Teddy Bear Innovation

Many ideas need someone to bounce the idea off to get the idea improved. I’ll suggest a completely different method for improving an idea. Use a Teddy bear as your professional confidant. Wait a minute this idea isn’t as far off the path as it sounds. Read carefully…

The Teddy bear effect has been used to replace code review. Formal code review has multiple coders present to pick apart the new code. It takes lots of time and effort to uncover issues. Much better than having the consumers finding issues though! They ran the same review with the coder just reading the code to the Teddy bear. The number of problems found within the code was about the same as the formal code review. The act of reading the code aloud brings the problems up where they can be seen.

Now apply this to idea refinement. Put yourself in a quiet room and with a Teddy bear (or other stuffed animal!) up in front of you. Then explain everything about the idea to the Teddy bear. Remember there is no one but the Teddy bear listening. Feel free to bring out any and all details no matter how silly. There is no idea that your reviewer will reject. The big thing is to hold nothing back. You can run silly ideas by the Teddy Bear without fear of being shot down. Have fun with your confidant. Write down the all ideas including the silly ones and be prepared to explain them to a real world reviewer. When you can explain the idea to Teddy bear you can do it in the real world.

 Talk to the Teddy and start a new round of innovation. Shhh you might not want to be discovered doing this by those around you. They might not understand. Teddy Bear innovation will pull you into areas you wouldn’t normally go into.