Page 153 - 100 Great Business Ideas: From Leading Companies Around the World (100 Great Ideas)

in terms ot the problem, that is, how understantlinr, the
relationships can he used to solve the problem. This is the

really challenging part of the process. It requires intuition,
insight, and quite often, luck. Participants write their solu-
tions in the third column.

4. Sharing Experiences. Participants are asked to share their
excursions, analogies, understandings, and solutions with
the group. As with brainstorming, members may piggyback
on the ideas of others.

Examples of the Process

A member of a group of bank personnel officers who were
experiencing conflicts with other departments described part
of her excursion through a natural history museum as fol-
lows: "I saw Indians making war on another village. The
analogy is obvious. We are at war with the other depart-
ments. This tells me just how serious our problem is. I never
quite realized it, but, in a way, we are at war and serious
measures must be taken to end this feuding before some-
body gets killed." Another member of the group found her
tour taking her past the section of the museum where rock
formations were shown. The various layers of hard and soft
rock meant essentially the same thing to her that the Indian
warfare had meant to the other woman. When asked how to
solve the problem, she said, "We have to take some dyna-
mite (i.e., strong measures) to blow up the hard rock layers
separating the departments."

Other analogies are less obvious. One facilitator had worked
with NASA personnel for some time to develop a satisfac-
tory device for fastening a space suit. After trying several
standard techniques for generating ideas, he had group mem-
bers take an imaginary excursion through a jungle. One
man described his experience as "being clawed at by weeds,
trees, and bushes." While describing his experience, he
clutched his hands together with his fingers interlaced. While
he himself had not made much of his analogy, when the
group discussed it they commented on the clutching of his
hands. This suggested the overlapping clutching of a Velcro
strip and eventually led to the utilization of a Velcro-like fas-
tener for the spacesuit.27