How To Generate Options (part 1)

How can we unlock creativity in strategy? By understanding the two constraints of creativity.

In a given situation, how do you actually identify what you could do? i.e. the options available?

To answer this, I’ll use an illustration of a team’s collective brain. Each dot represents knowledge, and the knowledge inside the circle represents the collective knowledge of the team.

The two constraints

We'll use this to illustrate the two constraints we face when generating ideas:

a) knowledge

b) access to that knowledge

Think of an option as a line connecting two dots of knowledge. An insight. A lightbulb moment. A solution to a problem or opportunity.

Obviously, the amount of knowledge is the first constraint. We cannot use knowledge we don’t have.

It goes without saying that knowledge comes from experience and study. As our knowledge grows, the number of potential connections increases exponentially. The pursuit of worldly wisdom, therefore, follows an exponential return function. Experience and curiosity matters.

That’s also how diversity can be useful. It’s simply more knowledge.

The deeper we understand the current situation, the more knowledge we have. Tiny nuances matter. Sometimes, the entire unlock is a simple sentence uttered by a customer.

As in the Pepsodent case.

Pepsodent dominated the toothpaste market for a decade or so. Competitors were struggling to capture meaningful share. They didn't understand why. Until they discovered the secret. In a focus group, they found out that customers liked the tingly sensation from the mint flavour. It signalled that the toothpaste was working. And after emulating the minty flavour, competitors started to gain share.

The second constraint is how well we can access our knowledge.

This has a couple of parts. Activation is triggered by perspective. Perspective is activated by question.

So asking the right question helps us access knowledge.

On the other hand, if team dynamics are bad, this reduces our access to knowledge. If people don’t want to look stupid, they won’t ask enough questions. In this regard, diversity might be bad, because it may reduce cohesiveness.

Useful tools

Politics and face saving aside, there are useful techniques to aid in this process.

These shed light on various regions of our knowledge. Knowledge gets activated and this helps us make connections and generate useful ideas.

Here are some really useful ones:

• Analysis: As Jobs said, “when you understand the problem deeply, you almost have the solution”. Analysis is a magnifying lens. It creates new dots from which we can connect other dots. By dissecting the current situation in detail, solutions often becomes obvious.

• Framing: Consider this example, from the brilliant Rory Sutherland: The upgrade to the Eurostar services cost £6 billion to shave 30 minutes off the journey from London to Paris. But was there a better, cheaper way to solve the problem? For example, for 1% of that cost, free wifi could have been provided, so the journey became an extension of the office, reducing time pressures. Better still, by spending one billion pounds – still saving £5 billion – they could have employed the world’s top supermodels to walk up and down the train giving out free champagne, and (here’s the real irony) people would have asked the train to slow down. By reframing the problem from “reducing transit time” to “making the journey enjoyable”, the solution space completely changed.

• Brainsteering: Kevin Coyne’s Brainsteering book is an unappreciated gem. Essentially, brainsteering means generating ideas using targeted, specific questions rather than vague generalities. Here are some examples:

  • “What do our least satisfied customers have in common?”

  • “What part of the customer experience are we currently ignoring?

  • “What will customers expect from this product or service five years from now?”,

  • “How could we drive customers away on purpose?”, or

  • “If customers could only buy our product if we reduced the price by 30%, what would we do to make it profitable?”

  • “If we were to double or triple the price of our product, what would it need to look like?”

The list goes on.

There are ways to stimulate creativity in a non cringe way. These techniques usually leverage a mix of deep problem understanding, reframing and taking pointed perspectives by asking questions.

We will explore this in the continuation.