Breaking the Rules – Design Ideation and Innovation
Don Baumgarten
Many organizations use a traditional brainstorming approach to identify innovative opportunities for
their product, service, or business. Teams undertaking these ambitious efforts can quickly get stuck in
the brainstorming process, resulting in a narrow range of ideas or solutions.
Bringing a structured approach to the creative process may sound counterintuitive, but using a
framework for ideation and specific brainstorming strategies can quickly stimulate creativity and open
up the innovation process.
In this article, I’ll present a three-step ideation process and two brainstorming techniques to help your
organization get “unstuck” in the innovation process.
Ready
When a company embarks on an innovation development effort, resources are committed to that effort
for weeks, months, or even years. With that in mind, it’s extremely important to identify the best
opportunities for development. Ideation is often a key component to identify new ideas.
Effective ideation is more than just brainstorming. It’s similar to painting a room: When you paint a
room, 20% of the effort is painting and 80% of the effort is preparation and cleanup. With ideation, 20%
of the effort is generating ideas and 80% of the effort is preparation and cleanup!
Set
The Three-Step Ideation Process is described below, followed by two brainstorming methods. To get
the most out of your ideation effort, conduct each step as a separate activity. With this ideation
structure and brainstorming techniques, there’s no more getting stuck!
Step 1- PREPARATION
Goal: Maximize effectiveness of the ideation effort.
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Typically 2 days to 2 weeks (depends on the scope of the innovation project)
Crystallize the TRUE objective:
o Define the problem statement
o Identify the fundamental need (people want a ¼" hole, not a ¼" drill!)
o Include essential constraints
Develop criteria to evaluate ideas (go/no-go and targets)
Select a facilitator & diverse group of participants
Plan the ideation session
Have participants work on their own first to start ideas flowing
Step 2 - IDEA GENERATION
Goal: Generate a wide variety of innovative options.
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Typically 2 hours to 1 day
Start with a fun brain warm-up exercise (you can find good ones on the internet)
Usual brainstorm rules apply: there are no bad ideas, no filtering, be wacky!
Facilitator reviews the goals and leads the team
Briefly explain each ideation technique, then go!
Use brainstorming “sprints” to keep people fresh
To keep everyone engaged, have someone else must write down your idea on a sticky note
Step 3 - IDEA SELECTION
Goal: Identify the best ideas for further development.
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Typically 2 hours to 2 days
Cluster similar ideas
Select the best distinct ideas from each cluster
Screen-out ideas using the predefined go/no-go criteria
Rank remaining ideas against targets: Vote on favorites or use a Pugh decision matrix
Select the top 1-3 ideas for further development
Go!
There are many ways to stimulate innovative ideas in a brainstorming session. I’ll describe two ideageneration techniques that consistently produce great results: Buried Treasure and Breaking the Rules.
Buried Treasure: A good idea is worth its weight in gold
This technique is called “Buried Treasure” because it helps a team identify hidden areas for innovation
that they might not consider with traditional brainstorming. The Buried Treasure technique is a twostep process:
STEP ONE: Search far and wide to identify a broad variety of areas to “dig.”
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Think about the problem statement from different perspectives
Generate a list of all possible big picture categories or “dimensions” to explore
Resist the temptation to pursue details of promising categories
STEP TWO: Identify the most promising areas and dig deep.
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Each participant gets 5 votes for best categories
Conduct focused brainstorming on the most promising categories first
Brainstorm on one category until idea generation slows, then move to the next category
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Brainstorm on as many categories as time allows
Here’s a brief example: Imagine your goal is to increase profits from your product. It would be easy for
a team to immediately “dig deep” to find ways to improve the product so more people will buy it, or to
look for ways to cut costs. By first “searching far and wide for a variety of areas to dig,” a team might
identify a much broader range of options to increase profits, such as new places to sell the product, new
ways to advertise, new ways to improve customer satisfaction, and so on.
By clarifying the objective and using a systematic ideation method, a greater breadth and depth of ideas
can be generated compared to traditional brainstorming.
Breaking the Rules: Sometimes you’ve gotta break the rules!
“Breaking the Rules” uses a deliberate exploration of the conventions typical for a particular product or
service to identify new innovation opportunities. This exercise often inspires new perspectives and
clever ideas. The Breaking the Rules technique is also a two-step process:
STEP ONE: Identify the “rules” of a product or service.
First, write down the primary benefit. Second, think about the product or service from all different
perspectives and list all the “rules” you can identify:
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Appearance, cost, materials, features…
Process steps, inputs, outputs, user interactions…
What does the product or service NOT provide?
STEP TWO: Break the rules!
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Generate ideas that go against one or more of the rules
Maintain, enhance, or alter the primary benefit in a useful way
This technique is best explained with some examples.
Example 1: Coffee maker
Primary benefit: Brews coffee
Rules:
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Glass coffee pot
Solid body
Brews 8-12 cups
Load and replace filter
Measure and load coffee
and so on…
Break the Rules!
 Eliminate the coffee pot, filter, and measuring the coffee
 Brew one cup at a time directly into your mug
Idea: Pod coffee maker!
Benefits: Quick, convenient, coffee doesn’t get stale
Example 2: Restaurant
Primary benefit: Get food!
Rules
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You are seated at a table
Waiter takes your order
Wait for food
and so on…
Break the Rules!
 Waiter doesn’t take your order
 Food is continuously brought to your table
 Take what you want
Idea: Sushi restaurant with food train!
Benefits: No waiting, it’s fun!
By deconstructing the common assumptions about a product or service and intentionally disrupting
conventions, you can bring a new twist to the primary benefit to better differentiate your product.
Conclusion
Teams face a significant challenge when searching for new innovation opportunities. A traditional
brainstorming approach can be haphazard, off-the-mark, and the group can quickly get stuck –
unintentionally resulting in a narrow range of ideas or solutions.
By bringing a structured approach and specific techniques to the creative process, you can unlock the
full innovative power of your organization.