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In business and in life, we pursue the good stuff and champion people who are known for their good ideas. But when we place too strong an emphasis on just the good, we may neglect to consider the bad ones. In design and in brainstorming, deliberately seeking out bad ideas is a powerful way to unlock creativity. Generating bad ideas can reveal our assumptions about the difference between bad and good, and often seemingly bad ideas turn out to be good ones. Jotly and Cow Clicker were jokes or parodies—that is, not good ideas—that have been surprisingly successful. Neil Young and Crazy Horse have covered folk songs. An action blockbuster features a US president swinging a silver axe against vampires. In this talk, Steve will explore how opening up the bad idea valve can lead unexpectedly to the kind of success we aim for with our good ideas.
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The Power of Bad Ideas
@steveportigal
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We help companies discover and act on new insights about their customers and themselves
Portigal
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http://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/user-interviews/
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Unleashing the bad-idea-creative-impulse
Bad ideas, from the sketchbook into the world
What can we do with all this?
Today
Who’s bad? Shamone.
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Click to edit Master title styleDTDT: What do ya mean by bad?
Bad is not the absence of good. It’s not meh.
Bad ideas go beyond prompting "That's stupid!" to eliciting a much stronger response.
Bad ideas are worse than ineffective, unpleasant, unsuccessful, and ridiculous…they can also be dangerous, immoral, and bad for business!
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Bad Ideas in the Creative Process
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Click to edit Master title styleExercise: Come up with a really bad idea
Write or sketch the worst idea for a product, service, feature that you can come up with
Tweet your idea use #MyBadIdea
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Click to edit Master title styleExercise: Hand off your bad idea
Pass your bad idea to someone else…
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Click to edit Master title styleExercise: Hand off your bad idea
Pass your bad idea to someone else…
Design the circumstances where that bad idea becomes a good one.
Tweet your reframeuse #MyGoodIdea
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Click to edit Master title styleThe ideation process
Time
Pace of idea generation
Addressing needs with low-hanging fruit
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Click to edit Master title styleDon’t forget your second wind
Time
Pace of idea generation
Addressing needs with low-hanging fruit
Innovative
Breakthrough
Wacky
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Click to edit Master title styleBridging the humps
Time
Pace of idea generation
Addressing needs with low-hanging fruit
Innovative
Breakthrough
Wacky
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Click to edit Master title styleWe need a safe place to enable bad ideas
Laugh at ideas, not people
Trust and listening foster collaboration
If you don’t create that safe place for each other, this creativity won’t happen
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Click to edit Master title styleTwo types of bad-idea-sharing
The tentative, unfinished idea (“Okay, this isn’t very good but…”)
The deliberately zany idea!
Recognize and support each of these appropriately
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Click to edit Master title styleThat makes me think of something else…
Learn to hear that impulse where something presented as a “bad idea” starts you thinking...
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Click to edit Master title styleMcDonald’s Theory
I use a trick with co-workers when we’re trying to decide where to eat for lunch and no one has any ideas. I recommend McDonald’s.
An interesting thing happens. Everyone unanimously agrees that we can’t possibly go to McDonald’s, and better lunch suggestions emerge. Magic!
It’s as if we’ve broken the ice with the worst possible idea, and now that the discussion has started, people suddenly get very creative. I call it the McDonald’s Theory: people are inspired to come up with good ideas to ward off bad ones.
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Click to edit Master title styleCombinatorial Creativity
This is one vector for creativity, based on combining stuff• Found in remix culture
For us, it’s about how the brain wants to reorient and redesign dissonance (e.g., a bad idea)
The bad idea is valuable because it’s a trigger to generate the next (possibly good) idea.
Good design has an element of surprise or provocation, of grit in the emollient flow of appropriate aesthetics. -- Gillian Crampton Smith
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Click to edit Master title styleFrom improv: Yes, and…
Process words are insightful• Throwing an idea• Accepting offers
None of this great stuff works if you respond with a negative (e.g., reject the offer)
All ideas are good; “bad” ideas may create more narrative advancement
Chris Miller emphasizes that your task in improv is to make your partner look good.
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Click to edit Master title styleImprov Dark Patterns
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Click to edit Master title styleWhy is that a bad idea?
Expose
implicit
beliefs about
what the
criteria are for
bad vs. good!
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Click to edit Master title styleRehearsal Note: That Bad Choice Could Be Useful
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Click to edit Master title styleDeep Thoughts About ‘Deep Thoughts’
I brought in a bunch of “Deep Thoughts” for my student poets to read, discuss and, finally, imitate. They produced some of their best in-class writing to date: concrete, specific, original. Like Handey, they began with a form of writing that traffics in phony enlightenment and demonstrated how the form is more often in effect tranquilizing.
Kathleen Rooney in the NYT Magazine
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Click to edit Master title styleBad ideas make great batting practice
Simply translating insights into solutions (even bad ones) is a win.
We build up understanding of insights from working with them.
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When Bad Ideas Go Good
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Click to edit Master title styleBreaking Bad Ideas
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Click to edit Master title styleSnakes. Why'd it have to be snakes?
Spielberg has a moment in those transcripts, He’s just sort of sitting along, going along with Larry and George. He’s tossing some ideas out; frankly, a bunch of them are bad. You’re thinking, “Gee, Steven Spielberg has some bad ideas.” Feet of clay, I’m heartbroken somehow. And then suddenly he goes “I have a great idea. When he’s in that temple he should set off a booby trap and there should be this enormous rolling boulder that comes after him. And he’s running and this thing is just right behind him.” And you go, “Oh my God, he really did have a great idea, fully formed.”
Scriptnotes podcast
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Click to edit Master title styleCow Clicker
The Curse of Cow Clicker
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/12/ff_cowclicker/all/
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Click to edit Master title styleJotly
Appsurd: In Silicon Valley, It's Hard to Make a Joke http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303505504577404284117534706.html
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Click to edit Master title styleA joke in one context…
Appsurd: In Silicon Valley, It's Hard to Make a Joke http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303505504577404284117534706.html
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Click to edit Master title styleRock ‘n roll in the next
Appsurd: In Silicon Valley, It's Hard to Make a Joke http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303505504577404284117534706.html
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Click to edit Master title styleIsn’t rock ‘n roll really about pursuing the bad idea?
Appsurd: In Silicon Valley, It's Hard to Make a Joke http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303505504577404284117534706.html
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Click to edit Master title styleAbraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter
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Click to edit Master title styleAbraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter
Appsurd: In Silicon Valley, It's Hard to Make a Joke http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303505504577404284117534706.html
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Click to edit Master title styleBad and Good Food Ideas
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Click to edit Master title styleBad and Good Food Ideas
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Click to edit Master title styleBad and Good Food Ideas
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Click to edit Master title styleBad and Good Food Ideas
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Click to edit Master title styleBad ideas stay bad
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Click to edit Master title styleBad is judged by the marketplace
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Click to edit Master title styleBad is judged by the marketplace
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Click to edit Master title styleBad ideas feed art
Mona Hatoum - Silence
Made of glass, this life-size crib threatens any child in its care with shattering collapse and inevitable injury. In spite of its title, neither the crib nor the child would be likely to remain silent for long…She has said, "I see furniture as being very much about the body. It is usually about giving it support and comfort," but Silence is part of a series of furniture pieces the artist made which are more hostile than comforting.
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(Bad) Idea Thinking
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Click to edit Master title styleChallenging all of our assumptions
The site Big Think has a series of provocations they call Dangerous Ideas.
"These ideas may at first seem shocking or counter-intuitive—but they are worth our attention, even if we end up rejecting them."
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Click to edit Master title styleSatire and social commentary
A Modest Proposal is the classic example of a deliberately bad idea used to critique circumstances where such an idea could even be articulated.
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Click to edit Master title styleBad ideas ignite our imagination
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Click to edit Master title styleBad ideas ignite our imagination
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Click to edit Master title styleBad ideas ignite our imagination
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Click to edit Master title styleBad ideas ignite our imagination
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Click to edit Master title styleBad ideas ignite our imagination
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Click to edit Master title styleBad ideas ignite our imagination
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Click to edit Master title styleComedy and tragedy
Appsurd: In Silicon Valley, It's Hard to Make a Joke http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303505504577404284117534706.html
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Click to edit Master title styleThe horror. The horror.
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Click to edit Master title styleThe horror. The horror.
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Click to edit Master title styleContext is King
Open to surprises
Let your audience tell you
Engineers say “if it works, it’s not a stupid idea” (check this)
Consider your context in order to assess• Art• Social change• Entertainment• $• Technology• Etc.
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Click to edit Master title styleContext is King
Open to surprises
Let your audience tell you
Engineers say “if it works, it’s not a stupid idea” (check this)
Consider your context in order to assess• Art• Social change• Entertainment• $• Technology• Etc.
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Click to edit Master title styleLessons from ideas that might suck
Consider your context
Engineers say “If it's stupid but works, it's not stupid”
Be open to surprises from yourself and your audience
Wonder where it might lead
Consider your criteria for success
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Click to edit Master title styleThe sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related, that it is difficult to class them separately.
Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, 1795
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It’s such a fine line between stupid and clever!
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