Innovators can’t come up with a solution unless they first know the problem, and they can’t really know the problem unless they can empathize with the people who have it. Empathy as an innovator’s tool proved a central theme on Tuesday during the Chicago Ideas Week session “Leo Burnett/Farmhouse: Re-imagine, Re-design and Re-market an Everyday Object.”
As it turned out, the title had little to do with the session itself. No matter. The folks at Farmhouse, the innovation center of advertising agency Leo Burnett, offered something perhaps trickier to identify than everyday objects: everyday problems. It was up to the audience to find the solutions.
After about 70 participants sat down among seven tables, four executives from Farmhouse briefly detailed their organization’s focus — namely, the people part of innovation.
“We start with people,” said Guybrush Taylor, director of possibilities. Farmhouse “aligns a brand’s purpose, the reason it exists, with a need that people have out in the world. We start by understanding people problems, which tell us how the product will be better.”
To demonstrate that focus in action, the Farmhouse crew presented the room with seven problems, one for each table. A couple of Farmhouse employees joined each group, acting as discussion guides. To come up with a solution, the teams had just one hour — plus an array of items that made each table look like a mecca for second-graders: Play-Doh, Scotch tape, Post-it notes, glue sticks, popsicle sticks, ribbons, markers and pipe cleaners.
The challenges ranged from, “How can airlines make traveling with toddlers a more pleasant experience for everyone — parents and non-parents alike?” to “Is there a product or service that can help me as a solo traveler to take advantage of group-targeted experiences?” to “What solution might there be for the massive reduction of city parking spaces in winter months?”
After a flurry of debate (during which the grammar-school aids sat conspicuously unused on the tabletops), the teams presented their solutions. The answer to the traveling-with-tots problem seemed to strike many in the room as an idea whose time had come: Family Class, a designated family seating area on flights, where families receive kid-friendly activities and snacks. Family Class could also involve a Sky Nanny — an airline employee who helps passengers with kids.
While the team suggested that families would pay just a little more for this service, Dan Chodrow, Farmhouse’s chief storyteller, observed, “The people without kids might also pay a little extra to have all those families together.”
After each presentation, Farmhouse employees offered supportive, encouraging notes. There seemed to be no bad ideas at this energetic brainstorming session, though some enjoyed a more positive reaction than others.
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Aside from Family Class, the more enthusiastically received ideas included Wanda, one team’s proposed app. Wanda would help solo travelers connect via their social networks to other vacationers in the same areas. These loosely formed groups then would get the benefits, like discounted rates, that come from traveling in numbers.
“You’re leveraging existing data and existing social networks,” Sarah Tynan, Farmhouse’s business director, approvingly noted, “which is something that people miss when they’re launching these new travel sites, and it’s why they’re failing.”
The most Chicago-centric of the concepts came from a team that had to solve the problem of finding parking spots in the winter. The solution: Spot On, an app (several of the ideas involved apps) that would connect people needing spots to people who have spots that go unused—whether private parking spaces or business and church parking lots.
“I think it helped,” participant Whitney Kelly, manager of social strategy and activation at Hyatt, said of the session. “It’s always good to exercise your brain in different ways.”
The no-bad-ideas vibe extended to the very end of the two-and-a-half-hour event, when entrepreneur Craig Dubitsky, founder and CEO of Hello Products and a founding board member of Method, declared, “These ideas were incredible and super-viable. Sometimes you’re not wrong, you’re just early. All of these things are going to happen.”