There seems to me, to be a natural tension between the desire to create and the desire for structure. Something at my core screams against standardisation in creative processes, how can we think outside of what is known if we’re all reading from the same playbook?
And yet, I often find my best work to come from routine, from practise, from process. In my experience, great ideas come from two places, and neither is less valuable. From thinking mode and from being mode.
The ideas that come from being mode are like magic: wonderful, fleeting, rare. This is when the idle mind stumbles upon a moment of true inspiration, as if the idea emerged from the ether. When in the moment, it’s as if the mind can free itself from the restrictions we generally think inside of. If you’re lucky enough to have even one or more of these moments, write it down before you forget it, and act.
But we can’t spend our lives waiting for these moments, which is where thinking mode comes in. Thinking is harder, messier. Thinking means gathering information, building understanding, making conclusions, while desperately trying to keep track of it all; fighting against the fog. Knowing where you want to go, but not knowing how to get there. This can be time consuming, and therefore costly, and therefore risky.
Not to mention, in either case, having the idea is only half the battle (probably more like a quarter, even). Communicating the idea, convincing people, getting something into the world. That’s harder still.
That’s innovation, and it is overwhelming. The good news is you’re not the first to attempt it. The better news is you don’t have to do it alone.
If you’ve ever had a conversation with me about design and innovation, you’ve probably heard me mention the Design Council’s Double Diamond process. If that applies to you, feel free to skim over this next bit.
The Double Diamond process is a structure I use to contextualise innovation and make an informed recommendation about where innovators should be focusing their efforts. It’s made up of four key stages:
Discover: Empathise with your target audience to understand their challenges.
Define: Identify, prioritise and frame the key problems to be addressed.
Develop: Generate and assess ideas to tackle these challenges.
Deliver: Build a compelling business case and present your solution.
All of these stages must be considered when on the journey of creating a solution (products, services), but the process is non-linear. It demands you embrace uncertainty and recognise when you need to take a step back. To put it simply, it can be summed up in four mindsets:
What we do at Edge is help people to embed these mindsets and apply this process, using a library of visual resources and activities (what we call tools) helping to guide the activity and ultimately de-risk innovation.
We’d like to think our services are priced to make this service as accessible as possible. After all, our goal is to eliminate the barriers to innovation, to support innovators to realise the potential of their idea, to democratise. But that doesn’t always mean they are accessible, especially in small businesses and start-ups where necessity dictates the flow of resource. This is why we involve ourselves in programmes such as the Tees Valley Innovation Challenge programme – a fully funded innovation accelerator scheme, powered by the Tees Valley Combined Authority and the UK Government.
Through this funded programme there are multiple business support options available including 1-to-1 support, innovation training, networking opportunities and not least of which, the innovation challenges – where we’ll be inviting Tees Valley based small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to respond to the challenges of large businesses. The latter is incentivised by some grant funding and potential partnerships with large businesses. However, the other support routes available are entirely dedicated to the progression of your business, at zero cost to you.
For the purposes of this blog post, I’d like to shine a spotlight on the innovation training. I think it is excellent evidence of my earlier ramblings regarding the creation, development and realisation of great ideas.
The course is structured in four sessions, based on the aforementioned Double Diamond process (Discover, Define, Develop, Deliver). Here we invite organisations to collaborate on a shared (hypothetical) challenge as an opportunity to try out the process in a relaxed and open environment, with the support of innovation coaches.
This is open to 36 organisations across 3 cohorts of 12, the first of which we have just wrapped up. There are still spaces available for the remaining 2 cohorts, which I will share the information for at the end of this post, but for now, I’d like to tell you the story of our first cohort and SilverCare Solutions.
Session 1: Discover
In session one, we introduced our confused but open-minded SMEs to SilverCare Solutions – a hypothetical business with an ambition to support an aging population, reliant on public funding and struggling to become self-sufficient. For the purposes of the workshops, our SMEs would act as SilverCare’s new innovation team, tasked with developing a commercially viable solution for the company.
In the first session, SME’s aligned on an ambition to improve the healthcare ecosystem, reduce social isolation and ultimately support an aging population to live independently for longer.
They empathised with our target audience, thinking about what they might be saying, doing, thinking and feeling and fully mapped out their current journey, to recognise frustrations around cost, safety and having to change routines.
To close out workshop one, SMEs then crystallised their learnings through the creation of personas - documents fully articulating the motivations and needs of not just elderly people, but also the staff and family members supporting them.
Session 2: Define
In session two, our SMEs started by analysing the alternative solutions they might be competing against. This included mental health services, care homes, smart home devices and stair lifts.
They used this insight to create challenge themes and identify where they could add value to the lives of the target audience. These themes were: poor mental wellbeing, a lack of community, reliance on other people, the risk of harm, the lack of user-friendly tech solutions and ultimately the deterioration of health over time. That’s a lot to solve, which is why they used the impact vs effort tool to prioritise which challenge to focus on. Ultimately the SMEs decided to focus on increasing independence while emphasising community.
All of this was summarised in a design brief – detailing the challenge scope.
Session 3: Develop
Session three began with SMEs reviewing their brief and creating “How might we statements” breaking down the challenge into smaller chunks, which could then be used as stimulus for idea creation.
As two groups they then practised blue sky ideation, letting go of restrictions to generate a wide pool of ideas to solve the target users’ problems. These ideas ranged from exoskeletons to pill dispensers to accessibly design door frames to a community driven care village – and many, many more.
To narrow down, our SMEs then prioritised - discussing if their ideas were a development of something that already exists, if it would be a complete transformation of an existing solution or if it was game changing disruption of the current market. The learning here being that the most disruptive idea doesn’t always mean the one with the highest value.
We closed out session three by asking SMEs to individually summarise what they thought was the winning idea, before voting in two teams and deciding which idea to take forward.
Session 4: Deliver
Session four, our two groups were tasked with developing their idea further, describing what happens before, during and after the users’ experience, and what partners would need to be onboard to make it happen.
They then identified where the risks might be, pre-empting where the solution may fail and identifying actions to mitigate.
We finalised the workshop series, by supporting each group to develop a pitch for their solution, explaining that they would have to convince their ‘senior stakeholders’ to invest further in their idea. This all culminated in the SMEs pitching their solution back to each other, giving feedback and receiving pitching advice from Edge CEO, Simon Green.
Which of the two solutions do you think was a winner?
Roots: a care village inviting people from all age ranges to get to know and support their neighbour, with community-based activities and classes.
Smart Monitoring Systems: a modular smart home system, which can be adapted to the individuals needs and budget, offering anything from simple smart system to open and close blinds to a fully integrated system supporting a wide range of accessibility needs.
I can personally see a huge amount of potential in both, and I think this is fantastic example of how process can lead to innovation. Our SMEs were not experts in elderly care or assisted living, but they were able to work together to understand the market, identify problems, create solutions and communicate them in a compelling way. I think it’s a huge testament to the value of structure, not to mention their open mindedness and entrepreneurial spirit.
If you think this programme could benefit you, please don’t hesitate to register your interest. We currently have availability across the remaining 2 cohorts, but places are expected to fill up fast:
To register your interest, please go to https://bit.ly/DT-TVIC and enter your organisation’s details.
To conclude, I’ll answer my earlier hypothetical: how can we think outside of what is known if we’re all reading from the same playbook?
To me, it’s about having the perspective and knowledge to know when to follow a process, and when you need to do something different. A process can be extremely valuable for when you feel stuck in the weeds, or when you’re persistently coming up against the same problem. It’s not about one or the other, it’s about both, seeking inspiration in all forms, but always challenging what you think you know. Embracing the tension between structure and creativity and trusting in process when lost in ambiguity.
Thanks for reading,
Harry Ridpath,
Senior Design Associate,
Edge Innovation.