9:45 A.M.
Tactic: The Mind Dumpster II
One or two songs past Gilligan and the Skipper, all the cards are turned in, and it's time for the second mind dump of the exercise, this time in small groups.
Hall and others have found that small rather than large groups tend to generate more ideas. Four or five people per group seems about right. "Any more than seven, and they're not as effective," say Arthur VanGundy, a creativity consultant and a professor of communication at the University of Oklahoma. Hall also suspects that the physical proximity of groups may play a role. Rather than isolating them in separate rooms, he generally prefers them nearly on top of one another, within earshot. Sometimes phrases or ideas will blow like seeds from one group to another.
Sitting catch-as-catch-can on couches, on the arms of chairs, and on the floor, the members of each group huddle around a formatted sheet of paper on a double-sized clipboard. Like everything at RSI, from the Eureka! Mansion itself to Hall's names for many of his idea-sparking exercises, these so-called Flapdoodle sheets are trademarked.
"You have only three or four songs," instructs Hall, once again employing the jukebox as a clock. The focus remains unfettered--it can encompass any stretch on tea or Celestial's brand equity. One group's scribe is Trained Brain David Wecker, a resident loose cannon and the coauthor, with Hall, of Jump Start Your Brain, the book that spells out the Eureka method, and the newly published The Maverick Mindset. (See Resources, below.) Wecker's got a stack of purple Mind Dumpster cards to goose the group should the outpouring of ideas be less than geyserlike. But that proves unnecessary. He's soon scribbling away with his marker, adding ideas helter-skelter on the page like so many mud balls thrown against a wall.
"Workout tea."
"Tea that keeps itself hot."
"Hotsy-totsy."
"Hotsy-potsy."
"A line of greeting cards."
"Bath products."
"Spa pampering."
"How about tea bags that fit over showerheads?"
"Teas that taste like foods you crave."
Imagine warming up on a doubles tennis court, batting balls back and forth with ever-increasing vigor. Or spin. At the Eureka! Mansion, you can hear the ball crossing over the net.
"Fiber tea."
"TNT."
"There's your super tea."
10:05 A.M.
Tactic: 'Bulging'
When the music stops, each group shares the ideas on its Flapdoodle sheet. A Trained Brain rewrites them on the facsimile-producing Panasonic whiteboard, also recording any so-called bulges. A bulge might be a related idea from another group that's worth mentioning now or, just as likely, any new notions sparked by a just-posted idea.
"We want to sell a tea bag with Colorado springwater," reports Hannah Buchanan. "And how about a portable steam mister, called Self Es-Steam. Herbal tea bags for a vaporizer..."
Group by group, the raw ideas pour out--several dozen of them--from just this first exercise, some with early swipes at product names: kids' drinks (Tea 4 Tots, Lip Ticklers), herbs for cooking, a college survival kit, breath-freshener tea, fortune-cookie-like messages on tea bags. ("What if they could be made to appear by adding hot water?" somebody says--a bulge.) Claps and cheers follow each presentation.
"The applause is critical," says Hall, identifying it as one of several reasons for the group reports. "It makes them feel like they've won, and in today's world people don't feel like they've won enough." The group reports also allow for the bulges. Last, the additional volume of ideas shared during the group reports helps "stretch people's minds to help them think of other things going into the next exercise."
When one group's summary lists "Ginseng Magic" and "Ginseng Power" as possible ideas, CEO Siegel interrupts, explaining his desire to take a run at the fast-increasing market for ginseng, a traditional wonder herb harvested as a funny-looking root and long believed to have both energizing and calming powers.
"We have a product called Ginseng Plus, with a Chinese bridge on it, which doesn't mean anything to anybody," he says, rustling up the artwork for the proposed blister-pack display for the product, which is sold in capsules. "We're playing with the concept of Dr. Woo's Ginseng Magic."
For a company its size, Celestial Seasonings does a remarkable amount of ongoing in-house new-product development and daily consumer testing, by tapping the annual stream of more than 60,000 visitors who take its factory and office tour, eat in the Celestial Cafe, and browse in the company's gift shop. So why hire Hall? "Because he and his Trained Brains don't think like we do," explains Siegel. "And it really helps to spend a couple of days out of the office, just thinking."
10:37 A.M.
Tactic: 'Smash association'
The next exercise is called 666. "This is where you smash-associate things together," says Hall, as he remixes the groups and gives each a set of three colored dice and sheets of paper with three six-item lists under the headings red die, white die, and blue die. The items on the lists are categories designed to get people thinking. The gathering closest to the front door rolls a white six ("New Preparation Process" on the 666 sheets), a blue three ("Picnic/Beach"), and a red six ("Spirited"), and tosses those stimuli into the group's mental blenders.
"Smash-associating is a structured way to do lateral thinking, which stretches the mind. It's like a balloon expanded: it never goes back to the same shape. Like a football coach calling plays, I'm setting up for creative exercises to come later. First I'll stretch their thinking from a product standpoint, focusing on occasion, target audience. Then I might hit them with the picture boards, where I'm focusing on getting them to deal with emotions and phrases and language. Now I'm getting the marketing side. It's setting up both the running game and the passing game," says Hall, defining the ground attack (the running game) as the grind-it-out product stuff and the passing game as the big-bang marketing stuff. He's found it's often best to alternate product exercises with marketing exercises. "If you do too many product exercises in a row, people will get an irrational mind-set when they're designing products. If I do too much emotional stuff, I'll have a hard time getting them to deal with reality."
