The Menu

"Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself." – Chuck Close

In short, to provide some context, I enjoy a lot coming up with ideas on how to solve problems. Sometimes (quite often, actually) I just indulge in coming up with solutions for problems that might not even exist.

At work, I started organising lunch sessions during which I facilitate ideation about whatever problem I can think about. It doesn't have to be related to my organisation's business. It is actually rarely aligned with it. Where would the fun be otherwise, one could ask?

The Rules of the Game

Despite the exercise's goal being to free a flow of ideas and train colleagues to understand and recognize opportunities, I found some ground rules to be a good foundation from where to start. Hence the aforementioned quote.

The rules are fairly simple and straightforward for anyone to copy them:

1. Invite a bunch of people for a lunch¹, and explain the purpose. I mean, it would not be nice to mislead them;
2. Choose an industry and two business model patterns. I usually take them from St. Gallen University's Business Model Navigator²;
3. Before starting, present the rules:
   • As a team, the goal is to come up with a solution that could fit within the industry and could be provided to customers by using at least one of the chosen business model patterns;
4. Start asking questions to your table companions, to kickstart the ideation session;
5. Feel free to change industry or business models if it makes more sense. I personally try to avoid it, but hey, there is really no reason to be strict;
6. Keep it bound to 1 hour: you wouldn't want to be responsible for low productivity, would you?

Un Café?

I often come un up with fun ideas for businesses, and I rarely follow up, since they are not aligned with my organisation's mission and vision. Nonetheless, should you come up with something that would make sense to further develop, do organise follow up coffees.

After all, since there are some many innovation types and processes, why not conceptualise "napkin innovation"³.