Bridging the creativity gap

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KATIA PALLINI NIELS SCHILLEWAERT FRANK GOEDERTIER

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FOREWORD At the time of publication, May 2020, we find ourselves in the midst of a global pandemic. While this bookzine was written in the weeks leading up to the crisis, we reviewed its content for current relevance.

We believe that great ideas will be needed to survive, and perhaps even thrive, in these unprecedented times. We already witnessed the creation of new products, services and business models, from ‘quarantine dating’ apps to ‘scents of normality’ candles. However, many organizations still resemble assembly lines rather than hotbeds of creativity, their imperative being to do the same thing better, faster and cheaper, rather than focusing on reshaping for the better. It is these we hope to inspire with this bookzine.

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Not everybody within an organization has the skill to come to new and fresh ideas in normal circumstances, let alone in high-pressure, high-stake situations. Only one in a hundred people can be deemed truly ‘creative’. In this bookzine, we aim to shed a light (bulb) on how your business can overcome these limitations and bridge the creativity gap, by using the power of the (creative) crowd.

We talk about the value of creative crowdsourcing on page 18 of this bookzine. To show that the need for this solution is just as relevant today as it was six months ago, we used our creative network eÿeka to co-create brand innovations for a post-lockdown world.

In April 2020 we launched a global qualitative COVID-19 consumer community which generated a number of key insights into the ‘future consumer’. One of the insights was the phenomenon of enochlophobia, or crowds afraid of crowds. We presented this insight to the eÿeka network in the form of an open contest, asking creatives

to help brands prepare for the ‘new normal‘ in the post-COVID-19 world, specifically addressing what sorts of products and services consumers will look for; and how brands can evolve to provide for those needs, and help consumers leave their homes ‘with caution’. In just 12 days, the contest generated 142 ideas from 77 participants in 35 countries, where one creative from India went so far as to redesign the entire in-store retail experience, including a thermal entrance tunnel, antimicrobial trolley grips and automated sanitization features throughout a shop. First place was awarded to a creative from Beijing, China, for their ‘Bubble wrapper Disinfectant’; bubble wrap injected with disinfectant would be used to wrap home-delivery parcels and once popped would sanitize the package before entering the home.

Whilst we cannot be certain about the future of your business or our own, we can be certain of one thing: actively shaping consumer insights and thriving in a volatile environment requires creativity! What’s your (brand) plan for life beyond the crisis? We hope this bookzine can provide you with some inspiration and spark your creative challenges.

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THE CREATIVITY GAP October 23, 2001 marks an important date in the history of Apple. It’s the day the iPod was revealed to the world. Yet it is not the newly released music player that marks this date in particular, but the key accessory that came with the device: the all-white earbuds. Before the iPod, all headphones, regardless of their brand or size, were plain black. Yet with a device that would predominantly be tucked away in people’s pockets, Apple cleverly understood white headphones could make the brand stand out. For some time, the white earbuds became an iconic brand asset, differentiating the iPod from other wearable music players.

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According to Philip Kotler, differentiation is the act of designing a set of meaningful differences to distinguish brands and products from those of competitors. Yet today, many companies have become disillusioned with the notion of brand differentiation. Half the store brands in national US supermarkets imitate a leader brand package at least in color, size and shape (Morton & Zettelmeyer, 2004). Within a category, products don’t show many noticeable differences on product-feature level, and if they do, it does not take long for them to be copied and adopted by the masses. Apart from a (subjective) brand layer, product and service are regressing to the mean.

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“Differentiation is the act of designing a set of meaningful differences to distinguish brands and products from those of competitors.�

Philip Kotler

In 1979, Daniel J. Boorstin, American historian and author, envisioned this growing congruence in his work ‘The Republic of Technology: Reflections on Our Future Society’. He characterized our age as driven by “the Republic of Technology [whose] supreme law is convergence, the tendency for everything to become more like everything else.” (Boorstin, 1979). Levitt, similarly, recognized that, in business, this trend has pushed markets toward global commonality, where businesses standardize products in the same way everywhere (Levitt, 1983).

The current market reality demands for brands to take a fresh perspective and explore creative solution spaces. A brand that did so recently (despite the fact that the launch itself became a farce, with metal balls easily smashing the allegedly shatterproof windows) is Tesla, with the launch of its ‘Cybertruck’. Its shape, form and features truly stand out.

If one looks at the automobile industry as a whole, most new cars are nearly unidentifiable when the branding is removed.

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Yet organizations often resemble assembly lines more than hotbeds of creativity, the imperative being to do the same thing better, faster and cheaper, at the expense of creativity, as there is no time for reflection, exploration and intense collaboration (Hennessey & Amabile, 2010).

One could label this as ‘creative scarcity’. In his book ‘The Infinite Game’, Simon Sinek refers to the finite mindset of many business leaders, since many have a vision to be ‘the number one’ and are obsessed with beating the competition, which results in a short-term focus. Yet this finite mindset leads to the decline of trust, cooperation and innovation. Therefore, leaders need to adopt an infinite mindset where the job is never done.

An IBM survey amongst 1,500 Chief Executive Officers from 60 countries and 33 industries worldwide identified creativity as the number one ‘leadership competency’ of the future (more than rigor, manage8

ment discipline, integrity or even vision). The research furthermore revealed that less than half of the global CEOs believe their enterprise to be prepared adequately to handle the highly volatile, increasingly complex business environment. CEOs are confronted with massive shifts that, according to the study, can be overcome by instilling ‘creativity’ throughout an organization (IBM, 2010). In 2019, LinkedIn analyzed 50,000 professional skills employers search for to discover the most in-demand job skills for 2019. Their research showed creativity is the single most important skill in the world for all businesses today to master (LinkedIn, 2020).

“You can’t wait for inspiration; you have to go after it with a club.”

Jack London, American novelist

This is also supported by the Adobe State of Create report, which shows that 73% of businesses believe that creativity increases a company’s likelihood for success (Adobe, 2016). Companies that invest in creativity are shown to perform better than those that don’t. McKinsey found that the most creative companies, according to their Award Creativity Score (ACS, an index based on the prestigious Cannes Lions awards given annually for advertising and marketing excellence), outperformed peer firms both on a financial and an innovation level. The 67% whose ACS score was in the top quartile had an above-average organic revenue growth (McKinsey, 2017).

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Creativity’s bottom line, McKinsey, 2017

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FRESH IDEAS COME FROM FRESH PERSPECTIVES Trying to unlock creativity within an organization comes with many challenges. Firstly, there is the problem of homogeneity: people that work (or live) in the same environment are likely to adopt a similar frame of reference and similar values, and grow shared biases. Alongside this, there is a strong tendency to homophily, which means that birds of a feather stick together (Lakhani, Jeppesen, Lohse, & Panetta, 2007). Even when a company chooses to consult external sources to solve a problem, they will tend to rely on people and companies that they know (well), therefore running into the same biases that are present in internal problem solving.

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DIVERSITY TRUMPS ABILITY Organizations can therefore benefit from diversity. Apart from deviating away from certain biases, there lies great power in involving a diverse set of people when exploring the solution space. The ‘diversity trumps ability’ theorem states that a randomly selected collection of problem solvers outperforms a collection of the best individual problem solvers (Page, 2007). Highly qualified people (e.g. an organization’s management team) form a homogenous group, with members sharing similar education, perspectives and problem-solving techniques. They are better than the crowd at large, yet only at a few things. Yet many problems cannot be solved by a single heuristic. Moreover, two heads are not better than one when it’s really only single head (Page, 2007).

MATLAB, the open-source computer programming language, for example, leverages the power of diversity, the collection of smart programmers creating a better solution than any single one of them would put 12

forward individually.

“The best algorithm at the end of the contest period exceeds the best algorithm from day one by a magnitude of one thousand.”

Ned Gulley, MATLAB

This all leads back to the egalitarian principle that every individual possesses some knowledge or talent that another individual will find valuable. Or as Montaigne once said, “The only thing we all have in common is that we are all quite different.”. It is only by combining the different frames of reference that one can move toward out-of-the-box solutions and thinking.

RULE OF PARTICIPATORY MEDIA Yet, not everybody within a team or organization has the skill to come to new and fresh ideas. Adobe’s State of Create report highlights that only 41% describe themselves as creative, and in Japan this goes even as low as 13% (Adobe, 2016). Creatives, and those that ‘create’, are a rare breed. This is also visible in the media content sphere, where if one would look at people on any given site (e.g. social media page), 1% will actually create something (i.e. the creators), another 10% will like, share or react to what is created (i.e. the contributors) and the remaining 89% will merely consume the creation (i.e. the lurkers). This is also referred to as the 1:9:90 rule, which originated from Bradly Horowitz, VP at Google, after him having observed people’s behavior on photo-sharing website Flickr. Not everyone has a knack of thinking outside the box or is engaged in creating concepts or solutions, yet in a reality where creativity is a core differentiator, businesses need to open the gates and connect with that 1%.

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CONSUMERS (SHOULD) DEMAND THEIR STAKE Unlike what they think, many marketers and company stakeholders are nothing like the consumers they serve. While they might be involved in manufacturing a product or providing a service, they are often not the ones consuming it. And it is precisely the people that consume the experiences and live the frictions and unmet needs that nourish successful innovations. Therefore, companies can benefit from including a consumer perspective in their innovation process. Moreover, consumers want to be involved. People do not want to consume passively, they would rather participate in the development and creation of products which are meaningful to them (Howe, 2008). The proliferation of the internet has empowered consumers to become creators, increasingly expecting to be given the opportunity to shape the products and services they consume. The task of innovation has passed from manufacturer to 14

user, with the latter having a greater need as well as the ability to improve a product’s performance. This ‘democratization of innovation’ comes with financial benefits, since co-created products are often perceived as better fitting the needs of consumers, having a higher perceived quality, a higher distinctive character and generating higher consumer preference (Hoyer, Dorotic, Kraft & Chandy, 2010).

Today’s day and age requires brands to step up their creativity game to create relevant products and solutions. The reality is that 99.99% of the smartest or most creative people do not work for you. Fresh ideas come from a fresh perspective. It’s about involving the right crowds to get to ideas that spark. Businesses need a more flexible business model rather than trying to house all talent under one roof (Howe, 2008). It’s about actively managing the collective intelligence by sourcing the right crowd for the right ideas.

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SOURCING THE RIGHT CROWD FOR THE RIGHT IDEAS Getting to ideas that spark is an art. Ideation represents the process of going wide and wild. It is about pushing for a widespread range of ideas, rather than finding a single, best solution. One could slice the world of ideation in two dimensions, with four different approaches.

DIMENSION 1: GUIDED VS UNGUIDED The first dimension involves the extent to which the flow ‘to get to ideas’ is demarcated by clear processes and guidance. While guided ideation involves an outlined process and a managed approach from start to finish, unguided ideation is the result of random sparks of ideas.

DIMENSION 2: INTERNAL VS EXTERNAL The second dimension is the source of the ideas and the extent to which the participants of the ideation process are internal or external stakeholders. ‘Insourcing’ refers to ideation activities involving company stakeholders, while ‘crowdsourcing’ activities tap into external crowds or stakeholders.

The combination of these dimensions results in four types of ideation approach: (1) creative crowdsourcing, (2) open innovation, (3) internal ideation and (4) intrapreneurship.

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CREATIVE CROWDSOURCING Creative crowdsourcing is an ideation approach in which organizations tap into the creative potential of external participants. Whilst the term might be rather new, the concept dates back to 1714, when the British government wanted to solve ‘the Longitude Problem’, a solution to determine latitude at sea to save the lives of thousands of sailors per year. As a last resort, the British government offered £20,000 to anyone that came with a solution to this seemingly unsolvable problem. John Harrison, a carpenter’s son, won the prize by inventing an accurate, vacuum-sealed watch. This early crowdsourcing experiment is a prime example of the concept that innovation and invention can come from anywhere, even from people 18

outside of the industry (Wagorn, 2014).

The Internet and social media have laid the groundwork for new ways of collaborating with (creative) consumers and stakeholders, resulting in many successful co-creation initiatives. Players of the online game Foldit, for example, succeeded in finding a solution for a scientific problem that had been riddling scientists for 15 years. Foldit is a multiplayer game in which gamers try to solve 3D puzzles which represent protein models. The true goal of the game is to use human intuition to predict the structure of existing proteins, which can help scientists develop drugs for diseases which proteins play a role in. For over a decade, scientists had been trying to determine the structure of the retroviral enzyme as it unlocks important information about battling the AIDS virus. After 15 years, the researchers presented the problem to the Foldit community, where in less than three weeks two teams came up with a model accurate enough for the scientists to refine and determine the structure of the M-PMV retroviral protease.

Benefits of Creative Crowdsourcing Creative crowdsourcing provides organizations with access to a continuous pool of fresh ideas and inspiration at a reduced cost (one does not need to hire creators). Crowdsourcing provides the ability to reach people that have skill sets that are unavailable within the company.

“No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else.”

Bill Joy, co-founder Sun Microsystems

Moreover, by definition, these ‘from-consumers-for-consumers’ ideas bring more value and relevance, resulting in broader acceptance by the greater public. Lay’s ‘do us a flavor’ campaign, where consumers could submit and vote for their favorite flavor, successfully drove sales. In 2012, the first edition of the co-creation activity, the winning chip flavor, Cheesy Garlic Bread, drove an 8% sales increase for Lay’s in the three months following the competition (Forbes, 2014).

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One specific benefit stemming from the transformational nature of creative crowdsourcing is the opportunity to discover a game changer, unlocking ideas that are not immediately apparent to a company yet do tap into relevant consumer frictions or needs. Moreover, creative crowdsourcing initiatives exploit the so-called spare cycles. According to Forbes, there are 80,000 freelance designers in the US alone. Most of them are, proverbially speaking, waiting tables. Crowdsourcing has the power to match demand and supply, as it involves people’s willingness to indulge in something they love to do.

Challenges of Creative Crowdsourcing Searching for inspiration outside the organization walls, crowdsourcing usually involves a group of people that are unaware of the company’s 20

ins and outs (i.e. history, values, technical capabilities and restrictions…). Also, due to the risk of confidential information getting into one’s competitors’ hands, (necessary) details about the problem, business intentions, or technology are usually kept hidden (Kumar, Meng & Kabiraj, 2018). This lack of knowledge and input can result in ideas that are too out-of-the-box or unrealistic, or that do not consider certain technical limitations. The fine line between the amount of detail and information one feeds the crowd is critical: enough to fuel relevance while still leaving room for creative out-of-the-box thinking. Moreover, crowdsourcing needs to be actively embraced and managed by the organization. To overcome the ‘not invented here’ syndrome, where there is a lack of buy-in from middle management as they ultimately do not understand why they should adopt this new idea or how it affects them (Kumar, Meng & Kabiraj, 2018).

OPEN INNOVATION Open innovation initiatives also leverage the inflow and outflow of knowledge to accelerate the innovation and ideation process, yet there is no formal ideation challenge. Instead, it involves an open call for bright ideas, where the company opens its R&D department to external people, experts and even companies. This closely resembles the concept of ‘corporate venturing’, which can be defined as ‘setting up structural collaborations with external ventures/ parties to drive mutual growth’, where corporates partner with start-ups to provide them with enough ‘oxygen’ that they eventually fuel the corporate engines (Van Peteghem & Mohout, 2018).

Unilever Foundry, launched in 2014, is a prime example of how a giant multinational puts a call out for ideas from small start-ups. The Foundry defines different focus areas (e.g. wellness, personalization, sustainability, supply chain...) for which start-ups can submit disruptive product, service and technology ideas. The Unilever Foundry’s aim is to build a collaboration culture between start-ups and the global business, with room for experimenting with new technology and business models at scale. Knorr, for example, partnered with the UK-startup DigitalGenius, that developed an AI chat service allowing people to use their basic phones to text the ingredients they have at hand to get advice on what to cook with them. This helped the brand connect with target customers in South Africa that didn’t have smartphones or computers, yet often struggle with the question ‘what to eat for dinner’.

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Benefits of open innovation Open innovation allows companies to benefit from external intelligence and contributions. Whether coming from academics, researchers or experts in a variety of fields, the collaboration with outsiders can help renew current business models and develop disruptive products or services. In the example of Unilever, where partnerships are formed with start-ups, this way of working leads to a win-win relationship: Unilever brings scale, budget and marketing, while the start-ups bring innovation and new go-to-market approaches. Since the process is not guided (sparks from ideation can come from any angle), it is a way for businesses to stay up to date and on par with new evolutions and emerging trends.

Challenges of open innovation A major challenge is managing time and resources, as well as defining 22

ownership. Within Unilever Foundry, for example, start-ups accepted into the program receive $50,000 and the possibility of working with Unilever, but remain separate entities. It is essential to be clear on the components each side is expected to deliver, and to set clear objectives and describe what success looks like. Next to that it is important that the collaboration is relevant; one should avoid ‘zero-impact venturing’ where companies try to show off their innovative image by doing things they don’t fully understand (Van Peteghem & Mohout, 2018).

INTERNAL IDEATION Internal ideation groups all the ‘formal’ ideation activities involving internal company stakeholders. These initiatives can range from extended team brainstorms to internal ideation hackathons.

Characterizing is that they follow a well-defined flow or process (= guided) and that the members come from within the company walls (= insourcing). One could call them brainstorms on steroids. To benefit from a diversified view, internal ideation sessions ideally engage a broader swathe of a company’s internal stakeholder base from various parts of the organization. These formats come with a formal flow, procedure or workshop outline.

Benefits of internal ideation

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When it comes to internal ideation, it is not necessarily about the volume of ideas being generated (although that certainly is a plus), but also about colleague curation and expert convergence. This is especially the case when bringing people from every corner of the organization to the table. Ideation is not the sole responsibility of marketing or R&D; the power lies in the combination of a multitude of perspectives, overarching the wider organization. The real value comes from involving a mix of people that is familiar with the corporate culture, legacy, mission and vision; they know and understand the bigger picture, potential technical and financial constraints, and are often experts in the field. This knowledge is key for fleshing out creative ideas and designs (which may come from outside the company walls) and refining these out-of-the-box ideas to the point where they can be converted into concrete concepts.

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Challenges of internal ideation Whilst internal stakeholders carry a backpack of technical skills and relevant business context, they are often not the most creative gang. Creativity is a unique skill which only a minority possesses (and these often do not reside within the company walls). Consequently, internal ideation sessions often will not result in the most out-of-the-box ideas. Another challenge is that a sense of reason might hijack these sessions. There is a danger that the technical and corporate backpack comes with ‘yes but’ reactions, challenging ideas on feasibility. What’s important here is to stress the diverging role of ideation, and that the sanity check should only come at a later stage.

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Intrapreneurship allows employees to act like entrepreneurs within an organization (Kenton, 2019). A single person within the company can take the initiative for developing an idea into a product or service. The whole ideation process is centered around self-motivated and proactive people coming forward to pursue an innovative product or service, rather than the organization rolling out a framework and outlined approach to innovation.

AT&T, for example, actively stimulates intrapreneurship through its Foundry initiative, a network of innovation centers which give employees the chance to experiment with pretty much anything they want. They can come up with an idea and then pitch it in a meeting with executives, just like an entrepreneur looking for funding would

pitch VCs. Through this initiative, they wish to shorten the innovation life cycle to under six months for products or services that would normally take two years to launch (AT&T, nd).

Adobe Kickbox is a similar intrapreneurial innovation process. Adobe first rolled it out in 2015, and it is now open-sourced for others to use. It starts with a shiny red box, including $1,000 and everything you need to launch an idea. The only thing one needs is the willingness to learn and the motivation to see an idea through. The Kickbox is designed to increase innovator effectiveness, accelerate innovation velocity, and measurably improve innovation outcomes.

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Benefits of intrapreneurship Intrapreneurship gives people the freedom to experiment beyond their functional roles. Not only can this keep employees motivated, it also enables organizations to accelerate and manage change effectively. Gallup Research estimates that disengaged employees cost US organizations over $450 billion in lost productivity (Gallup, 2013). Intrapreneurship provides a platform to engage employees in work that is challenging and meaningful.

Moreover, it allows ideas to come from all corners of the organization, where the latter benefits from tapping into the experiences and knowledge base of those that know the business better than anybody else. The iconic Facebook ‘Like’, for example, is not the result of a late-night idea brainstorm with Zuckerberg, but rather an idea submitted by an engineer.

Challenges of intrapreneurship

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Not recognizing an employee that demonstrates an intrapreneurial spirit can be detrimental to a brand or company, where one might end up losing said employee. Nevertheless, regardless of its benefits, intrapreneurship means the organization must grant employees some ‘play time’ or ‘perk time’. 3M, for example, one of the first multi-national corporations to recognize the creative potential, allowed employees to spend 15% of their work time on developing new projects. Google, for example, gives their employees the option to invest 20% of their time in a side project, which can range from learning to code to anything that can spark creativity. As it turns out, a lot of the side projects have turned into something much bigger. Gmail is only one example, among many.

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THE PARAMETERS OF IDEATION Each of the described initiatives visibly has its benefits (while also housing some challenges and weaknesses). There is no one-size-fits-all formula for ideation. The choice in approach depends on the nature of the innovation challenge. Yet, regardless of the approach, some parameters contribute to successful ideation.

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1. INSIGHT AT THE CORE “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I would spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions”. As highlighted by this quote from Einstein, a clear understanding of the consumer friction is key prior to exploring the solution space. If one has not clearly defined the problem, how is one supposed to find a solution. This all boils down to understanding the underlying frictions and needs, and translating these into insights. A good insight has the power to unlock marketing innovation at different levels: brand innovation, product innovation, service innovation, communication, and consumer activation. The key is to understand and select the insights which should form the cornerstone of your ideation journey. An insight is a short, single-minded statement written in consumer language, that reflects a consumer need, a wish or a desire, and can be defined as ‘an understanding of the inner nature of things, leading to a discovery of something that is not yet obvious but at same time recogniz30

able and real, and which provides the basis for relevant and actionable innovation, ultimately leading to a competitive advantage’.

Our definition of an ‘insight’ contains some crucial elements that a consumer insight should possess in order to drive business impact:

It’s me: a good insight is relevant for a consumer. Relevance can be driven by personal identification or by peer identification (which is when an insight is called contagious).

Aha!: an insight should be fresh and present a new way of looking at things. This includes both discovering something completely new and uncovering an existing reality in a new or fresh way. An insight should not immediately be apparent. It is something that is present latently;

you only realize that it is true the moment you hear it. It brings to the surface what was there subconsciously.

Emotion: an insight should have an emotional valence. This could be a friction or a problem that consumers want to solve, but it could also be a desire for something. Consumers should be excited about having a potential solution.

Yet, as obvious as it might sound, many ideation attempts do not start with a clearly defined insight. Research by InSites Consulting has shown that concepts with a validated insight at the basis perform 40% better than those without. It is essential to truly immerse in the consumer reality and detect those insights that can fuel innovation. The stronger the insight, the higher the business potential.

2. SUSTAINABLE DIVERSITY

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As highlighted in the ‘diversity trumps ability theorem’ (cf. supra), groups of diverse problem solvers outperform groups of high-ability problem solvers.

The sum of a group is greater than the brightest individual. Ideation can benefit greatly from the collective wisdom by combining a group of people with different backgrounds, reference points and perspectives to explore the solution space. This is where synergies are created, and one can find ideas that spark. This is valid both for insourcing and crowdsourcing initiatives. Diversity is essential. Yet its existence is not enough, it needs to be maintained. When bringing people together, an interesting dynamic kicks in: people either accentuate their differences and polarize, or they downplay them and reach a consensus. In both cases the diversity is diminished. Relative isolation retains people’s diversity. This is also the reason why one must avoid working with fixed groups in internal ideation workshops. It is essential that people get individual thinking time and continuously rotate groups and people.

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3. MOTIVATIONAL MODEL Why do external people contribute to ideation challenges? Why would internal stakeholder feel motivated to think of new product or service ideas? Regardless of what outsiders might think, it is often not primarily about the money. Financial compensation is not the main driver for participation in co-creation activities. The desire for product improvements, the pursuit of knowledge and the willingness to help companies are important sources of motivation (Constantinides, Brünink & Lorenzo, 2015). Humans do not always behave in predictably self-interested patterns. It is about the emerging reputation economy, where people participate for the creds (Howe, 2008).

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“It’s addictive - especially when you are in design school or working for some corporate gig where you are working under strict guidelines.”

Ross Zietz, Threadless community manager after his designs won 8 times

Research by MIT, for example, examined why highly skilled programmers would donate time to open-source software projects. They found that programmers are motivated by reciprocal altruism, a desire to create something which the larger community (including themselves) can benefit from, as well as the joy of practicing a craft they excel in (Athey & Ellison, 2014).

This explains the growing popularity of crowdsourcing and intrapreneurial initiatives, where people are contributing their excess capacity (or so-called ‘spare cycles’) to indulge in something they love to do.

4. BALANCING DIVERGENCE AND CONVERGENCE With the divergent stage aiming at getting as many ideas as possible, ideation is a volume activity. Consequently, it follows the adage called ‘Sturgeon’s Law’, stating that 90% of everything (and so this also accounts for user-generated ideas) is crap. Regardless of whether your ideation process includes formal guidelines or procedures, enough time also needs to be invested in the convergent phase. The flipside of Sturgeon’s Law is that 10% of everything is not crap, and a smaller percentage is downright good. That is why it is essential to spend adequate time and resources in selecting, prioritizing and finetuning the ideas from the first stage. Getting an idea is a great eureka moment but it needs to be tested quickly against reality if it resonates with consumers (more on this in our Innovation Envy bookzine).

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OUR CROWDSOURCING PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE At InSites Consulting we believe in the power of the crowd and its synergism. Our approach unites different stakeholders around an ideation challenge, guiding them from insight to idea, by immersing teams into the consumer reality to identify relevant needs and frictions (i.e. consumer immersion), injecting the necessary spark of creativity through our proprietary creative crowdsourcing community (i.e. creative crowdsourcing) and fueling ideation through an engaging workshop (i.e. internal ideation).

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CONSUMER IMMERSION Regardless of whether the ideation centers around brand activations, innovation or customer experience development, insights form the starting point of our ideation approach. Not only do they help immerse stakeholders in the consumer reality and understand the underlying problem, they help mark the solution space, avoiding too much deviation from solving the initial friction or problem.

Our proprietary online hybrid community platform, called ‘Square’, captures these underlying consumer needs and frictions. This always-on platform connects consumers around a topic, category or brand, using a multitude of activities. Consumers might be asked to go on (shopping) missions, report their experience through videos and pictures, and discuss these individually or in groups. Other activities include activation/deprivation challenges, where consumers are invited to use/ stop using certain products and share their experiences (e.g. stop 36

eating fruit for a week vs eating more than two units of fruit a day). The output of these activities helps marketers immerse in the consumer reality and shapes strong insights that can serve as a steppingstone for ideation.

CASE Discovering insights with AirFrance KLM Customer Experience is high on the agenda of AirFrance KLM, the FrancoDutch airline holding company. Transfer flights in particular are complex situations, evoking a lot of (mainly negative) emotions. In order to approach this passenger touchpoint as an opportunity and to further improve travelers’ experiences, AirFrance KLM and InSites Consulting embarked upon a research journey centered on the emotional service perception.

A proprietary online community was set up with frequent flyers, to capture

and map the transfer journey through pictures and videos. This resulted in the discovery of 10 insight platforms, emphasizing travelers’ needs, emotions and expectations linked to the full transfer journey.

One of the insights was that stress arises in the moments just before landing, with little information available on the status of the connecting flight. These insights formed the starting point for idea co-creation aimed at turning the negative emotion into a delightful experience.

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“On aircrafts equipped with internet connectivity, passengers can now retrieve information about their upcoming transfer. They will also be notified in case of a cancelled or delayed onward flight which would cause missing the connecting flight.

Whenever rebooking options are available, the passengers will be redirected to KLM.com to complete the rebooking while still in the air. This makes that we empower passengers to take control of their journey.”

Charles Hageman, Customer Journey Manager Flight at KLM Royal Dutch Airlines

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INTERNAL IDEATION & CREATIVE CROWDSOURCING The relevant insight platforms serve as the ignition for ideation. Our ideation approach taps into both the in- and outsourcing spectrum of the ideation framework, where we set up an ideation track with internal stakeholders and/or involve our proprietary creative community, depending on the ideation needs.

When ideating with internal stakeholders, our proprietary studio platform, which one could call the Pinterest of research, serves as an idea springboard. The Studio is built around different ‘Walls’, each representing an ‘insight platform’, where stakeholders can post and share ideas, observations, inspiration around these insights, and then vote and comment on those of others.

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CASE How Efteling sparked employees to level up the overnight stays The Efteling is a fantasy-themed amusement park in the Netherlands, with attractions reflecting elements from ancient myths and legends, fairy tales, fables, and folklore. When visiting the Efteling, more and more visitors find their way to the overnight stays. To promote these, Efteling wanted to create a seamless experience with the amusement park that offers a true WOW effect.

To spark ideation, key internal stakeholders were challenged to put themselves in the shoes of their visitors. This was done through the Insight Activation Studio, illustrating all the harvested insights and frictions (from previous work and projects) in the customer journey, which stakeholders were invited to explore and discuss. In a next step, the stakeholders were challenged to complete steps within the journey (e.g. book an overnight stay) and share ideas (based on their own experience and the consumer frictions on the Studio) for upgrading the customer experience.

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Not everyone within the organization has the creative power to get to ideas that spark. To boost creativity, we can combine internal ideation with creative sparks from our proprietary creative crowdsourcing network eÿeka. Founded in 2006, the eÿeka community gathers more than 400,000 members from +160 countries (75% of whom are Millennials) that participate in online creative competitions. This uniquely skilled global creator community solves client challenges ranging from product and service innovation to communication campaigns to packaging innovation. It’s unique because of its size and diversity, and because it provides that fresh perspective which internal stakeholders or agencies cannot offer, and a level of quality and creativity which regular consumers don’t possess. They are not in it just for the money; they are intrinsically motivated to showcase their creative skills.

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The key requirements for an ‘ideation contest’ are formulated in a condensed brief. A good insight forms the brief, which is posted on the community platform and is the starting point for ideation, where members are challenged to share their ideas. The ideas are then analyzed and clustered, after which they are evaluated and transformed by the internal teams into ‘winning’ business con-

cepts, ready for market launch. The network delivers a guaranteed 35 to 100 well-articulated, illustrated ideas in only a few weeks’ time. They vary from raw, non-executed ideas to fully-fledged visual concepts.

To leverage the power of diversity, the ideation challenges always run globally; people from any corner of the world can participate in any challenge. With over 20 nationalities involved in any given contest, 92% of the best ideas have proven to originate from creatives located outside the target market, which proves that ’great ideas truly come from anywhere’.

CASE How KitKat got its mojo back with Kätapult Nestlé Australia wanted to return the ‘mojo’ to KitKat with a humorous yet relatable-in-the-every-day campaign. The campaign idea dubbed ‘Snap Out of It’ had potential buy-in from the client, but the creative agency struggled to find an executional storyline to bring it to life. To get out of the impasse, ideas were sourced using our proprietary creator network eÿeka. The brief: to generate funny and relatable stories with people reacting dramatically to frustrating situations where KitKat could help someone ‘snap out of it’.

In three weeks, we gathered more than 200 storyboarded ideas from 43 countries.

An idea-screening workshop was organized to review the top 20 story ideas together with Nestlé and the agency, combing their expertise and experience with fresh, out-of-the-box inspiration. A story featuring a guy trying to build a robot, à la IKEA flat-pack furniture, served as the creative spark. And when 20 stories are set in medieval times, that in itself is valuable inspiration (a Gameof-Thrones effect?). The eÿeka input formed the agency planner’s brief: “Depict a comical IKEA moment in medieval times to bring to life the ‘Snap Out of It’ campaign idea.” The resulting ‘Kätapult’ video was a huge success. The campaign exceeded sales and brand equity KPIs in Australia, resulting in 6 million online views, and was adopted by many other Nestlé KitKat markets.

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CASE Combining internal ideation with creative crowdsourcing by VW After different rounds of ideation (with both internal stakeholders and consumers), the VW team was still missing that typical break-through idea that would truly WOW Volkswagen customers in the after-sales journey. The eĂżeka creative crowdsourcing network was briefed to give the ideation stream an extra boost. Some ideas were similar to, or a more advanced version of the internal/ consumer ideas, while others showed the potential to really disrupt the after-sales service in the automotive sector. In the ideation workshop, ideas from the different stakeholder groups were clustered. 10 ideas that met strategic, feasibility and desired impact were chosen and fine-tuned, seven of which were signed off by the board and tested in agile feedback loops with consumers on the 42

community platform (aka Consumer Consulting Square).

The output from these creative challenges serves as creative inspiration for internal ideation workshops which gather stakeholders from different corners of the company to move from insight to idea.

The ideation workshop leads to a selection of ideas relevant to the business. These ideas can be tested and optimized (in idea screeners where ideas are rated by consumers overnight) to ultimately craft highpotential concepts. The results can be further fine-tuned in a conceptwriting workshop, or on the Square community platform again, by consumers or employees.

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CASE How Royal Canin leveraged the power of the crowd to move from insight to concept Royal Canin, a global leader in the pet care category, wanted to blueprint an innovation approach to explore and leverage innovation opportunities. The innovation protocol included pet owners, a dedicated multi-disciplinary team and a creative crowd. Following a consumer immersion, a qualitative deep dive with cat and dog owners on a dedicated Square community platform, the next step was creative crowdsourcing to translate the gathered insights into new ideas. This resulted in 70 ideas, which were used as stimuli during a twoday workshop, where the ideas were further explored, prioritized and tested overnight, and transformed into 10 actionable concepts. These concepts were then optimized and validated on the Square community with cat and dog owners to ensure they met consumers expectations.

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BRIDGING THE CREATIVITY GAP Creativity, as illustrated, is a rare yet ever important discipline and a crucial part of the innovation equation.

73% of businesses consider creativity as a driver for (financial) success, yet less than one in two describes themselves as creative and 44% say they are living up to their creative potential (Adobe, 2016).

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More than ever do brands need to embrace creative thinking as a core component of their day-to-day business and actively close the creativity gap. There are many approaches to ideation, yet what truly unites them is that every perspective can bring fresh sparks to the table.

Who to involve is a matter of what one wants to achieve. Unless a company is operating on a huge scale, most of them don’t staff all the resources they need at any given time. In order to cope with the pace of change and grow consumer relevance (or even stay relevant), brands need to incorpo46

rate the voice of both internal and external stakeholders. Companies like P&G, for example, grew for decades by innovating from within, building global research facilities and hiring the best talents. This ‘if it wasn’t invented in-house, then it didn’t exist’ culture worked fine for the first 163 years of the company’s history. The introduction of new products and services came with an average commercial success of 15 to 20%. This success rate blossomed to 50-60% when A.G. Lafley became CEO in 2000 and started involving consumers and external stakeholders in the ideation process (Lafley & Charan, 2008).

Yet traditionally, firms are not set up to broadcast their internal queries to outsiders. The traditional corporate culture is geared to limit outsider access to insider information, not increase it (Lakhani, Jeppesen, Lohse, & Panetta, 2007). Businesses need a more flexible business model rather than trying to house all talent under one roof (Howe, 2008). It’s about actively managing the collective intelligence. We will (need to) move towards a future where crowdsourcing communities supplement the conventional corporation in their ideation challenges.

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“Either you innovate or you’re in commodity hell. If you do what everybody else does, you have a lowmargin business. That’s not where we want to be.”

Sam Palmisano, Sam Palmisano, former chairman of the Board at IBM

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Customer motives and benefits for participating in online co-creation

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C

reativity is the number one skill needed to survive and thrive in the

current market reality. Yet too often organizations resemble assembly lines more than creative hotbeds.

Getting to ideas that spark is an art. Not everyone has a knack for thinking outside the box or is engaged in creating concepts or solutions, yet in a reality where creativity is a core differentiator, businesses need to open the gates and embrace creative crowdsourcing. This bookzine sheds a light (bulb) on how businesses can overcome their own limitations and bridge their creativity gaps by relying on the crowd’s collective creative intelligence.

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Authors: Kristof De Wulf, CEO InSites Consulting Katia Pallini, Content Marketing Director InSites Consulting

ABOUT INSITES CONSULTING From the start of InSites Consulting in 1997 until today, there has been only one constant: we are continuously pushing the boundaries of marketing research. With a team of academic visionaries, passionate marketers and research innovators, we empower people to create the future of brands. As one of the top 10 most innovative market research agencies in the world (GRIT), we help our clients connect with consumers all over the world.

www.insites-consulting.com