I felt like the defining step of our process was a little less organized than I might have liked – an innovation for CVS is a pretty broad topic to tackle, so I felt like our group was feeling a little lost as we approached this second step. Personally, because I’m Type A and high maintenance, did not love how my group didn’t come fully prepared for this step, in particular having synthesized our pains & gains. However, part of being in a group is realizing that other members don’t work at the same speed or creative process as you do! Because that part wasn’t my assigned job, I figured that there was no use letting the inconvenience inhibit my commitment to this step of our process. Other than that, I think my group has been really great to work with. As we all come from different backgrounds and have different attention details, we all bring a diverse viewpoint to the table, which has made innovating and working together a lot of fun. In a macro sense, I think this is an important thing about group work in general — although it may take less time to agree with people you have the same backgrounds as, you produce more meaningful and thought out work with individuals who bring different perspectives to the table. I have really appreciated working with individuals different than myself, because I feel like I usually end up in groups I choose myself, with people who have similar backgrounds!
I really enjoyed our “How Might We” process of defining our problem. As the reading said, I really believed the “might” aspect was very helpful in “deferring judgement” to “allow a free space to brainstorm” – my group came up with some ridiculously improbable ideas, but I feel that that’s important in the process of finding the feasible and possible innovation. I think this process could be useful in the other marketing classes I’m taking too. For example, in my consumer behavior class, we have to come up with an “innovation” for a certain industry, and my group is having a really hard time coming up with an original idea for the grocery store industry, as the market is already heavily saturated. I think by using this design process or “how might we” ideas, my consumer behavior group could help each other develop our ideas, and come to a better conclusion as a group. This article is definitely something I’m going to forward on to them as we move on in the development of our idea.
Additionally, I enjoyed thinking about CVS’ problems in the context of our living principles. I remember when we first used the living principles to evaluate a “sustainable” product, each concept varied greatly on score. For example, our solar powered light scored very low on its environmental aspect, whereas the group with the shower head felt that their product didn’t contribute to culture as a whole. I think it’s interesting to apply this same concept to our companies – CVS is going to lack in certain areas of our living principles, while the group sitting next to us analyzing a shoe company, is going to have to make up completely different areas in the living principles. For that reason, everybody’s ideas on how to make their companies sustainable are going to vary accordingly — I’m really excited to move on in the design process and see how each group is able to come up with something radically different.