If you have an idea, you have to physically see, what is this thing going to look like? And that's necessary so we can try things on people. Function follows form. We often say form follows function, but the form of the thing, the design of the thing, kind of determines its function. Think in the box. We talk about thinking out of the box, and I'll expand on this point later, but sometimes we need to think in the box because we have boxes. We have a time limit. The IDEO team did the shopping cart project, as you'll see in the video, in five days. They had a time limit. They had a budget limit. They had constraints on what the shopping cart could look like. So sometimes we have to invent things within realistic constraints. The key, of course, is to know what constraints really hold, and what constraints can I abandon, can I eliminate in order to be creative. Ambiance. You need to create an environment, a setting that encourages creativity. Democracy. We need to get ideas from everyone, from low to high, and there is no low or high in the ideation process. And a very important principle, number 13, when you build a team, we know we tend to kind of gather people to us that are like us. But that really doesn't work in creativity. You need people who are not like you. When you hire people for your startup, hire people who are not just like you, who don't think just like you do. Because that diversity will create many, many great ideas. And IDEO has a highly diversified team, from medical students, psychologists, marketing people, engineering professors, you name it. And they all bring their own qualities and their own creative ideas. That ends our discussion about team-based creativity. Please come back and join me for Session #7.
