“Solutioning” activity toolkit
Class: Strategies for Open Innovation
Team: Ariel Chen, Surbhi Kalra, Vidya Mantrala
Advisors: Carlos Texeira, Irem Tekogul
Solutioning is knowledge integration activity where stakeholders come together to “turn insights into design interventions to address the design problem. The process involves proposing solutions based on insights and criteria generated during the engagement or provided by facilitators. The target is to generate quality and quantity of ideas. This lens is used to consider the criteria and insights involved in the design problem, and invite participants to propose solutions/interventions.”-Carlos Texeira, A Step-by-Step Guide to Knowledge Brokering
In the solutioning phase, the emphasis is on generating as many ideas as possible so that the opportunity spaces are constantly bombarded with different perspectives and ways to look at problems. The many concepts can then be grouped and categorized based on emergent concepts that can help in the refinement of criteria and generation of features.
Pre-Requisites
This solutioning activity assumes that opportunity spaces have been identified based on research insights around the given topical area. The discovered opportunity spaces and research insights will seed the rest of the activity.
Goals
1. Many ideas to address pain points discovered within opportunity spaces
2. Develop a working fitness landscape to further refine areas of exploration
3. Codify the knowledge integrating discussions through written questions and idea add-ons from the different participants.
Activity Timing and Flow
The Space
Diagram of a potential workshop layout.
Participants are encouraged to freely “shop” the opportunity spaces that interest them and ideate as well as converse with their peers on the ideas that are being created.
4 stations with How Might We...? statements pinned to easels to indicate the opportunity areas
3-5 participants standing at each HMW station at all times
4 equal sized standing round tables at each station to facilitate an egalitarian discussion.
1short round table in the center of the room to display and interact with the fitness landscape.
Note: This assumes ~20 participants
The FrameWorks
During each phase of the activity, frameworks are built into the conversation. Rather than removing the frameworks prior to transitioning into a new activity, the frameworks continue to exist in the space in an additive fashion.
0-4 minutes: Insight cards + Criteria (i.e. The solution should...)
4-10 minutes: HMW opportunities and ideation sheets to start ideation
25-30 minutes: Physical “fitness landscape” to aggregate, analyze and discuss ideas and themes
The Tools
Introducing tools at each phase of the workshop will help in ideation, advancing ideas and aggregating/sharing out ideas in the end of the workshop.
Core Cards will trigger ideation on selected opportunity area, giving the participants a starting point with which to generate the initial solutions.
Trigger cards with questions like “did you know?” and “have you considered?” can be introduced to either broaden or deepen a group’s thinking. No more than 2 triggers per opportunity space.
Question bubbles and Post-its to either clarify an idea or add to an idea respectively. For faciliators it will also be a way to codify the discussion in addition to the ideas themselves.
Existing offering cards and different sized flags to start thinking about solutions in the context of the fitness landscape. The “scores” for existing offerings helps you rank your new idea as it’s applied to the fitness landscape.
A note on the Fitness Landscape as An Analysis Tool
A fitness landscape is a way to evaluate an idea on three separate dimensions and then understand the strength of that idea based on ideas similar to it. It is not really a way to prioritize ideas, but more of a way to identify clusters of ideas, and develop on emerging themes. As the below pictures show, the fitness landscape becomes most interesting when concepts fall on a continuum and peaks and valleys can be identified.
Source: http://www.turingfinance.com/fitness-landscape-analysis-for-computational-finance/
For a workshop with less than 20 participants (same discipline):
One fitness landscape could be used to aggregate all of the selected ideas from the session.
If more interested in specific ideas: Each table selects 3-5 ideas that could be aggregated on the model
If more interested in themes and patterns: All the ideas from all the tables regardless of personal preference can be added to the model. The peaks and valleys can then be analyzed more thematically.
If more interested in opportunity spaces: A fitness landscape could be developed for ideas in each opportunity space to develop more specificity.
For a workshop of many participants of many disciplines:
Separate workshops for the separate disciplines can be conducted and fitness landscapes from each workshop could be layered on top of each other in order to understand where different disciplines see the opportunities. Overlaps and disparities could be synthesized into ideas that could be refined in other modules.