4.1 Methods of selection
Here are six other methods you can use to select your best ideas:
- Pick the most interesting – this will keep you engaged with the process. This has drawbacks in that the most interesting isn’t necessarily the one that creates or adds most value to the solution; but if it’s interesting, then there’s usually something worth exploring anyway.
- Alternatively, stick with the idea that creates or adds the most obvious value for your partners, customers, beneficiaries or colleagues.
- Pick the idea that addresses the most urgent part of the problem. This is a good approach for a crisis problem, but not so appropriate for long-term strategic gain.
- Ask experts to evaluate the merits of competing ideas. Experts could be people already in the activity group, or in your wider stakeholder group. They are simply the people who are best-informed about the components of the problem.
- Experiment: you don’t have to pick one single idea straight away. If there are elements that can be tested or prototyped, then take this route to evaluating the best ideas against each other based on some real data and experience.
- Combine ideas. Depending on the complexity of the problem, your creative thinking may have identified a number of different elements that could be brought together to form one systematic solution.
However you choose your best ideas, remember that they are just ideas rather than fully formed solutions. Your next step is to create an action plan to start turning these ideas into something more practical.
Activity 4
Think of a problem you have that could benefit from some creative thinking. This could be something at work, or an issue at home or elsewhere in your personal life. You are doing this as an activity to test your learning at this point, so keep it simple.
Taking a personal example, I currently have a scheduling issue in which the time I need to get to work each morning clashes with the times that other members of my family need to be at their own schools and colleges. Public transport where I live is poor, so I am usually the family ‘taxi driver’. I’d like to find a creative solution to this problem.
Test your understanding of the Fast Idea Generator Tool by working through your problem completely, filling in your printout of the Fast Idea Generator Template. Aim for just one or two ideas for each approach. Finally, identify your top three ideas.
Discussion
Your answers will, of course, depend on the problem you explored, but hopefully you found it useful to work through the entire template on your own. If you got stuck anywhere, then look back through the module to see why this may be, or try to explain why you’re stuck to a friend or colleague – often, just describing something aloud can help us to gain better insight into it.
My own insight came from the very first line of my explanation of the problem: my common practice is to drive the children to school. My inverted idea was for them to drive themselves. On initial reflection, I thought that was silly because they can’t drive. However, one of them is old enough to learn, so in the longer term, if I helped him to do so, we could be a little more flexible with the use of the car. I even feel a bit silly for not thinking of this before!
4 Selecting ideas