When creating a product, the natural first step is to decide on what that product is. Whether you have been commissioned to create one, or are producing one for a personal reason… Usually there will be certain outlines/boundaries you need to follow or stay within. The idea generation process allows for creativity to form in that of a new product/event whilst assessing the pre-set conditions; “The synthesis of new ideas and concepts… Where innovation is the implementation of creativity.” (Heap, 1989) This process encourages many different routes to design an innovative and successful product. Innovative ideas were key to the positive final outcome of our product; “not to innovate is to die” (Freeman, 1982) The key here is that for the hotel to keep up with its external environment, it needed to continue to have fresh ideas to attract consumers. A new event is almost like a science experiment- you need quantitive data gathered from the idea generation process in order to hypothesise the success of the event. These hypothesise should be deduced from a ‘logical set of pre-existing assumptions’. (Layder, 1993) This is to say that the research gathered before the idea screening tests begin needs to allow you to fully explore all potential options. After having viewed the hotel and spoken to the manager, which allowed us to identify any limitations set by The New Westcliff for the event, we then began the ideation.
Our roles within the group lent themselves loosely to what it was we needed to do for the idea generation- specifically the Belbin roles for plants were supposedly key in this. However the traditional role of a plant is to produce springboard ideas for the other team members to build upon; whereas I found that the plant was also key in initial research to create a sound potential product. I found that the definition set by Filculescu and Cantargiu (2013), was more appropriate-
“First, there is the person of the entrepreneur who continuously seeks knowledge. Reading books [and] taking leadership”
There were three of us in the team that naturally fell into these roles and provided a selection of ideas to produce inspiration in the other members. One of our key processes was concept mapping; this allowed us as a group to bounce ideas off of one another and hone in on the ideas with the most potential.
“A concept map is a pictorial representation of the group’s thinking which displays all of the ideas of the group relative to the topic at hand, shows how these ideas are related to each other and, optionally, shows which ideas are more relevant, important, or appropriate.” (Trochim, 1989)
This was one of our most efficient generation methods; by being together and working as a collective, we utilized the best intellectual qualities from all of the members in the group, and because we were all present, it allowed us to develop ideas together in an organic nature that wasn’t forced or overly researched. Here was where we presented our initial thoughts and feelings about our assignment and simply put all rough ideas on paper. Whilst this was impressive in creating vast volumes of ideas, it did mean that some of our personal favourites weren’t as possible as we initially thought when we went on to the next stage of our generation process.
Whilst our generation and screening methods were in depth and detailed- we failed to fully look into the basic external environmental research. Upon doing this we discovered that we had a very similar idea to what an entire hotel in Bournemouth was based on. This led us to another generation tactic – which was to talk to focus groups of age appropriate members of the public. We kept it as an open set of standard questions that allowed the people to give us a broader range of ideas. This meant that it didn’t leave constraints and gave us the opportunity to have an open conversion that we could lead in a certain direction to find answers we needed. This was incredibly effective as it gave us a way to test the waters with some of our previous ideas. This also allowed for us to judge the non-verbal responses to our questions using a basic level knowledge of Facial Action Coding System (FACS). (Ekman and Rosenberg, 2005) This is simply reading the facial expressions to give an organic response to an idea posed by the questioner. If the answerer responds negatively with their facial expression; it allows the asker an opportunity to change the route of questioning until they receive a positive response and therefore useful answer.
The New Westcliff hotel wanted a product that was going to bring in a new clientele that wouldn’t affect their current market, but would efficiently utilise their marketable properties in order to expand their target market. This meant that we needed to set goals and outcomes we wanted from the event before the idea generation process fully began. (Goldblatt, 2005) We knew, from the internal sources (the hotel manager), that they wanted an event outside of the Summer months, due to them already being booked up, but that they also wanted to stay away from the family market, without any group bookings such as stag/hen parties, so as to not disrupt their current clientele- 75% grey market.
The idea we settled on was as a result of picking one idea and altering it slightly to create three separate options that we then used multiple screening tactics on in order to assess the creditability of them. The components that make up the idea generation process vary from personal taste to necessity- some testing methods, such as the Ansoff matrix, allow creatives to source crucial information for a successful idea. The Ansoff matrix in particular allows a creative to streamline important facts/information; the weighted score format can measure aspects such as whether there is a large enough exposure that can come as a result of the product. (Neilsen and Wenzel, 2002) Also, the weight index method can be targeted towards certain focus points- innovation, fun and ease of set up. By tallying how much each idea was weighted on this scale it allowed us to narrow our ideas to the best option. It quickly showed us which of the ideas was the most positive due to the numbers that came as a result of it.
We also used De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats; this process involved a way to have a ‘quick exploration of a subject’ (De Bono, 2015) whilst flowing like a thought process. The colour hat you choose after the subsequent hat should eliminate issues found in the previous hat, although it can be used in any order the user sees fit. We found this helped to lay out the positives and negatives of our three final ideas.
The idea generation statement wasn’t particularly clear at the end of our typical screening period and I felt that our research could have been stronger in order to fully support what it was we wanted to show to The New Westcliff hotel. I personally noticed that when we were developing our pitch post initial generation phase, production blocking stopped several potential ideas from coming to light and kept the group in a repetitive circle of being unable to develop the idea past a certain threshold. (Diehl and Stroebe, 1987) However, I don’t think our disappointment with our mark affected the groups opinions of the successfulness of our cooperation; despite studies showing that a negative outcome of group work can have a negative response to the idea generation process after the event. (Guzzo, Wagner, MacGuire, Herr, and Hawley,1986) The proximal layout of the group was semi-permanent and I think that was a positive as it didn’t leave any opportunity for conflict or serious disagreements- due to us having spent time together previous to the assignment, we were all comfortable and understanding of one another’s prior-arrangements and happy to work as a group. (Campion et al., 1993) If we were to do this work again, I would have hoped that we would have thought of an even wider variety of ideas in order to create an entirely unique event. This didn’t happen initially due to the constraints given to us by the hotel – we were limited in what we could offer, and I personally feel that we should have been less apprehensive about what other groups were doing. The awareness of other groups planted doubts in our ideas; in the future I would have encouraged my colleagues to trust our initial instincts more, rather than be led by others opinions. I would have also suggested that we undertook more initial research before beginning the idea generation process as, even though it would have damaged the organic nature of our innovation – at least we would have been further aware of the competitive external environment, and therefore invested less time in an idea that was too similar to a competitor.