Week 5 – Meld & Dissemination > Topic 8: Meld & Dissemination > Convergence
- These lateral-thinking methods ask us to take notions that seem bizarre or extraordinary and consider them ordinary.
- When we reflect on these suggestions, they lead us to change our usual assumptions and to consider new patterns of thinking.
- What we need to learn is once you’ve come up with lots of ideas, some pretty wild, how do we narrow down to the few we can move forward? How do we take that best idea and sell it to the world? Convergence.
- Idea prioritization selection is called convergence.
- The expense and time needed to test whether our idea might be true or work makes it impossible to pursue every idea we generate.
- In stating our question, we made sure it was plausible, useful, and actionable.
- The first two principles, plausible and useful, advise that the idea is not clearly just proven by current evidence and that it might be beneficial.
- Healthy skepticism leads us to search for evidence separating true plausibility and usefulness from beliefs.
- Erroneous assumptions that a new idea was just proven, or that a proposed novelty would be unacceptable, are legendary.
- What they should have been asking is whether any data demonstrated that the idea would not work.
- Excluding ideas should consider good research and data against them and not only consider existing support for them.
- Actionable suggests the ability to bring the idea to society.
- That is, can you or a collaborator move it forward? Let’s say you’re a chemist with two ideas, a personal flying machine and an enzyme that will speed the growth of oil producing bacteria.
- Then make a list of your favorites from all the ideas posted.
- What kind of evidence would you be looking for? And how would you use it to find the most plausible, useful, and actionable idea within this list? “.
Week 5 – Meld & Dissemination > Prototyping > Prototyping
- The pharmaceutical industry tests new drugs within a hierarchy of increasingly complex and costly research trials.
- Phase one trials test dosing and enroll a few subjects.
- Phase two studies enroll a few dozen, and focus on safety.
- Finally, phase three enrolls hundreds or thousands as full-fledged tests of efficacy.
- In business, focus groups and market surveys give us imperfect, but useful information about how customers may behave.
- Phase one and two trials and market research are quick and dirty approaches that allow us to base our decision-making on at least some real world input.
- Stop and think, how might you prototype or do social research to obtain evidence for or against your new diaper design? “.
Week 5 – Meld & Dissemination > Dissemination: Keenness for newness > Dissemination: Keenness for newness
- Society- that is, you and me- are the judge of which new ideas are impactful and useful.
- Change is hard, and revolutionary ideas are often rejected before they’re accepted.
- Keenness for newness requires paying attention to what is new.
- The availability of new things seems almost unlimited.
- Research shows that in the midst of too many choices, people’s minds close down, and they’re more likely to simply select what is habitual.
- Malcolm Gladwell in his popular book The Tipping Point argues that grabbing attention is aided by gaining advocacy from the right people.
- These right people are highly connected, attuned to new trends, great at selling dreams, or a combination of all three.
- Highly connected people appear at the center of social networks.
- Those were the right people, the same kinds of people who can bring public awareness to your invention.
- Stop and think, you converge on a new diaper that indicates when it’s saturated by turning color.
- Industry rejects buying your idea, because they believe that diaper choices are made solely on price and your diaper will be more expensive.
Week 5 – Meld & Dissemination > Dissemination: Openness to change > Dissemination: Openness to change
- Openness involves a willingness to break frames, and we know how hard that is.
- A typical American breakfast may consist of cereal, bacon and eggs, or pancakes.
- How many customers would be willing to seek out, pay for, and maybe even eat items from the new Japanese menu? Likely, very few could get past their sense of surprise, or even disgust.
- Others do so through segmentation, such as selling multiple versions of shampoo for dry, greasy, and colored hair.
- Finally, opening minds- that is, challenging frames- can happen through hitching our idea to something considered socially good or bad. Now to the heated battle over reproductive and abortion rights.
- DR. ROBERTA NESS: In 2012, the state of Virginia passed a bill that required a woman to see an image of her unborn fetus on ultrasound before deciding to go through with an abortion.
- DR. ROBERTA NESS: Incensed women everywhere got blogs and emails from friends and relatives, and a large number of opinions changed.
- Hitching the idea to something as horrible as rape opened many minds.
- Consider how to market your color changing diaper, by making it into the right idea, or the right message.
Week 5 – Meld & Dissemination > Dissemination: Allowing change > Dissemination: Allowing change
- Innovation is more quickly adopted in communities that are on the lookout for transformative answers, such as California and Oregon, states that have been at the forefront of passing socially controversial legislation, such as gay rights, assisted suicide, and legalizing marijuana.
- Acceptance of gay rights started in cities with concentrated gay populations in the 1970s and ’80s. Gays were urged to “come out” and reveal their orientation.
- Aided by psychologists and focus groups, gay leaders tapped into the American majority’s sense of humanity.
- Rather than framing gay marriage as a right, leaders marketed it as fulfillment of the universal human need for love and commitment.
Week 5 – Meld & Dissemination > Discussion of stop & thinks > Discussion of stop & thinks
- Discussing now today’s stop and think questions, the best ideas are those that are plausible, useful, and actionable.
- Our overall idea might answer the question how to improve the modern diaper in the US. Note the import of specifying time and place since the answer would likely be different in rural Thailand or in 2050 with evolved technologies.
- Replacing diapers with a bladder catheter would improve convenience and the immediate cost of diaper changes.
- Color changing diapers would not be detrimental socially as they would reduce environmental harm from only partly used diapers.
- Prototype or market research that would support color changing diapers would include testing various materials, considering appropriate colors, checking on your own skin for any discomfort or safety concerns, asking parents whether they would buy such a product, and checking out a few models on your own baby.
- A market segment of interest for your color changing diaper is one that values convenience over immediate price, values long-term over instant savings, and values environmental protection.
- Notably, hitching the diaper to environmental protection also gets you a social pitch.
- How to get customers to pay attention is not easy in a market brimming with established diaper manufacturers who can compete aggressively on volume and price.
- To summarize, once we have identified a vast number of ideas, we must converge on one or a few given the reality of limited time and resources.
- Convergence on one or a few ideas requires determining which are the most plausible, useful, and actionable.
- Plausible, useful, and actionable are best supported by information that the idea will not work rather than evidence that the idea will work.
- Dissemination of a new idea becomes more likely when people pay attention, are open to change, and eager for reform.
- These attributes can be aided by finding the right people, positioning the idea, and priming the social environment.
Week 5 – Meld & Dissemination > Week 5 Wrap-Up > Concept ReviewV
- ROBERTA NESS: To summarize, once we have identified a vast number of ideas, we must converge on one or a few, given the reality of limited time and resources.
- Convergence on one or a few ideas requires determining which are the most plausible, useful, and actionable.
- Dissemination of a new idea becomes more likely when people pay attention, are open to change, and eager for reform.
- These attributes can be aided by finding the right people, positioning the idea, and priming the social environment.
Week 5: Meld & Dissemination