The ideation process went surprisingly very well for my group. On Tuesday only half of my group was in class and so we definitely struggled with coming up with a large number of ideas to sticky note on the board. However, Jack and I were able to bounce off of each other’s ideas on the board and came up with some unique and not too outlandish ideas that Chipotle could implement.
The most shocking part of this process was realizing how many ideas I was able to come up with. Even though it was just Jack and I the first day, we totaled about 25 ideas in the 20 minutes of brainstorming that we did. I did not believe that there could be that many ways to change an already sustainably focused company like Chipotle. And not only did we come up with a large number of ideas, some of them were FANTASTIC ideas that truly excite us. Even now as we’re planning for the upcoming week, we are all ecstatic by our concept.
One concern I do have is whether or not we are spending enough time as a group talking through our work as these brainstorming sessions are taking place. In previous classes, the majority of group work was completed through communication at every step of the process. In this class, it seems to be more of individual work that we pull together as a group. I think as of right now, doing more individual brainstorming is fantastic and has led to ideas that we wouldn’t have come up with had we succumbed to group thinking, but as we start to create the product, I worry that we might start moving too fast and forget to talk through our ideas as a group.