Alan Dix - research and innovation techniques

Silly Ideas

Away Day - Session 9 - 11am Wednesday 29th November 2000
Alan Dix

Note this session would have been entitled:

Advanced analytic pseudo-stochastic methods for research, innovation and creativity

but that didn't fit on the program, so for the sake of brevity just 'silly ideas'

• How to get good ideas by having bad ideas.
• A group challenge exercise to promote critical appraisal,
• innovation and creativity in your research.
• Please approach this session with due seriousness.

For all your long or short research career you have probably been trying to think of good ideas, now is your chance to think of a really BAD IDEA.

• what do I mean by a bad idea?
  
  
• thinking about bad ideas
  
  
• the groups
  
  
• their silly ideas and their 'solutions'

This session is based on part of my notes on research methods and innovation, which also includes ways to analyse literature, find critical areas, generate ideas, etc. (This contains little of what you would expect to find in a 'research methods' course, but various things you may not.)

Thanks also to Steve Alexander for giving me a reference to Chindogu, which bears similarities but with some differences:

Chindogu:

an idea that's meant to be a good idea but turns out not to be

Alan's bad ideas:

an idea that's meant to be bad but turns out not to be