Easy-to-process things feel truer, safer, and more appealing.
More quotesWant boring ideas? Put twelve adults in a grey room, call it an Innovation Workshop and remind them that the finance director is joining at three.
Adults are not short of imagination. We are over-supplied with embarrassment. By the time an idea reaches our mouth, it has already passed Legal, Procurement and the imaginary tribunal of colleagues who might think we are a bit odd. Seven-year-olds have no such governance structure. Lucky sods.
That is why crude prototypes work. Give a product team cardboard and tape and they will attempt things PowerPoint would have killed. Ask for twenty deliberately terrible names and the eleventh may contain the good one. Tell people to design a hotel for dogs, then steal the useful thought about effortless check-in for humans. Play is not the output; it is the smuggling route.
Of course, “think like a child” can become another ghastly facilitator slogan. Children also put crayons up their noses. The valuable bit is not innocence. It is temporary immunity from looking sensible.
I would split the job brutally: first make judgement unwelcome, then make it earn its salary. Generate without defending. Build without polishing. Only afterwards ask whether the thing is useful, affordable and true. Professionalism is often fear wearing a lanyard. Take the lanyard off for twenty minutes and see what escapes.