How to Design a Creativity & Innovation Meeting

Creativity & Innovation Meetings last three to five days and solve important company problems. I custom design every meeting. To ensure success and high-quality solutions, I build several elements into every design.

Working in Teams and Alone

I use techniques for teams and for individuals working alone at each major step of the problem-solving process. Powerful team techniques combined with equally powerful individual techniques create an exciting mix of team interaction and individual creative thinking. Out of this mixture comes success.

Incubation Time

Incubation time is an important design factor. The stages of the innovation process include Preparation, Concentration, Incubation, Illumination, and Implementation. I apply these stages to the meeting design:

• Preparation: Expert participants come to the meeting with prepared minds.
• Concentration: Participants focus on the problem during the meeting.
• Incubation: Participants turn their attention to other things during free afternoons, evenings, and overnight.
• Illumination: Each morning provides an opportunity for new insights.
• Implementation: Most participants leave committed to action plans.

Incubation partly explains why the most effective meetings last four to five days. This time allows the mind to make unexpected connections and produce blockbuster ideas. Three-day meetings can also succeed, though not quite as well.

I build incubation time into every meeting and often plan specific adventures. During free afternoons in Washington, DC, for example, participants visited the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, the Museum of Natural History, or an art museum. While there, they wrote metaphors and poems about the problem.

During a six-day meeting in Orlando, FL, participants spent afternoons and evenings at Epcot Center, Sea World, and the Kennedy Space Center. They used ideas and metaphors from these outings as triggers for creative thought when they returned to the meeting.

Separate the Front and Back End

I design the front and back end of the meeting as consecutive, non-overlapping processes. The front end focuses on creative thinking. The back end focuses on logical and evaluative thinking.

One- or two-day problem-solving meetings often do not last long enough to produce truly high-quality solutions. The front end becomes shallow and rushed, so participants generate common and ordinary ideas. Solutions often consist of ideas participants already had when they entered the meeting.

The back end can also be shallow when participants overlook excellent possibilities by failing to use forced-withdrawal and trigger-proposals. These homegrown meetings often end with solutions previously suggested by management or others instead of creating new ones.

Half-day brainstorming meetings only provide a nice warm-up.

Planning Session

About a month before the meeting, I attend a planning session with people in the organization to discuss the problem or problems and agree on goals. I hold this session at their site because I want to meet the participants and listen for the organization's needs.

After a break for reflection, I outline the kind of meeting I think the organization needs to achieve the desired high-caliber solution. If warranted, I suggest a Creativity & Innovation Meeting.

I request that the meeting be held away from the plant site, preferably out of town. I don't want participants disturbed or tempted to visit the office. I advise them that four-day meetings produce more effective outcomes than shorter meetings. I explain incubation time, the slow processes of creative thinking, and the need to avoid the quick fix. I emphasize success.

At home, I develop a minute-by-minute design and send it to people in the organization for comments.

Designing the Teams

The organization assigns people to creative thinking teams before the meeting. I advise putting people at the same level in the same team, with no executives and supervisors or bosses and subordinates together. I also recommend mixing diverse people according to functions, locations, departments, and talents.

I suggest five to seven people per team and prefer six. Six provides one recorder and five other group members. If one member leaves the room, the team can still function. With only five members, losing one leaves a recorder and three members, which is too small for effective work.

I aim for diversity while keeping status and job levels equal. If unavoidable, I ask high-status people and experts not to damage the creative climate and encourage low-status team members to participate.

Team Building

First Session: Introductions

Everyone wears a name tag, even if everyone knows each other. I don't.

The first interaction within a team consists of introductions. I ask each member to share something about themselves that no one else in the group knows. They might share a creative idea or innovation from their organization, a funny experience, or something they are proud of. I want this first interaction to remain low key and give each person an opportunity to contribute something unique.

Warm Up With Riddles and Puzzles

After introductions, I ask each person to solve a puzzle alone and then solve it with the team. I discuss the answers in terms of habits that affect the creative atmosphere of the meeting.

Practice Non-Evaluative Listing

Soon after the first session begins, I use a warm-up exercise that teaches or reminds people about non-evaluative listing.

I ask each team to list items such as ways to spoil creativity at work, ways to spoil meetings, ways to spoil teamwork, or what they want to accomplish during the meeting. Then I describe non-evaluative listing, the gauntlet that each idea runs, and the recorder's role.

I emphasize the need for a creative atmosphere and remind everyone that each person has 100% responsibility for everyone's creative efforts.

Start Each Day With a Low-Key Interaction

I start each day with a simple interaction within each team. Participants might share new ideas they thought of overnight, funny experiences, jokes, or dreams that triggered new ideas.

Sometimes I remove the captions from New Yorker cartoons and give different cartoons to each person. I ask them to write captions for the cartoons overnight. Laughter is a wonderful way to start the day's interactions.