Collaborating for Creativity: Generating and Refining Ideas
Introduction
With a clear problem statement and valuable insights from the Learn stage, it’s time to roll up your sleeves and start brainstorming. The Work stage is where creativity meets collaboration. Here, teams come together to generate ideas, explore possibilities, and identify the most promising potential solutions. It’s a dynamic, high-energy phase designed to transform insights into actionable concepts.
What is the Work Stage?
The Work stage is all about perspective sharing, ideation and teamwork. This is where you take the data gathered during the Learn stage and use it to brainstorm solutions that directly address the problem. The process thrives on collaboration, encouraging teams to think outside the box and build on each other’s ideas.
Key activities in the Work stage include:
- Divergent Thinking: Generating a wide range of ideas without judgment.
- Convergent Thinking: Narrowing down options to focus on the most viable and impactful ideas.
- Empathy Maps: Revisiting what users think, feel, say, and do to stay grounded in their needs.
- Idea Clustering: Grouping similar concepts to identify patterns and themes.
This stage ensures that your solutions are creative, user-focused, and grounded in research.
Why is the Work Stage Important?
Creativity is the heart of innovation, and the Work stage is where it shines. It allows teams to:
- Explore diverse perspectives and possibilities.
- Generate a volume of ideas to ensure the best ones rise to the top.
- Collaborate effectively, leveraging the strengths and insights of every participant.
Without this stage, solutions risk being too narrow or disconnected from user needs.
Example
Let’s return to the university recreation center example. After learning that students want group workout options and better access to equipment, the team begins brainstorming.
- Divergent Thinking: The team generates ideas like modular workout spaces, reservable equipment lockers, and social workout challenges via an app.
- Convergent Thinking: They identify three standout ideas to prototype:
- A reservation system for equipment.
- Flexible group workout areas with adjustable setups.
- A mobile app that tracks fitness goals and connects students with workout partners.
- Empathy Maps: The team uses empathy maps to test these ideas against student needs, ensuring they address pain points like overcrowding and lack of motivation.
By the end of the Work stage, the team has a focused set of ideas ready for development.
How Work Connects to Develop
The Work stage sets the foundation for the Develop phase by producing refined, actionable ideas. These ideas will be prototyped, tested, and iterated in the next stage. For example, the modular workout space idea might be built as a lo-fi prototype using simple materials, allowing the team to test its feasibility and collect feedback.
FAQs
Q1: What if my team struggles to generate ideas?
A: Use creative prompts like “What if we had unlimited resources?” or “What would the worst idea look like?” to spark new perspectives.
Q2: How do we decide which ideas to move forward with?
A: Evaluate ideas based on feasibility, desirability, and viability. Tools like dot voting or scoring rubrics can help prioritize.
Q3: What if the ideas we come up with don’t address the problem?
A: Revisit the problem statement and insights from the Learn stage. It’s better to adjust course now than to develop solutions that miss the mark.
Learn More
Discover more about the Work stage and other parts of the Innovation Funnel: