“Do you know how to download this?”
The woman was leaning against her car, iPhone in hand.
“Everyone’s talking about Pokémon GO, but I can’t get it to download,” she said as she frantically scrolled and swiped. “Have you played it?”
I told her no, I hadn’t played it. And assuming she eventually figured out how to download it, it occurs to me that I might just be the earth’s last holdout.
How does a simple game suddenly take off like wildfire? And what lessons can we learn and apply to the creative problems we need to tackle in our own organizations?
The Power of What if…?
Before Pokémon GO, there was Ingress, an augmented reality game that put gamers out into the world as they searched for and tapped mysterious sources of energy. Also created by Niantic Labs, the developers behind Pokémon GO, Ingress took some of the established conventions of gaming and turned them on their heads.
In essence, the developers asked one of the most powerful questions in creativity and innovation thinking: What if?
Brandon Badger, a product manager on Ingress, described some of these “what if” moments in explaining the design principles behind the game. For example, gaming is typically a sedentary activity. What if the game got people off the couch, forcing them to go out and move around and get a little physical exercise?
Likewise, the gaming experience is often isolating. Even when there are virtual interactions, if you’re at home tethered to your computer or console, you’re not in the real world building human connections. What if the game experience went beyond the virtual, allowing people to meet up in person out in the community?
There was another “what if” question brewing in gaming communities, one that Pokémon fans had been thinking about since its original release: “What if Pokémon weren’t limited to the games’ world? What if they were real and inhabited our world?”
With the experiences of Ingress and a willingness to take some creative risk, what might have seemed like a crazy fantasy was now suddenly a very real possibility. And these “what ifs” became the first steps in a journey to developing a worldwide phenomenon.
4 Tips for Getting Creative to Solve Your Tough Problems
Your team might be looking for ways to shake up the industry and create a viral sensation like Pokémon GO—or you might just need to innovate an existing product. Maybe you’ve been stuck on a problem and can’t seem to break out of your old thinking to find a better way forward.
1. Reverse your assumptions. One way to get to new thinking is to write down all of your assumptions and state their opposite. This is what the Niantic Labs team did with those “what if” questions:
- Gaming is sedentary and isolating.
- Let’s create a game that requires physical activity and real-world interaction.
2. Use magic wand thinking to unveil “crazy” ideas that work. Ask yourself, if I had a magic wand and could solve this problem with no constraints on the solution—no matter how “off the wall” it might be—what would it look like?
Here’s an example: Years ago, employees on the line at a manufacturing plant were wrapping products in newspaper, and too many people were actually stopping to read the articles. As a result, production had slowed way down.
A manager called a meeting to ask for ideas on how to solve the problem.
Someone hesitated and then spoke: “Well, we could poke their eyes out.”
That qualifies as a crazy idea. Most everyone agreed that it was ridiculous.
But even in the weirdest ideas we can sometimes find a hidden gem—a kernel of insight that actually solves a problem.
3. Encourage diversity of thought. The manager could have easily shut down the conversation at this point. After all, this wasn’t the creative environment of a gaming lab. But naysayers are everywhere. Ingress wasn’t a slam dunk. According to founder John Hanke, “There was a camp of people in the game development world who said, 'That won't work—gamers want to sit and play, you have to feed them compulsion loops, and it has to work in a certain way.’”
It takes strong leadership to recognize, access and appreciate individual creative courage and to nurture the diversity of thought and ideas on the team.
4. Turn crazy ideas into actionable solutions. Sometimes all a crazy idea needs is a little TLC. Nurture the idea by asking:
- What is tempting about this idea? You have to admit, implementing that employee’s idea would solve the problem.
- What is lacking in this idea? Quite a bit, obviously—including all of the gory, unethical aspects of it.
- What could we change about this idea to make it work? There are some possibilities, including:
- Darken the lights on the line so that employees can’t see well enough to read.
- Package the products with unreadable material, like foreign language newspapers or blank newsprint.
- Hire blind people to work on the line.
The company actually acted on one of these ideas. And it worked.
Go Crazy, But Let Your Whole Brain Be Your Guide
No matter what problem your team is facing, the brain is the source of creativity, and we all have access to our whole brains. Given the right tools and techniques, everyone can start thinking more creatively and contributing to your next breakthrough solutions—whether you want to revolutionize your industry or reinvent the way work gets done.
Of course, you might have to get them to take a break from their phones first.
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