A tool that will help you ideate!
April 23, 2008
According to a recent Accenture Survey (April 3, 2008) - “Nearly two-thirds of 601 executives in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and Canada claimed that their organizations business strategy is either totally or largely dependent on innovation.”
Ideation, it’s puts the Ying in your Yang - because it leads to innovation… But how do we go about thinking about thinking? One way it to take advantage of what been done. But first lets talk about Homer.
I love that episode when Homer Simpson runs for the office of the sanitation department. His campaign slogan was “Can’t someone else do it”? Well, if its been done before - whether right or wrong, lets learn from it. Recently I have been making use of a tool that helps me think of terms…a tool that was created by a company that has a high dollar per share value and we all have come to know and love (and love to hate) - Google.
There are times when it’s hard to be exhaustive. I remember the times when my kids were young - at the end of a story they would ask…what else daddy? It’s not unlike situations that we are faced with today. When we are talking to the business or to peers alike, its always the case - what else? Today, I am going to recommend a tool that I sometimes use to help me build out a framework for analysis. Well, that might be an overstatement. It is like using a hammer to build a house - it’s just one tool of many.
The situation: you are meeting with your customer to frame a strategic discussion or to set a structure for analysis. For example, you are meeting with the business leadership to discuss a database consolidation effort - there is no precedent set and your beginning point is a real white board. It’s helpful to begin with an analysis framework - or a conceptual model that represents the enterprise and its nuances.
Often times, its good to look at a matrix - where there is relevance on where the rows and columns meet. On the left side of the matrix, you represent driving factors that feed in to a decision. But what is the list? Where do you start? Now, we need something across the top… Maybe the approach to scaling may make sense.
Yes, we can do most of it from our experience. But it’s always helpful to query some good data. Google has been doing data analysis around terms (and their relationship to terms) for years and are quite good at it. And they have opened up some of their findings. Of course, anything Google is very large. To manage this they exposed a database with a simple front end.
The concept is simple; type in some items in a list (or set as they call it) and click either ‘Large Set’ or ‘Small Set’. The application sends your input to their Google brain - runs some analytics on relationships and relevance of your terms to what others have ‘put together’ at some point during the not so distant past - in other words, Google is learning what terms kind of relate to other terms. What returns will absolutely astonish you, make you happy or leave you sad. Sometimes it returns nuggets of thought that you may have missed. Sometimes it returns things that don’t make sense - but you have to get good at using this tool!
TRY IT HERE: http://labs.google.com/sets
The magic here (or the power to harness) is using the results to think about things in a different way. Make use of the terms to abstract to higher levels or reach exhaustion of set terms. Once you figure out how to make use of Google’s term analysis, it will help you reach exhaustion - ok, that’s a punny stretched a bit…. what I mean to say is that it will help you think of those things on the tip of your tongue or terms hiding deeply within your brains - even presenting new things that you should consider.
Of course, everything is clickable and it initates a Google page - ready for you to continue your exploring!
For example, when I type in; love, peace and joy and click the Small Set. It returns the following:
- peace
- love
- joy
- kindness
- gentleness
- goodness
- faithfulness
- patience
- faith
- hope
- longsuffering
- happiness
- meekness
- jesus
Clicking the ‘Grow Set’ returns:
- peace
- love
- joy
- faith
- hope
- happiness
- kindness
- patience
- gentleness
- goodness
- life
- faithfulness
- god
- family
- humility
- prayer
- compassion
- friendship
- beauty
- jesus
- forgiveness
- truth
- generosity
- spirituality
- christianity
- trust
- justice
- courage
- friends
- charity
- wisdom
- gratitude
- honesty
- strength
- qotd
- bible
- grace
- blessings
- respect
- christian
- healing
- success
- freedom
- religion
- light
- mercy
- loyalty
- heaven
- longsuffering
Going the other way (technology), when I type in (Oracle, Microsoft, IBM) the small set returns:
- oracle
- microsoft
- ibm
- sap
- sun
- cisco
- hp
- novell
- intel
- bea
- sybase
- adobe
- citrix
Growing this returns:
- oracle
- microsoft
- ibm
- hp
- cisco
- intel
- sun
- novell
- 3com
- dell
- sap
- apple
- accenture
- symantec
- cognos
- adobe
- compaq
- sony
- toshiba
- amd
- acer
- fujitsu
- manugistics
- citrix
- agile
- lexmark
- marque
- sybase
- linksys
- webmethods
- epson
- apc
- bea
- deloitte
- netgear
- seagate
- ariba
- tibco
- linux
- ugs
- ptc
- canon
Going fruity and typing in; apple, banana, cantaloupe returns:
- apple
- banana
- cantaloupe
- pineapple
- apricot
- watermelon
- grapefruit
- orange
- grapes
- lemon
- cherry
- avocado
- lime
- mango
- blueberry
Growing the set returns:
- cantaloupe
- banana
- apple
- orange
- cherry
- lemon
- strawberry
- mango
- pineapple
- apricot
- pear
- grape
- watermelon
- blueberry
- papaya
- coconut
- kiwi
- chocolate
- lime
- blackberry
- grapefruit
- peach
- assorted
- pomegranate
- raspberry
- lychee
- tamarind
- vanilla
- cinnamon
- grapes
- sweet
- mint
- avocado
- plum
- blended
- cranberry
- tomato
- citrus
Want to know grocery stores - type in Kroger, Tesco, Bigg’s and Google Sets will return:
- tesco
- kroger
- wal mart
- safeway
- albertsons
- carrefour
- publix
- winn dixie
- sainsbury
- target
- asda
- walgreens
- meijer
- costco
- rite aid
- cvs
- food lion
- waitrose
- auchan
- kmart
- somerfield
- fred meyer
- harris teeter
- k mart
- home depot
- morrisons
- heb
- sainsbury’s
- hypernova
- ahold
- albertson’s
- sam’s club
- makro
- piggly wiggly
- ingles
- co op
- office depot
- globus
- kaufland
- metro
- giant
- eckerd
- sears
- walmart
- supervalu
- giant eagle
- king soopers
One word of caution - it is in Google’s Labs - their playground. Its fun to play there, but you may get sand in your pants!
Have Fun!
~ Scott Felten
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Scott,
As one tasked with a lot of ideation, I love this tool. It is great when trying to broaden your knowledge on a specific subject. Simply type in what you know, and see related items that you may or may not have associated. I tried it with our core service offerings and got some very interesting results. More reading for the new marketing guy… I use it sparingly as it tends to warp time and space causing me to “wake up” wondering where the last 45 minutes went. Still, Google Sets is an amazing tool. Looking back at the NFL draft, do you wonder if any teams might have used this tool as opposed to paying for scouts? (not mentioning any names). Great post.