How to get Marketing Ideas

I recently I took part in discussion to come up with some marketing ideas.  However, on this occasion I was a participant rather than a facilitator.  As a facilitator I look to make the ‘process’ work, whereas as a participant, I was more interested in the results. 

I was also able to observe somebody else managing the process, and I learned something useful.

We were a group of about six volunteers, all keen to help.  The leader went through the background to the meeting and outlined what we needed and we came up with a list of useful ideas.  But I noticed that we never managed to take the step from ‘useful’ to ‘imaginative’ ideas.  We seemed to be held back by the original context - and the youngest member of the group never said a word.  This is what I noticed;

* If you don’t ask for imaginative ideas, you are unlikely to get any.  In a group setting, most people stick to ‘safe’.
* To get imaginative ideas, you need to go ‘off piste’.  But you need to get people to agree to it.  Ask permission, some people are reluctant to go without a good reason.
* Being a facilitator is a bit like being a good manager, you have to encourage people and give them room to succeed, help them to do more than they think they can.
* Avoid practicality or detail – keep that for the implementation stage.

Challenging Assumptions

I recently watched some brilliant videos about innovation but there were some really interesting ones about questioning assumptions.  They are part of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. 

In one,  Tina Seelig, the speaker, talks about giving some students an exercise in entrepreneurism.  She gave each group $5, and told them to see how much money they could make in two hours and to give a three minute presentation on the results.

The students came up with variety of innovative schemes that met the challenge.  Most of the groups quite reasonably considered what they could do with $5 in two hours.  However, a couple of the groups did rather better.  They chose to ignore the assumptions of the initial problem – the $5.  One group booked tables at a very popular restaurant and when the usual queue formed outside, they sold their reservations to the queue.  Another group found a company that wanted to sell services to students, so the students sold their three minute slot to the company and did their presentation about the company’s services.

The link below is to a different five minute talk she gave about “Challenging Assumptions”.  In it she gets her audience to solve a simple problem.  The real lesson of the talk comes at the end.  A brilliant observation about solving problems, which I won’t give away. 

http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2779