This statement is a lie.
There are simply loads of bad ideas. Chocolate teapots, a donut eating competition to fundraise for a diabetes charity and voice activated lifts – and that’s just for starters.
I believe that when you are trying to come up with original and creative ideas, part of the creative process is to have as many as you can. At this stage it’s important not to filter or kill your own or others (good or bad) ideas. You need crazy and bad ideas to help inspire different thinking.
Your challenge as a team is to turn the bad ones into something brilliant.
The bad ideas aren’t supposed to make it to the marketplace.
I think many bad ideas make it to the marketplace because we start our creativity and innovation at the wrong place. We start with ideas.
The starting place for creativity and innovation isn’t ideas. The starting place is your audience.
Good ideas and innovation happen when you can solve a problem for your customer or spot an opportunity to make their life better. And ‘better’ can be many things, for example, easier, faster, more exciting, sexier or more meaningful (or a combination of some or all of these things).
When we start the creative process with ideas we fall in love with them. And when we fall in love it’s impossible to be objective. And before you know it your bad idea has been manufactured and your money and reputation are slipping through your fingers.
That’s why the most successful innovations don’t start with an idea. They start with solving problems or making life better for their customer. Why do you think every time you buy something or eat out you are incentivised to give feedback on your experience? The success of TripAdvisor relies on reviews. Starbucks take your feedback and combine it with ethnographic research (observing you when you are in their coffee shops) so they can develop new products and ways of working that meet your needs.
When you know your customer and innovate around their needs you start to reduce the risks of innovation. Getting to know your customers, understanding what problems you can solve for them is the starting point for creativity and innovation.
Then there is a bravery and skill to allow your team time and space to have lots of ideas, good ones and bad ones. From that big messy pile of ideas creative teams can then build on ideas to turn the mess into something tangible that your audience or customers need.
Sounds quite simple but the reality is hard. If you’d like some help to get your team working together creatively then get in touch.