How these ladies used Innovative thinking to solve a health problem
An article by the BBC this morning brought my attention to the organization behind Buggie Boot Camp
It explained how the UK has seen people interacting with sport and their general activity levels decline since the 2012 Olympics.
The team at Buggy Boot camp have realised that rather than proceed with a standard marketing fitness awareness campaign they would work out the problems that women had attending a fitness class first and then set about these problems.
They discovered a reoccurring theme of problems that the ladies had when thinking about attending an activity class.
- They lacked the confidence to go to a gym
- They felt exercise was not fun
- They had issues organizing child care.
Buggie Boot Camp solves all the problems
In essence the women bring their children to class and exercise is designed around mutually fun goals for mothers and their children alike. By being mutually fun for parent and child, the women gained confidence and also did not have to worry about child care.
 |
| Look at these ladies bench pressing their toddlers! |
Look at the problems first rather than thinking of solutions
By looking at the reasons why people were not exercising, the team have created a solution to a real problem.
I too have found myself in situations in my career where I’d thought of a really good idea first only to find that the problem I thought of didn't really need a solution.
In Bruce Lee’s Striking Thoughts there is a great quote “Do not start from a conclusion”.
I have found that by holding "painstorm" meetings where the focus is on the acquisition of problems is a much more efficient way of acquiring problems that need innovative solutions. These problems are then solved in a separate meeting using people adept at solutions.
Painstorming instead of Brainstorming
When attempting to think of a new idea, people generally consider a brainstorming as a technique to come up with ideas. The idea behind a brainstorm is
- To generate as many ideas as possible
- Not criticise people’s ideas
- Welcome unusual and daft ideas
- Combine and improve ideas in a collaborative environment.
The problem is that brainstorming favours quantity over quality. The ideas generated still fall into the trap that they may present a solution to a problem that may not need solving. I think that Brainstorming is an inefficient way to come up with valuable ideas.
- The ideas generated can be too fanciful for actual development
- The ideas generated are simply not inventive enough.
This is because it is unfair to assume people can come up with an idea from a standing start.
A far better use of a crowd of people's time is to use a technique I call Painstorming.
Painstorming
A painstorm is where you get a divergent set of people for whom you wish to solve a problem and get them to define areas where your innovative team could solve a problem ie issues that cause them pain.
By framing the meeting into one where problem issues occur you are using your "customers" or "users" experience to full advantage rather than having them come up with a solution.
Run well you will find it chimes far easier with their desires to improve and will help define the issues to which an innovation could be brought about by a team with another set of skills to actually solve the problem.
In agile development we call these pains user stories. I will write a post about this another time.
In agile development we call these pains user stories. I will write a post about this another time.
If you liked this
I hope that you have found this article of interest.. If you did then I have written more ideas with techniques to make your innovations punch above their weight. I call my book Innovation Muscle. Its a short sharp read as to how you and your team can innovate fresh powerful ideas. Using these processes you will be able to create ideas that punch above their weight.
You can download my book by clicking here: INNOVATION MUSCLE
Anyone purchasing the book will receive not one, but TWO FREE mini e-books that are supplied directly as PDF files to your inbox. These can be distributed to you team when starting a new project or used simply to sanity check your existing processes.
Until next time
Paul
No comments:
Post a Comment