Then you have reached the right destination.
Have you ever wondered that every giant company out there originated from an idea of just ordinary people like you and me?
Think of a few top of the mind brands; Apple, Coca Cola, Virgin or Google to name a few, it all started with an idea of one or more individuals who wanted to take their ideas to the next level.
If their ideas could conquer the world why would not yours!
In the technology domain, the use of Telco APIs to give birth to life altering inventions has already become a mainstream. APIs have become a key enabler in the telecommunication industry spurring innovations and developing groundbreaking business models. All what you need is a promising idea and you can bring it to reality with the use of Telco APIs.
Here’s a great example from TADHACK 2015; the global hackathon for Telco Application Development.
People often tend to limit themselves assuming that creativity is born and all the bright ideas only come from genius people. But “Hard work beats talent” proves that these assumptions are rarely true.
Making our lives easier, today we have tried and true methods which can be practiced to trigger great ideas. Described below are few of those techniques.
Brainstorming
It is one of the oldest, simplest and well known methods for idea generation. You can do it either individually or in groups. All what you need is a desired outcome to kick-off brainstorming and simply let the minds wander along that objective. All the participants of the session should speak out whatever comes to their mind and all ideas, no matter how illogical, must be recorded; in fact strange ideas should also be welcomed. Participants are prohibited to criticize or evaluate any idea while the brainstorming session is going on. Finally ideas can be combined to form a single good idea as suggested by the slogan “1+1=3” (Herring, Jones and Bailey,2009).
Mind mapping
According to experts it is a powerful graphic technique which provides a universal key to unlock the potential of the brain. Grab a pen and a blank paper, start by writing the key concept or phrase in the center of the page and write whatever else comes to your mind on the same page. It can either be words, images or anything. Once done see if you can make any connections among the information that you have put down on your page.
Role Playing
Role playing works best in teams in generating ideas. As you might already have heard it is something to do with acting and it is fun. Assume a scenario or a character and walk in his/her shoes to get quality insights of the situation. For example imagine you are a team working to find a solution for a problem in the agriculture sector. Who else knows the problem better than a farmer and what other way will work the best for finding a solution other than looking at the problem from the farmer’s point of view. Role playing will take you on the right track!
Focus Groups
Great ideas come to light not only by thinking about ideas but also by thinking about problems, even problems that you have for yourself. Focus group discussions are an ideal way for conducting group discussions along a certain topic. You need to appoint a moderator/ facilitator who will lead your team discussion, may be about a problem that you face in your daily routine and how to find a solution. Focus group discussions can be a lot more than seeking answers for a set of questions. Participants can discuss in-depth about the issue at hand and stimulate more concrete answers through constructive criticisms on team members’ ideas.
Forced Relationships
As the name suggests here you have to force your mind to map relationships among a set of unrelated ideas. Wondering if it will work? It has worked and it will work. The digital watch with the calculator in it is a famous example of a product originated from a forced relationship.
Miller et al., 2011 provides following directions to work on building forced relationships.
- Form and review the ground rules for diverging
- Point to an object or picture totally unrelated to the problem and ask, “When you look at this (object or picture), what ideas do you get for solving this problem?”
- Force a connection between the item and the problem to generate more ideas.
- Share your ideas and repeat as necessary.
Attribute Listing
This break and re-build technique works in a way where you have to breakdown the subject into parts to identify what is inside and start rebuilding by recombining the components in new ways, looking at it in different perspectives.
You might be the person holding the next game changing idea in your mind; a little triggering would help you to bring it out.
TADHACK 2016 is the platform to showcase your creativity and innovativeness and make your ideas come to life.
Pick the technique that suits you the best from above to think out of the box, generate new ideas and spark the creativity within you. Don’t worry too much about doing it the right way and just make it fun. Happy Ideation!
