The Defining process activities that we did last week was something that I have never done before in a college class. In other classes, group projects are usually done outside of class and are not guided by the professor. A lot of times one or two people in a group end up doing the heavy lifting of the load. In this class, with Professor Luchs guidance, we are innovating in a truly group project setting.
I have never done group activity where we start with individual work first but are still doing it together. However, I do think that by spending that time together working alone my group was able to come up with ideas that we never would have thought of. I think that by posting the post-its on the board, we were able to see what the other members were thinking without feeling pressured or pigeon-holed into thinking the exact same way. All in all, our group was able to consolidate our questions down to three that we all seemed very interested and invested in exploring. It’s funny though, because without those first few minutes of individual work, I don’t think we would have come up with the questions we used.
The hardest part of the week for me was creating the target customer. As a non-business related major, I wasn’t really sure where to start with this activity. Logically I know that having a specific customer in mind will make it easier for the group to tailor our new good/service. However, I am a bit worried that we are closing doors to bigger and better innovations. Maybe this is a worry that every marketer or designer or innovator has?