1. challenge and uploading
Challenge: At the beginning of each workshop, it is important to ensure that the workshop participants have understood the assignment or question very well. Give them the opportunity to ask questions. Where are any existing boundaries, helpful and disruptive?
Uploading: Uploading is just as important as clarifying the assignment. Make sure that the workshop participants can free themselves from their prior knowledge and existing ideas that could block the new ideas. The participants should also be able to save their skills and experiences they have already had, including their ego (e.g. their own attitude, opinion or personal state of mind). Provide a separate poster for this purpose, which hangs openly in the room and can be consulted, added to and, above all, used at any time (but definitely at the turning point).
2. Inspiration and intuition
In this phase, the participants should act purely intuitively and allow themselves to be freely inspired by the stimuli on offer to tune into the creative field. As this is not easy for many people, it is important that you create a relaxed atmosphere through your leadership. Methods that provoke a high speed of expression are helpful here.
3. Association of ideas
Already in this phase, the participants should express initial ideas associatively. This means more complex and more meaningful statements than in phase 2.
4. Wendepunkt
Dies ist ein sehr wichtiger Moment innerhalb des Innovationsprozesses. Mach dir klar, dass du dich nun in Richtung Schliessen bewegst. Ab jetzt gilt es konsequent die Menge zu reduzieren. Überprüfe nochmals das erstellte Uploadposter. Gibt es dort Aspekte die in der Schliessungsphase nützlich wären?
5. Combination of ideas
After you have made it clear to yourself and the participants that it is now important to convergently reduce the previously generated large number of associations and ideas, you offer methods with which the participants are able to combinatorially link several ideas and drive them towards a solution.
6. Selection and choice
Suitable solutions should now be evaluated and selected from the combinations of the fifth phase.
7. Results and evaluation
The results are evaluated again with your guidance and prepared for subsequent further development. The innovation process is reflected upon and possible optimizations are identified. The selected results and proposed solutions are often sent to a new divergence-convergence process.