If you had 24 hours, from the moment you saw it, to make as much money from this cow as you could, what would you do? This is the question I’ve posed to student and business teams over the past 3 years as a warm-up to begin the creative problem-solving process.
On the 5th of October, it was the question I asked 60 senior members of Business Innovation Centres from all areas of Europe at the European Business Network’s Techcamp. (The event is for the sharing of tech, learning and ideas between the members of the network and was filled with interesting talks!) After a few questioning looks and some ideas as to what might happen with their cow, I explained myself to the audience.
Every time I’ve asked this question of a group, each person in the room has come up with different original ideas for using their cow - some crazy, some sensible, but many of which are absolutely brilliant. All that was needed to unleash all this creativity was a challenge to focus people’s minds, and a way of communicating it.
It’s the same for organisations. They’re full of people bursting with solutions that could provide a new product, a way of making a process more efficient or improve the environment. All they need is a challenge to focus their energy, and a way to communicate their response.
That’s where Solverboard comes in. You can post challenges for your people to solve and get them thinking creatively about your organisation – find out more here.
Overall, the EBN tech camp was an amazing and inspiring experience, not least because it was hosted in the beautiful city of Naples – but now I’ll ask you: what would you do with your cow?