Getting Max Creativity Out of Everyone During Co-Creation
At ITG we love working with our Creative Consumers® associates (CCs) because they are so energetic, generative, and thoughtful! Before they show up ready to go in an ideation session with your team, the inherently creative people in our panel pass our creativity test with high scores, and then have their natural abilities amped up over 16 hours of group and individual creativity training sessions. They LOVE participating in ideation sessions, they are great at coming up with lots of diverse ideas, and they can do this for hours on end. The second one of our CCs opens their mouth to share insights from their homework, I immediately get excited because I know they are giving us the gold!
But what about when other perspectives are needed? Sometimes, when people with specific professions, medical conditions, or demographics (like kids) are not represented within our CC panel, we run a special recruit.
Here are a few things we do to prepare participants who don’t have the experience of a CC:
Test their creativity. We use a test that we developed, that gives us a way to “score” creativity. It measures a person’s ability to generate a lot of ideas, ideas that are different from each other, unique ideas, and the ability to build on the ideas of others. For us, it’s the best way to know if someone has the creative chops to run with ITG. Once they pass the test, we know they have the potential, and it’s up to us to get them ready to put it to work.
Train them up for the purpose. When we need to recruit creative people outside of our own panel, we don’t have the luxury of training them for 16 hours, when we are only going to use them for 1 or 2 sessions. And we still need to train them to prepare them for the session. We have developed a quick way to teach and practice the techniques we need them to know and adopt. We teach a skill off-topic so they can understand the principles, and then we practice it on-topic to make sure they will be effective in session. It works so well that, whether they are Rheumatologists, Fire Fighters, or Tweens, they are able to jump right in and hold their own like the pros!
Give clear instructions with examples. When working with newly trained creative participants, we are sure to give simple step-by-step instructions for the activities we ask them to do. Whether that’s an exercise in the homework assignment or a creative excursion during ideation, we take extra care to walk them through the instructions because unlike our own CCs, this is new to them. We also make sure to provide examples as well, so they know what types of ideas we are looking for at any given moment. This practice helps set them up for success.
When we bring in additional creative participants to a session, it’s often because there is something specific needed that’s not part of our panel (like the Rheumatologists, , Fire Fighters, and Tweens referenced above). In some of those cases, there are a few additional considerations to ensuring we get the most out of them.
When working with Kids here are a few things we do that help:
Keep it fun. Most of the time when working with kids, it’s about coming up with products that will appeal to them, without turning off their parents, the ones with the money. So, even if it’s a topic that doesn’t seem fun like allergies or vitamins, we make an effort to draw from their experiences with activities they love, and brands they find fun and engaging. This helps us unlock what makes them tick, and we can then apply that to the topic at hand.
Keep it simple. When working with adult Creative Consumers® associates, we can give them a bit of a peek under the tent. They have more information about what the objective is, or what the brand strategy is, or what the big challenge is that needs to be overcome. They can connect the dots and use that knowledge to help them generate ideas that are on point. With kids, they don’t need to know all that stuff. They just need to know that we are interested in what kids think, what they think is relevant to someone their age, and that we want their ideas. The rest is up to us, to take what they say and translate it into something workable.
Keep them from spinning. Pro tip. We don’t use chairs that spin! When working with kids, it’s important to get them up on their feet and allow them to get their hands dirty. And, at times. We need them to sit down, listen, and write stuff on a piece of paper. If they are in chairs that spin, that becomes impossible to manage. So we swap them out for stationary seating.
When working with Doctors, here are a few things we do that help:
Make sure they understand their role. Docs are used to being in charge. However, when working with us, the Facilitators are in charge. So when we train Doctors in creativity, there’s a dual purpose to that training. It’s partly about giving them the skills needed to participate in a creative ideation session. And it’s partly about level setting, checking to see who is a team player, making sure we don’t have someone who thinks they are better than everyone else, and making sure they can follow a Facilitator, vs. taking the lead.
Don’t underestimate their desire to be creative. We typically give our CCs four hours of homework with 4-5 different exercises to get them ready for the session. While we are cognizant that giving a Doctor four hours of homework is unrealistic, the two hours of homework that we give them is designed to stretch their thinking, just like with our CCs. We are often delighted by the poems they come up with, or the cartoons they draw, or the funny names they generate to describe a challenging patient persona. So, while we limit the amount of time we expect them to put in, we don’t hold back on what we ask them to do.
They can handle a late night, even if we can’t. In order to get Doctors to show up, we often have to start an ideation session at 5pm or even 6pm in the evening. And depending on whether it’s in person or online, the sessions can last between 3 and 4 hours. So that means we are asking them to be creative sometimes until 9pm! And while that sounds painful to some of us, they can handle it.
Whether we’re working with our own Creative Consumers® associates or bringing in a group of creative participants to meet a specific need, the preparation and techniques we use bring out their best.
If you would like to learn more about how we train the participants in our innovation projects, click the link below to get your own creativity assessment, as well as a series of emails explaining how to think more creatively!