TTT: ‘Rules of the game’

Below you will find the rules of the game to organize your own ThinkTankThursday. If you would like us to organize it for you, please contact us and we are glad to help!

If you organize a ThinkTankThursday yourself:

Before ThinkTankThursday:

• Make sure it’s clear to everybody how to handle with intellectual property rights. For BOTH contributors and organizations! When needed, use a (short) non-disclosure agreement and make sure contributors know what they can expect.
• Think about choosing a neutral location (external conference room, café/restaurant, etc.) versus an in-house option (office, own conference room). Both do have advantages and disadvantages. In-house you’re able to involve contributors by showing them the business processes, while a neutral location unleashes the group of its regular frame of reference.
• Don’t invite too much contributors. 10 to 20 contributors provide enough inspiration while being able to brainstorm effectively.
• Make a trade. Think about what the organizing party can offer the contributors in terms of knowledge and inspiration. Provide the contributors with a presentation a/o experiment a/o preview about the organization and its technology a/o competitive advantage. Share to multiply!
• The organizer should take care for food and drinks. This means that if the ThinkTankThursday takes place on an external location (like a café) the organizer should pay for the first X drinks.

During ThinkTankThursday:

• It’s about sharing knowledge and creativity between people and organizations, using their different frames of reference. Make sure there’s no leak of knowledge and creativity! So:
• Nothing is wrong! Something can look like crap, but may be very valuable from another point of view! Involving contributors with others frames of reference attracts this kind of situations.
• When it’s sophisticated: make sure the expert is also available. Otherwise there is a great risk that the results will be useless after all.
• Think about the format of your meeting. Don’t let inspiration get loosed, by letting everybody to write down their own ideas before starting a plenary discussion. Otherwise the whole brainstorm session will focus on the first plenary results.
• Keep it dynamic but don’t push it! Try to trigger the contributors, but do not push them with (very) limited time to come up with solutions (most of the time the groups starts noisy with easy catch, becomes quiet to think about it and then becomes innovative!).
• Don’t use too much subjects in one event and, despite the previous point, use short sessions per subject with short pauses in between.

After ThinkTankThursday:

• Make sure there is a follow up for contributors that keep thinking about your problem and come up with the solution one or two days (or weeks / months) later.
• Invite contributors that really made the difference for another session if you want to!
• Share your ThinkTankThursday experience with us. Send your survey to info@ThinkTankThursday.com or post it yourself on the ThinkTankThursday LinkedIn group or ThinkTankThursday Ecademy club!

Online or offline:

Choice for online a/o offline depends on several points, like rewards, openness, accessibility, time window, etc. And also online it depends on the platform. For instance at the ThinkTankThursday-LinkedIn group it’s free for everybody, but there are also platforms where people can earn money by sharing their knowledge and creativity. Most of these online platforms consist of large crowds of specialists. Still this is an extremely cheap way to innovate!

Offline you should reward the participants for coming over, participating and sharing their knowledge and creativity. A minimum of €50 per contributor is fair.

PLEASE NOTE:

There are almost no strict rules. The rules above are more like guidelines that cover our intentions of making innovation easy, accessible, and fun! The only two requirements are (1) name it ThinkTankThursday, and (2) refer to the ThinkTankThursday initiative a/o website. Further, please respect the creative common licenses on all materials.