When first starting at Digitas, I was part of a small group tasked with coming up with new ways to approach our work. After many sessions—we ended up with a simple set of high-level principals. Uncover, Define, Ideate. Each principal housed a subset of techniques we could apply to an initiative. The techniques could be varied based on how we would approach each problem. In essence it was a toolkit.
However, the group dissolved and we went on with our everyday work. But before we did, I mocked up this little set of cards and recently came across it again. There's something here that's worth re-exploring and having this as an artifact helps reinforce the thought more than scribbled notes, an excel document or a bulleted powerpoint slide ever could.
That's the power of an artifact. Even if you don't take the idea to full execution, it leaves you with something tangible which can inspire future ideas. Maybe it's time to come back to the approach we began outlining here. Even if we don't—it's still nice to have the artifact.
