Page 73 - Transforming an Idea Into a Business with Design Thinking

52 ◾ Transforming an Idea Into a Business with Design Thinking

However, Uber and Lyft pioneered the highly successful ride-sharing busi-
ness model and exploited the completely contrarian view of the conven-
tional wisdom.

◾◾ Push your team to think about all the conventional wisdom related to
your problem space that you are operating under. And now imagine
you flipped the conventional wisdom upside down; how would you
now solve the problem?

Team Brainstorm
Now that you have all the ideas on the whiteboard, have the team review
them. You’ll see that several themes are emerging in these ideas.

Cluster the ideas according to these themes. You’ll be surprised to see
the diversity of the ideas and themes. You can consider these themes as a
collection of related ideas. Review the ideas individually and in your team.
Discuss the merits and demerits of each idea and each theme.

4.1.1.2 Document Assumptions

After the session, the session lead should ask the team to write down all the
assumptions made and record those assumptions in assumptions template in
Chapter 6.

4.1.1.3 Review Prior Steps

Review the prior steps and adjust as needed with the consensus of the team.

Creativity Requires Time:
Creativity isn’t something that you can force in one brainstorming ses-
sion. One needs to let the ideas percolate into the subconscious in order
to have deeper insights as well as “Aha!” moments. It is important that you
don’t just consider this one session as the final session. This session should
be repeated several times. A good rule of thumb is to have the session
repeated every week for a couple of weeks. During these subsequent ses-
sions, the quality of ideas improves, and you also have a chance to think
about the existing ideas in further depth as well. In addition, do discuss
promising ideas with the users whenever you get a chance, so that you can
gain further insights and input on the suitability of the ideas in the users’
context.