A Lost Secret: How To Get Kids To Pay Attention

A great short read from NPR geared at rearing kids but could also pertain to creating with adults. View Article

This got me thinking with respect to Invention Workshops: To get engineers and designers motivated to focus and engage in inventive problem solving they need the proper motivation.

Why are we in this workshop?  What difference does it make?

First, get the team to the vision of the goal, “breakthrough ways to deliver benefit”.  This is the necessity of crafting a solid Opportunity Statement with the client but then also having the  participants edit the Opportunity Statement to their collective understanding. It will never be perfect but with ownership stake, it will be real to them for the task at hand.  

The second part, individual autonomy to explore and play with options. We could and to some extent should focus on the defining the problem with the current solution, if one already exists. However,  without individual autonomy focus on that singular problem solution can sway a team away from breakthrough benefit delivery.