The document provides a comprehensive guide for conducting effective ideation sessions, emphasizing that brainstorming should be structured rather than free-form to avoid wasting time. It outlines steps such as conducting competitive scans, distilling research, creating empathy maps, and generating insights to generate high-quality ideas. Additionally, it suggests using timed activities and various tools for prototyping to facilitate meaningful discussions and innovation.

1. HOW TO PRODUCE KICK-ASS IDEAS
STOP WASTING TIME BY MAKING YOUR MEETINGS MORE PRODUCTIVE
Flickr Image: @ bertboerland

2. The quality of your output will directly be
influenced by the quality of the input.
This presentation will guide you in how to prepare for
and conduct ideation sessions. Let’s get started…

3. Let’s get a few things straight before we begin.
Brainstorming is not:
1. Getting people to sit in a boardroom and asking them what
they think. That’s brain-dumping.
2. About free-form ideas. Contrary to popular belief it does not
work better when there is no process or parameters.
That’s wasting time.
3. About generating lots of random ideas. What’s the point of
having lots of ideas that don’t solve your problem?
That’s counter-productive.

4. COMPETITIVE
SCAN
DISTILL
RESEARCH
EMPATHY
MAPS
PROTOTYPE
THE BRAINSTORM PROCESS
WHAT THE ?DF?!?@
I DON’T HAVE TIME FOR THIS. THIS LOOKS LIKE A LOT OF WORK.
CALM DOWN. YOU’LL SEE IT REALLY ISN’T…
INSIGHTS IDEATE

5. Competitive Scan
How do you conduct a competitive scan?
- Look for examples from within the category and outside of it
- Use industry tools to help pull information quickly
- Present your competitive review using the following
different tools…

6. Lay your findings out on a wall or on craft paper.
Mark all the category conventions that you see within the industry

7. Use a strategy canvas to represent your competitive scan.
The horizontal axis maps key dimensions the category competes on
and the vertical axis shows where each competitor plays. Find
examples to support each point on the value curve.

8. GE WHAT WORKS MATRIX
List all the steps
involved in solving the
problem you are
brainstorming around
Show examples of different
companies who have
solved that specific step
Record what you find on the matrix.
When you find a combination that seems to solve your problem, study it
further to see exactly what your source did in order to succeed.

9. Distill Research
Can come from many different sources
Existing from client
3rd Party – i.e. Forrester Reports
Conducted on your own
A few guidelines:
- Distill research down into a context document.
- Goal of the document is to provide a condensed format for the
entire group to read through and understand the most salient facts.
- Document should be no longer than 2 pages.

10. Empathy Maps
In order to create meaningful change you have to find the feeling.
It starts with having a true empathy for your customers.
Enter Empathy Maps.

11. How to Create Kick-Ass Empathy Maps
1. Populate each of the quadrants in the empathy map
template with questions
2. Highlight any assumptions that the team wants to explore
further
3. Go out in the field and interview the target audience to fill
out the empathy map (use one map for each respondent)
4. Review all of the empathy maps and look for areas of
commonality and divergence
5. 7 – 10 people is a good number of interviews for your
purposes. Remember this is not meant to be statistically
relevant. It’s about finding the feeling.

12. Consumer Journey Wheels
Once you have your empathy maps
you may want to present your
findings in a way the larger team
can quickly understand.
Enter Consumer Journey Wheels.
Map out each stage of the
consumer journey using happy, sad
and neutral emoticons to show the
different states from the
consumer’s perspective.

13. The process so far should now help
you avoid the most common mistake –
TRUE BUT USELESS (TBU) INSIGHTS.
HHI = $75,000
Target Audience = Busy Mom, Multi-Tasking
TBU!
If your brainstorm briefs are filled with this type of information you’re
wasting your time and won’t get great ideas – remember the quality of
your inputs is directly correlated with the output.

14. INSIGHTS
COMPETITIVE
SCAN
DISTILL
RESEARCH
EMPATHY
MAPS
Using your competitive scan, any research you’ve distilled, and
findings from the empathy maps develop a list of 3 – 5 insights.
At this stage you want to re-group with your core team and go
through all of your findings and insights.

15. Idea Generation Time.
What you will need:
1. A stopwatch – every activity must be timed
2. Sharpies – no pencils or pens, you don’t want to sketch
details at this stage
3. Insights that you will form ideas around
4. Activities
You’re going to generate ideas around a very specific
problem and use the insights you’ve compiled to explore
different solutions.

16. Conducting the Session.
Reveal the core problem everyone will be focusing on.
Reveal one of the insights that you want people to think about.
For example, we are going to focus on improving the grocery shopping
experience (problem) because shoppers hate searching for products in
aisles (insight).
Next, use one of the following tools to think/sketch/design ideas…

17. If you don’t know Leah Buley, you should.
She’s amazing. Find templates like this one on her personal site
http://www.ugleah.com//Work.asp
DESIGN
THE BOX.
What would your
solution look like if it
was a product? What
would you say on the
front and back?

18. Template from:
http://www.ugleah.com//Work.asp
Sketch out your
concept – describe
what it’s like and
what it does.
(Don’t forget to time
each exercise. A
good time for
everyone to sketch is
about 5 minutes).
SKETCH.

19. Stephen Harper Lady Gaga
Novice Tech Savvy
Individual Social
SPECTURMS.
Sketch your ideas at
different extremes. What
would your solution look
like if you were designing
it for a novice vs. a tech
savvy person?

20. What would your
concept’s coming soon
page look like? What are
the benefits? What the
most important thing you
would want to
communicate?
COMING
SOON PAGE.
Check out unbounce.com or launchrock.com for examples
of coming soon pages.

21. BUILD.
Use brainstorm cards to
build on ideas or explore
solutions from different
perspectives.
Check out mentalnotes.com for a set of 50 awesome insights
based on psychology to help focus your thinking.

22. LOW FIDELITY PROTOTYPES.
Group the ideas from the brainstorm with your core team.
Quickly prototype these ideas using the following tools.
The goal of prototyping at this stage is to have a physical
representation of your ideas so that you can show them to
your team, clients, target audience and get feedback.

23. Check out these two presentations from Travis Isaacs on
Slideshare and get his templates.
http://www.slideshare.net/tbisaacs
http://travisisaacs.com/

24. Use Google SketchUp to quickly sketch product ideas

25. Use Unbounce to develop web ideas

26. COMPETITIVE
SCAN
DISTILL
RESEARCH
EMPATHY
MAPS
PROTOTYPE
THE BRAINSTORM PROCESS
I promise it will help you avoid looking at each other with blank stares
in a boardroom because seriously, nobody enjoys that.
INSIGHTS IDEATE

27. THANKS FOR READING.
collidelabs.com | nish@collidelabs.com