Innovations can happen in any industry and a variety of different ways. We are going to take a deeper dive into part of the FIRE framework known as ideation. We will focus on combining individual ideation and team ideation. On this week's show, we will discuss Walt Disney's “Plus it” approach and how it changed the customer entertainment experience.

Disney's “Plus It”

Walt Disney used a concept known as “plus it” to improve his company's ideation. He would tell his Imagineers (people who design the Disney experience) to “plus it” as a way to motivate them to take their work to another level. He challenged them to see what was possible and then encouraged them to take it a few steps further.

“Plus it” is a technique to iterate on ideas without using any harsh criticism. It's about finding what is good about an idea and tweaking it to make it even better. The question is, how do you do it?

The first step you need to do is to conduct brainstorming activities and set up a quota of ideas to iterate. You need to come at the problem from different angles. Good ideas will get people excited so keep an eye out for reactions. Remember, evaluation happens after, not during this process. After brainstorming, grab some sticky notes and crank out unique ideas. Cranking ideas is when individual ideation comes in to play. Do this for about twenty minutes and come up with a minimum of twenty ideas.

Team Ideation

The next step is to post and group ideas. Each team member posts and shares their ideas to the rest of the group. Done through a short and quick process, it involves posting a sticky note on a board. During this time, one idea may trigger another's idea. If this happens, write down the new idea and post it. If two people have similar ideas, post those ideas next to each other.

The next step is to do team ideation or “plus it”. One at a time, everyone chooses somebody else's idea that they like. Then, they ideate and build upon that idea and have others jump in.

Throughout my work, I have found that around 30% more and better ideas come from this combination of team and individual ideation. I've also found that there is an elevated collective ownership aspect to this. People feel like more of a team and are more passionate and energized through this combination.

Examples

Walt Disney focused on making ideas better for many years and made it fundamental to Disney's culture. Many other organizations have embraced the “plus it” and have applied it to their organizations. Walt Disney made breakthroughs using his “plus it” method in many different ways.

Walt applied plussing it early on at Disney with the idea of Disneyland. He came up with the idea for a Christ