Most brainstorms fall far short of breakthroughs. Painstorming provides the focus and insight to leapfrog to the next big thing.
Brainstorming is today’s no-brainer. Most leaders and organizations preach it and teach it. It’s about generating lots of ideas, deferring judgment and then – for savvy innovators – using some type of meaningful criteria to winnow down the laundry list.
Here’s the problem: We often don’t realize we’ve got great ideas for a misguided focus until it’s too late. A Fortune 500 client of mine once said, “We’re great at executing on bad ideas.” Most of us are absolutely awesome at coming up with creative solutions to the wrong problem. But as the saying goes, “Garbage in, garbage out.”
What’s the solution? Painstorming.
Painstorming is the process of uncovering pain points to drive breakthrough innovation.
Instead of jumping to solutions, Painstorming uncovers the fundamental drivers of new opportunities. No more innovating around the fringes of the problem.
Here are the steps:
P – Persona: What is the customer “persona” you’re innovating for? Who are they? What are their characteristics, issues, and challenges?
A – Activities: What activities do they do and why? Where do they spend their time?
I – Insights: What are the things they struggle with most? What irritates them or brings the most joy?
N – Needs: What are their priority needs? What are the needs that, if addressed through new products or services, would make them really happy?
Visit Praxie.com for a simple PAINstoming template you can download, as well as many other useful tools.
With this, you’re ready to heal your customers’ pain. Jump back into brainstorming and generate options for solving individual or multiple pain points through new products, services, processes, and business models.
Painstorming solves one of the biggest pain points in the innovation process itself.
About the Author
Soren Kaplan is a bestselling and award-winning author, a Columnist for Inc. Magazine, a globally recognized keynote speaker, the Founder of Praxie.com, and an Affiliate at the Center for Effective Organizations at USC’s Marshall School of Business. Business Insider and the Thinkers50 have named him one of the world’s top management thought leaders and consultants.
