This post is the second of a three-part mini-series presenting common Goal|Problem|Solution (GPS) patterns, to help you get a feel for the power of the GPS tool.
My previous post was on the Complex Decision-Making GPS. This one is on one of the Deliberate Genius GPS’s: Alternative Generation and Integration (AGI).
The Situation
My client, Dr Wolfgang Scholz, was the director of HERA, the metals engineering industry research association, which employs top-class research engineers to advance its industry and New Zealand’s international competitiveness.
HERA’s challenge was to find the time to come up with funding proposals for new research projects that were innovative and valuable enough for government and the bigger industry players to fund.
The funding that they were able to secure barely covered the direct cost of the research it was secured for – these things always take longer and cost more than we estimate – leaving little funding for the time to “come up with new ideas” to secure funding for.
Coming up with revolutionary ideas and working them up into a funding-worthy proposal is very time-consuming: and Wolfgang felt certain that there were better ideas to be discovered, if only he and his people could escape the inside-the-box thinking, he felt they were all trapped in.
For various reasons, the organisation didn’t have appetite for looking for innovative ways of securing funding – but it did have a small budget for improving organisational innovation.
After a few discussions using an early version of the GPS method, the objective was clear: find a way of accelerating research innovation so that instead of research projects running over time and dollar budget, they ran under – leaving time and budget to apply a similar method to accelerate both the speed and quality of new research proposals.
The GPS (Goal|Problem|Solution) Pattern
Here’s a refined version of what we ended up with:
- Goal
Enhance and Accelerate Innovation. - Problem
It’s extremely difficult – physiologically – to think outside the box. We’re always trapped within our existing thinking. - Solution
Create a working prototype to define the box in a clear and tangible way, then deliberately generate and integrate alternatives to it – repeatedly, updating the prototype in each cycle.
AGI (Alternative Generation and Integration)
We now call the method we came up with Alternative Generation and Integration – AGI.
Here’s a diagram of the method
The AGI Steps
- Define a working prototype (before doing any thiniking or research).
- Generate alternatives to it.
- Integrate the alternatives to
- Create a refined prototype.
- Repeat until the prototype is as far as we can take it, without R&D.
- Conduct conventional R&D, in order to test the prototype and generate new alternatives.
- Repeat the cycle, until you’re happy with the result.
How the AGI approach contrasts with the traditional one
The traditional approach to innovation conducts R&D until deadline forces the development of a working prototype – or worse: the ultimate design or product. It’s research-based innovation.
AGI innovation focuses on enhancing a conceptual and then physical prototype – and uses R&D to generate further alternatives for integration into the prototype.
Its power derives from the iterative combination of divergent and convergent thinking: it’s really a form of Systemic (Pattern) Thinking.
Unpacking the GPS
The first element: The Working Prototype Pattern
A working prototype defines the box that we’re currently thinking within. It may take the form of a bulleted list of elements, use-cases or features, a diagram of how things would work together or an actual physical artefact of some sort.
Working prototypes are powerful innovation and ingenuity stimulants, because they enable our brains to gain cognitive purchase on the current idea – and it’s a lot easier to enhance something that already exists in some form, whether cognitive or physical, than something that doesn’t exist at all yet.
Until we’ve defined the box of our current thinking in a clear and tangible way, it’s virtually impossible to get any form of cognitive purchase on it. In fact, we’re often blind to and ignore outside-the-box ideas until we “see” them as alternatives to some tangible aspect of the box.
Fast-prototyping has become increasingly popular and commonly used in recent times, especially in software development and product development.
The second element: The Generate Alternatives Pattern
Once the box is defined in a clear and tangible way, thinking outside of it becomes a lot easier and it didn’t take long for us to see the pattern across the various ways of doing so: it’s all about finding alternatives.
Our brains are good at generating alternatives – if we take the time to do so – and we get excellent at it very quickly, with even a little practice. More about this in a future post.
The key insight here is that every time we repeat the cycle, the likelihood of generating a truly outside-the-box alternative increases, because the prototype becomes, increasingly, the embodiment of the box that our thinking is trapped within. So alternatives to it become, increasingly and inevitably, truly outside that box.
Supporting techniques for generating alternatives
Any of the conventional methods for generating alternatives work well here. But if ingenuity and innovation are part of one’s job description, it’s worth making a list of the dimensions that could be improved. We can then use this list to prompt our thinking every time we need to come up with something truly innovative.
For example, we might use TEASE (Target|Enhance|Accelerate|Streamline|Energise) – another of the Deliberate Genius techniques – to focus us on generating particular alternatives that: target the problem or opportunity better; enhance the quality or impact of the solution; accelerate it; streamline it, by removing time, cost, material or effort; or energise people’s adoption and use of it.
Another very effective way of generating alternatives is to test the prototype in different scenarios, in order to surface the failure modes (conditions under which it might fail). Once again, a list of common failure modes or use-cases to test against makes this process a lot quicker and easier. I’ll cover this in a future post on the MODIF Solution.
Simplification is another good way to generate alternatives – and, as before, developing a list of ways in which things can be simplified makes generating this sort of alternative way less demanding. Look out for a future post on Deliberate Simplicity.
The third element: The Integrate Alternatives Pattern
Alternative integration is about incorporating key elements of the alternatives into the conceptual or physical prototype, either in combination with or replacement of existing elements of the design.
The integration step often generates new alternatives, as the integration of insights often results in a new insight that is more valuable than the sum of its parts.
In fact, it is often only in the integration step that the real insights are made. Here’s why:
We realised that the data-gathering and analysis phase takes a lot of time and generates only a little insight. It’s in putting it all together that we gain the deepest insights.
AGI brings us to take advantage of the integration benefits multiple times – which has the added benefit of redirecting our research iteratively, too.
Think of your past assignments and projects and how boring and confusing reviewing existing ideas and publications is; and how challenging putting it all together is; and how things eventually click together, at the last minute.
The power of AGI comes from securing those gains early and repeatedly throughout the project, rather than only once, at the end.
Of course, Pattern Thinking is a powerful technique for integrating seemingly disparate and incompatible elements and features!
The fourth insight: The Fast-Cycle Repetition Pattern
The biggest gains are often made as the result of repeating the process a number of times – deliberately evolving the prototype, iteratively, over time, closer to ideality.
This is where the hidden power of the previous three insights becomes evident and tangible: we have a tendency to give up, settle, compromise or rest on our laurels after only one attempt or cycle.
This is – at least partly – because the only thing we detest more than repeating boring things is repeating challenging and demanding things – especially when we can’t guarantee a return, because we’re trapped inside our current thinking and assume that, because we’re unaware of there being a better way or idea, there can’t be one.
This pattern is becoming increasingly popular as the result of the Lean – and particularly the Lean Start-Up – movements.
How AGI helps us to think outside-the-box
Traditional innovation exposes us to the tendency to refine our starting insights, while AGI forces us to think outside the box, and then integrate to create a bigger box – iteratively and on demand. The final solution becomes the centre-of-gravity – the quintessence – of the mindset that produced it.
Back to the Story
My HERA client, Wolfgang, liked this solution so much that he started using it himself, immediately. It didn’t take him long to secure tangibly more innovative solutions, in a fraction of the previous time – and he used these to convince his team to use it, both within their projects and to come up with new fund-worthy research project proposals.
The result was not only accelerated research projects and a bigger stream of better new research proposals, but also:
- The collaborative refinement of the organisation’s mission and purpose to focus more directly on leading and stimulating innovative and to broaden and extend it’s reach within the broader industry and
- The establishment of a highly successful biannual industry conference, to both stimulate innovation and grow membership – and consequently funding.
An easy way to get started: Provisionals
Because we’re always trapped inside the box of our current thinking, it’s difficult to believe that there can be a better way. An easy way to start the ball rolling and get immediate benefits from AGI is to use the Provisionals Technique.
Provisionals brings us to force out a provisional solution or insight as early in the process as possible: ideally before conducting any research (even a Google search) at all.
Provisionals create a provocative starting point. Any subsequent ideas or refinement cycles, whether generated by R&D activities or other means, provide an automatic segue into AGI.
Here are some ways in which Provisionals can be used
- Developing a provisional solution or insight, no matter how inadequate it might be. More about this in a future post – it has some hidden powers that become very evident in some situations.
- Populating a document, template or model (e.g. GPS, SWOT).
- Requiring juniors to always have a provisional answer or solution to any question or problem they have, resulting in self-resolution and a mind that is more prepared when they hear the expert’s or manager’s answer or solution.
- Doing a masters, MBA or doctorate? Instead of ploughing through the readings in the conventional way, create a quick provisional (prototype) summary of the existing insight you have on the title of the article, book or chapter, before reading it.
This will set a filter up in your mind and enable you to skim the bits you already know and make the bits you hadn’t thought of jump out at you. Refine your prototype as you go.
What’s next
I’ll provide one more GPS Pattern example (How to use pull – instead of push – to create change) and then take you through a pattern-thinking exercise, end-to-end, before resuming the saga of my Drim Journey.
‘Can’t wait to share some of my recent discoveries and developments!
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