We’ve pulled together just a taste of methods we’ve found to be effective when bringing together beings from different domains/disciplines/mindsets and experiences to think, explore, make, and take action. For a really deep dive check out one of the companies our founder co-created to teach the world how to innovate with each other, LUMA Institute (now an underlying operating system within Mural).
But first, a nice example of how an experience that uses these methods plays out…
And a link to watch it directly on YouTube.
You may have noticed the template all the participants used to structure their thinking. Here is the IdeaDay template that IdeaLab requires founders to present when they are considering investing.
The Space Remembers for You
Ok, it turns out the most important thing you can do if you’ll be facilitating is taking over the space you’ll use (or building one or many, like we did) so that you can get the most out of the participants. As Kaye Foster, one of our mentors, says “context is decisive.” Change the context and you’ll get different (and if done well) better, outcomes.
Fortune Favors the Prepared
Be sure that if it’s in a real life setting and not virtual to get the right supplies ahead of time!
A long time back at MAYA we developed a handbook for new MAYAns to learn how to facilitate sessions (before we launched LUMA). It has many deep words of wisdom from various MAYAns and it’s worth doing a bit of studying if this is your first rodeo;)
A few of our favorite templates to get you started…
Some of these methods work in large groups, others work best if you start in small groups made up of one (sometimes loners just want time to think themselves) or two (but not three or you’ll get social loafing). Some work well in succession using a method called one (first everyone spends 5-10 minutes doing one all by themselves), two (then two participants cross share and build a hybrid of the best of their big ideas or gritty nuggets), and then four (where the two groups of two share with the other two groups and build their best hybrid to present to the whole collective). These mechanisms are meant to foster late (individuals get to have independent or pairwise thoughts and discussions and then the averaging mechanism acts as a market), instead of early averaging (where you often get compromise by superset and the loud mouth wins and the introverted members are never heard) and then bubble up the wisdom (instead of the madness) of the crowds.
The first one is in a category called “Thing from the Future” and is called “Monster in a Box.”
Monster in a Box
If you were magical wizards for a day and could pack all the big ideas and gritty details into a box, shake it up and turn it into a monstrous magical product that a stakeholder could purchase off the shelf to address their challenges, what would it look like?
Give the monster a product name that has shelf appeal so it’ll be adopted and taken home
Describe who it’s for (who are the archetypal users/buyers or the beings most likely to play well and be adopted by the monster?) Explain how it’s different than the way it’s done today (include at least one gritty and tangible detail). Draw a diagram or picture of the monster and how it works. Be sure to include warnings of how it could go wrong or be misused! Bonus: Map out a timeline of how you’d get started casting the magical spell.
Cover story from the Future
Another example of a “thing from the future” method that works well is called the “Cover Story from the Future.” Choose a relevant publication and future issue date. Write the headline. Develop quotes and inside deep dive article headlines in support of the main story and create sidebar text, if applicable. Write up a snippet of the story. Use the sketch to pitch it to the editor in chief.
Creative Matrix
The creative matrix is a format for creating “systematic mash-ups” to generate many wide-ranging ideas. This method is particularly good at helping participants think divergently – specifically, creative matrix exercises generate many wide ranging ideas in a relatively short period of time. You won’t be surprised to learn that a creative matrix is a form of generativity. You are a product of this process, half of your mom’s genes got together with half of your pop’s and made you. Generativity is not a method of form but of process. If you take two (or more, but humans aren’t so great at high dimensional mashups) dimensions and cross them together orthogonally and force yourself to consider what a given cell could contain, it often stirs unexpected ideas. Look at the white block shapes below, what is the hidden rule for the vertical dimension? What is the hidden rule for the horizontal dimension? Just by defining two dimensions we end up being able to generate 16 concepts.
It does turn out to be important to remember two things if facilitating a creative matrix activity.
- Encourage participants to work in parallel and quietly. Quantity is more important than quality and sometimes you’ve got to sift through a lot of sand, to exercise your demons, and find a golden nugget.
- Encourage participants to pick a vertical column or horizontal row and just work across it. So if one person picks the top row, another can pick one near the bottom.
Once you’ve given folks enough time to start filling the grid (think of it as a game where the winning team fills all the cells), encourage participants to read other concepts from their team mates and riff on them. Sometimes it’s easier to take someone else’s idea and build on it than come up with an idea from a blank sheet of paper. Halfway through play a bit with which team seems to be bloviating too much and which team seems to be in the lead.
Oh yeah. A really good concept has some key parts. Take a look at a well formed initial idea below.
Once all the teams have run out of steam, have them spend another 10 minutes briefing out each other in their team. Each team mate highlights 1-3 of their favorite concepts and others grab any ideas they had that are related or give more nuance or can make it even better and place their ideas next to the team mate who is pitching (this is a form of “affinity diagramming”). It’s good to encourage the teams to circle really good clusters and name them so they can share out their favorites when it’s time to pitch what each team did to the rest of the group.
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