Elaboration of a componential creative process for short ideation sessions

Abstract

This research tends to be a contribution in assisting companies to better innovate, since researchers state that Small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which comprise the vast majority of employments and businesses, face barriers such as the lack of finances, skills and time to innovate. For that, we chose to focus on the ideation session, which methodologies imply creativity tools and processes, but also, team preparation, risk management, eco innovation, etc. Literature reveals that Brainstorming is the most used creativity tool. This is consistent with results from secondary data analysis of “The 24 Hours of Innovation” (The 24 Hours) competition from 2007 to 2010: Brainstorming was used by 98,57 % of 968 participants. Yet, for many researchers, with Brainstorming, teams find almost the same sets of ideas, mostly low creative. We also found that many participants did not know what a creative process was and the difference between a creative process and a creativity tool. For more productive ideation sessions (in quantity and quality), we chose a componential creative process approach to allow participants who would like it to use the Brainstorming, but most other creativity tools. We named this framework “short ideation sessions”. Then, as our research question, we wanted to know “How to elaborate a componential creative process for short ideation sessions”. Our main research objective was that all components of our new process would have to be helpful, adopted and used by more than 50 % of participants. Since we could not find creative processes with components like creativity tools made for short ideation sessions to help SMEs for example who lack time, we created classification and selection systems for existing creativity processes and tools we had listed, and selected three creative processes among 39 and nine creativity tools from 615. Doing experimentation within The 24 Hours instead of companies presented, among other advantages, that of having a large population of more than 1000 participants working in the same setting, with the same rules and issues. Furthermore, we could repeat our experiment since the competition is renewable each year. That is how, because lack of time prevented participants from using creativity processes and tools we proposed in 2012, we simplified them in 2013 and created “mini creativity tools” faster to learn and use. In 2014, we elaborated our Componential creative process for short ideation sessions with five components : 1. A simple three steps creative process; 2. Mini creative tools associated to it; 3. A team preparation guide; 4. A creativity guide to help understand how to use the components of the creative process; 5. A chronological guide to help participants manage time. Participants found these components helpful to create at a rate varying between 60 % and 100 %, adopted and used them. Expecting better results, we simplified our Componential five components model in three components for the experimentation planned in 2015. Our main recommandations are to elaborate our new componential creative process for short periods of time other than 24 hours: from 5 minutes to 48 hours, experiment and adapted for different types of companies, technological and cultural.

Date	25 May 2015
Original language	American English
Awarding Institution	École de technologie supérieure
Supervisor	Mickaël Gardoni (Supervisor)