Ideation Workshop

❓What is it

• This collaborative technique involves running a physical or virtual session to actively explore the broad space associated to the opportunity, to generate new ideas or expand on existing idea candidates that support the realisation of an opportunity that is deemed valuable to the organisation.

👥Who

• Product Manager brings together a group of people, preferably between 7 to 12 participants who have an interest in this topic, but come from diverse backgrounds, e.g. technology, strategy, customer service, product, end user service owners.

🛠 Running the technique

• A prerequisite of running a successful workshop is clear framing of the opportunity. This may be in the form of one or more of the following:
  • Draft vision statement, a PR release, secondary market or technology research extracts, industry case studies, high level opportunity statement (How might we…)
• Plan the workshop - agenda, participants, pre reading material, outcomes, format
• On the day, prepare the virtual or physical space to encourage participants to immerse themselves in the opportunity area
• It is always recommended to start the workshop with an ice breaker, followed by a fun creative exercise. An example of this is playing an alternative use game with a household item
• Use some of the prepared materials such as vision statement or PR release to trigger the main ideas creation activity, encouraging non judgemental divergent thinking to generate a broad range of ideas. If the flow of ideas is low, try a What If technique to re-energise the room
• Use the next activity to work as a team to theme some of these ideas. Capture all the ideas, with top level themes into an ideas backlog for future reflection and refinement.