free to take notes if you want to the
first story I want to share with you
guys was a call from Ben & Jerry’s it
was actually candalyn wall who used to
be a stanford resident she called me
from Vermont and said could you come up
and help us at Ben & Jerry’s invent new
novelties so what are novelties
novelties are anything but pints right
so it could be bonbons or in the case of
Ben and Jerry’s it would be Ben Ben’s
right okay bonbons with stuff inside him
right so I said great love to do that
and by the way she said we’re gonna be
serving ice cream all day and as the
facilitator of that by the end of the
day I was literally shaking I’m not
kidding I was in sugar shock but it was
fun and and so I said great terrific
I’ll come up and she said oh there’s one
other thing
one other thing we’d like you to help us
name a new strawberry and fudge ice
cream and I said sure how long you been
working on it three months because
naming is hard if you ever tried to do
naming and marketing it’s it’s really
hard so I said three months okay how
much time do we have in the session she
said a half hour and I said I can’t do
it in a half hour she said well you know
I’m the client and you’re not so that’s
what we got okay
so I said okay and the key to this thing
is what this is not brainstorming what
are the key takeaways from today is we
don’t want you to do brainstorming
brainstorming has been even though it’s
a generic term for coming up with ideas
it’s an actual technique the actual
technique has come up with a lot of
ideas and withhold judgment so that’s
the two rules of brainstorming right but
research has shown it really doesn’t
work it really doesn’t work and so this
is all about ideation so how is ideation
different than brainstorming this is a
key takeaway you can capture it in one
word and that one word is stimuli you
use stimuli to trigger the brain right
if we go to a client and we’ve been with
that client and they say and they’ve
been thinking about Oreo cookies for a
hundred years and we go got any ideas
got any more ideas they should throw us
out of the room right because we’re not
using stimuli to trigger
their brains so what stimuli did I use
in this half-hour to come up with a name
for a new strawberry and fudge ice cream
I thought well what is the essence of
Ben and Jerry’s and for me the essence
was their anti-authoritarian if you
looked at some of their names you’d
agree that they are very
anti-authoritarian even from Saturday
Night Live that name which I won’t
mention it’s amazing right and so I said
what could be anti-authoritarian
triggers and I thought about I thought
about that and it was very simple
I said well slang is anti-authoritarian
so I got out slang dictionaries cut them
up into pieces pass those out had the
teams working on this thing
Rufus dooby bud V girl all these weird
things right but from that from that one
team came up with snafu which was
strawberries naturally all fledged up
and that became that the flavor they
watch it under and did extremely well so
that’s a good example of using stimuli
to trigger new ideas okay I want to talk
now about this impossible thing right so
we get strange calls you know odd calls
can you help us do XY and Z and we got
one of those calls we were working with
a large management consulting firm one
of the famous ones and they came up to
us or they called us up and they said
we’ve got one of the Big Three
automakers and we’d like you to help us
help them invent a new sales forecasting
system and I’m getting nervous now right
because this is it’s not new products
and part of the take away for you today
is that you don’t use ideation
techniques just for new products or
naming or even advertising or promotion
you can use it for cost-cutting you can
use it for efficiency you can use it for
strategy so in this case how do we use
some kind of creative technique to help
us do a better job of forecasting the
sales of our cars so what we did was one
of the techniques we use is sort of a
semantic analysis technique so we the
way we define the challenge was how do
we invent a new sales forecasting system
pretty simple right and what we do then
is look at each of the words in that
problem statement or challenge statement
or opportunity statement and say what
could we do
that all right was it and one of those
two four six seven words below was the
key and when I asked audiences this and
the keynotes they kind of they usually
guess system first well it wasn’t a
system you would take a shot at this it
wasn’t forecasting it was an invent it
wasn’t sales and it wasn’t we and it
wasn’t new alright I was freaking out by
at this point but it was actually a so
what are the assumptions inherent in a
that it’s one sales forecasting system
and so the breakthrough idea came when
we realized why don’t we do a bunch of
these we’ll have one for manufacturing
slash production one for sales one for
marketing R&D etc and and then over time
because they all have different needs
for the sales forecast and then justify
it and get a more dynamic sales
forecasting system as a result of
putting them together so that’s what we
did and that was a big success so
surprised us alright so next I want to
go to I want to talk a little about
problem framing because this is critical
we got a call from an iron company one
of the famous a hundred year old ironing
companies right and they called us up
and said what can you help us invent new
irons right and we said great except
that’s the last thing we want to do okay
and by the way if you’re in working for
a company that’s probably not what you
said your boss when he asked you to do
something is probably you probably don’t
say that’s the last thing we want to do
but what was behind this was we all know
what an iron is right an iron has got
that metal plate and it’s got the handle
it’s got the steam thing coming out and
so if we’re gonna get really
breakthrough ideas we have to think very
differently right about irons and this
gets back to you know I don’t want to
drill I want a hole right or the jobs to
be done or whatever you want to call it
the consumer benefit and so we framed
the challenge differently
subtle but important and the difference
was how do we invent a new anti-wrinkle
device okay and by doing that it freed
our minds up actually we weren’t even
broader than that
we went to how do we invent a new
garment care device right but the point
here was if we had gone into that
session saying let’s invent new irons I
I know from experience I’m convinced we
would got haven’t gotten nearly we
wouldn’t have gotten nearly the number
of ideas number one nor would they have
been breakthrough by going in and how do
we how do we invent a new karma care
device or a new anti wrinkle device okay
so the next story I want to tell was and
this is a there-there’s a technique
called semantic intuition and it’s a
word combination technique and the way
this technique it was invented by Patel
in Germany the way this technique works
is you sort of mash together different
words okay and so we had an assignment
both with Oreo cookie and Chips Ahoy
and we’re working on the Chips Ahoy one
and so what you do is you do columns of
words that you can combine so things
associated with the dessert right and
things associated with different forms
that a cookie could take and maybe the
third column is ingredients and we
started mashing those up to trigger our
brains right it’s all about triggering
the brains and so if you get brownie
layer and walnut this actually led to
the brownie Chips Ahoy cookie and if
anybody has tasted that cookie it’s
absolutely delicious
there are D people the food technology
people manufacturing people figured out
how to put a layer of brownie inside
that chocolate chip cookie and it’s been
and by the way I heard some laughing
about that I was I was the store soon
after this thing watch and a woman was
buying it and she you know I had to go
up to a write and say you know why are
you buying this brownie Chips Ahoy
cookie and she looked at me like I was a
total idiot I’m not that that idiot look
we’ve bought and she said it’s a brownie
inside of a chocolate chip cookie right
and and that that was it
and sometimes these answers are very
very simple right sometimes they’re very
simple now by the way what’s happened
now is because that’s been such a big
success they put in other stuff in there
right so red velvet birthday cake
frosting sometimes the idea is the most
simple we had an Oreo project going on
at the same time it never occurred to us
to put Oreo filling inside of the
chocolate chip cookie yeah and I almost
with good reason right but that product
is actually done pretty well I want to
move on now to give you a technique this
is called a problem redefinition
technique and this technique you can use
it for anything I’m gonna use it for a
very strange call we got to demonstrate
it we got a call from a company if
watching Wisconsin is Catholic Knights
insurance company they’ve since renamed
the name of that company but they what
do they do those sell life insurance to
Catholics okay and I’m on the phone
going who is this right who’s calling
here life insurance to Catholics and of
course that can’t you can’t sell the
Jews and Muslims and Buddhists no we
only sell the Catholics and they’ve
actually been sued by all those groups
but their charters held up so that was
our problem challenge how do we sell
more life insurance to Catholics oh boy
the way you do this technique is you
look for a subject which would be what
the we write the verb which would be
sell right and the object could either
be life insurance to Catholics they
weren’t going to reinvent their life
insurance offerings so we pick Catholics
okay so that was our problem challenge
then what you do is you go under each
one of these and you come up with
different options so who else could the
we who’s typically the we it’s the
Salesforce right but now you come up
with different options so maybe the
clergy may be friends of Catholics
churchgoers family members etc all these
people could help them sell life
insurance is that right yes okay how
about cell this is thinking more broadly
about the word cell license giveaway
test run Co market to market et cetera
so you come up with options there and
the third one is a Catholic a Catholic a
Catholic well kind of yes and no you can
kind of segment that a little bit right
so maybe Catholic doctors the Vatican
and millennial Catholics we’ve got the
we got the Pope in there Hispanic
Catholics etc okay so now you’ve got
these lists right now what do you do
it’s sort of mad libs Chinese menu time
right
so you pick you pick like we usually
have them pick three in each column so
friends of catholics board members
policyholders we just picked those three
second combi incentivize license and
reward third comm Catholic grandparents
Catholic schools and the Vatican all
right so we got those then what do you
do you redefine your challenge so how do
friends of Catholics be incentivized to
some where life insurance to Catholic
grandparents right okay any how two
board members do the licensing of life
insurance to Catholic schools and
finally how do we get policyholders to
reward the selling of life insurance to
the Vatican obviously some of these
don’t work right clearly on the third
day what do you do with that but that’s
not the point
right the point is if you get a new idea
you got it right and so this company
they had come out of the world you know
of quality and so they were extremely
rigorous about these combinations they
would already came up with thousands of
combinations of the these things and and
so you know one of the ideas for
instance was if we go to Catholic
schools could we if a certain number of
people signed up for for our life
insurance a certain number of families
then we would donate equipment athletic
equipment and computers for instance
another one was go to Catholic
grandparents if they have a new kid
that’s that’s recently been a grandchild
that’s recently been born maybe they
gift some life insurance to the parents
etc etc so about nine months later after
we did this work the CMO wrote me and he
said and this is about a hundred million
dollar company at the time they said we
have increased our sales by fifty two
percent using this technique so this was
an unsolicited feedback from him so what
does it take away from that I clearly
under charged right but but beyond that
the takeaway is that if you do these
combinations you can come up with ideas
even for something as hard as selling
life insurance to Catholics right okay
and maybe even a broader the point is
you could use this for anything any any
time you have a subject verb and object
by the way if you have ten in each
column how many how many different
combinations would you have to redefine
this challenge I’ve asked this the
finance people and they’ve said anywhere
from a lot to a hundred and it makes me
nervous because it’s a thousand right
it’s ten to the third power 10 times 10
times 10 if you have 20 in each column
you get 8,000 right okay so that’s the
problem redefinition technique the the
last technique I want to share with you
this this sounded really rough when I
got the claw we got a call from the New
York ASPCA American Society Prevention
of Cruelty to Animals and they said we
have a real marketing challenge it’s
really tough the New York police are
giving us all these pitbulls that had
been abused by drug dealers and can you
help us get New York families to adopt
ex drug dealers pit bulls so what we did
was we did their different techniques
their questioning techniques their
metaphor techniques their visual
techniques and there’s a whole realm of
fantasy techniques so we did the fantasy
technique we had developed a technique
called worst idea where you come up with
not good ideas with bad ideas and then
you flip it okay we did not do that
because we said oh you could you know
kill the dog and all this weird stuff so
we changed that we adapted that a little
bit to say come up with a silly idea a
silly idea and that was gangbusters and
so some of the some of the silly ideas
was maybe you could do a virtual
adoption right set up cameras and people
might fall in love with a dog and
actually adopt him I went and quote met
a bunch of these pitbulls and I wanted
to bring one home I got to tell you of
course my wife would have freaked out we
have a have a poo so that’s probably
breakfast for the further for the pit
bull but you know another idea was dress
him up in in in costumes and March him
in the you know Greenwich Village
Halloween parade and a third one which I
thought was silly and really fun was
let’s have let’s have let’s take him out
for a walk walk up to New York and say
would you mind holding my dog for a
second and then run away
so they didn’t do that but the net of
all this was really cool they realized
that they should be personifying these
animals and really showing what their
personality was and that led to the
national campaign which has really
helped them place more dogs okay
my call to action is here these are not
this is not rocket science I want you to
learn these techniques right and use
them in whatever you’re doing it could
be at work in your personal life
whatever because they work I mean we’ve
helped companies come up with over three
billion dollars of stuff and I’ve
written three books but there are a lot
of books out there they’re not hard to
learn and frankly even if you do them
poorly right it’s better than saying god
any ideas got any more ideas last trick
I will give you I feature this in my
last book because of the Internet of
Things now if you have a passion for
something you can take a concrete object
whatever it is gardening it could be a
chair a pen it doesn’t matter put the
word smart in front of that whatever it
is and I guarantee you you will get a
new invention and if you doubt that look
at the telemarketing or the the
telephonic company I won’t mention it
what do they do they have a commercial
out there on what smart asphalt so if we
can do smart asphalt you can do
something else thank you [Applause]