You have now identified whom you will co-create with, and have a better understanding of their background, so it is time to start the co-creation process itself.

Tips & tricks

For a successful ideation process based upon a co-creation approach, here are some tips which can be helpful:

• Try out the “together alone” ideation process, in which each of you works on your own concepts and ideas in silence, but in the same space, with regular intervals where ideas are shared and progressed.
• Keep all concepts and ideas visual – so that you and your team can pass them by and reconsider their purpose, usefulness, viability, etc.
• Change your scenery – It may seem a minor detail, but if you want to think out-of-the-box during your ideation session, it may be advisable to change your usual place, i.e. change the setting, as a new environment can introduce new stimuli and be beneficial for the generation of ideas.
• Create a safe space for ideas generation – try not to be judgemental about your own ideas, or other’s.

There is a wide range of creativity and ideation techniques and tools that can be used for ideating a product or service based upon plastic revaluation. Some of them are more appropriate for a co-creation approach and in this section we focus on these, nonetheless the list is not exhaustive and feel free to consider other options if you feel more comfortable with them.

• Brainstorming: It is all about leveraging the synergy of the group to reach new ideas by building on the idea of others. Ideas are blended to create one good idea
• Brainwriting: Brainwriting is similar to brainstorming, however better for situations which require more solutions in less time. In this technique participants write down their ideas on paper and, after a few minutes, they pass on their own piece of paper to another participant who’ll then elaborate on the first person’s ideas and so forth. Another few minutes later, the individual participants will again pass their papers on to someone else and so the process continues. After about 15 minutes, you will collect the papers and post them for instant discussion.
• Lateral thinking: This technique works well with the creativity “on demand” related to the plastic revaluation process where we are defining and solving problems and finding new ways to do things. It is also referred to as “thinking out of the box”, and constitutes a deliberate, systematic way of innovative thinking in a repeatable manner. It involves discarding the obvious, leaving behind traditional modes of thought, and throwing away preconceptions.
• Mindmapping: A mind map is a diagram which contains words, concepts or ítems arranged around a central concept. It visually structures ideas to aid in analysis, and turn long lists of information into a more visual, organised and colourful representation. This visual thinking tool helps you to better analyse, understand, synthesize, recall and generate new ideas and helps to structure the information.
• Crazy 8: It’s a fast sketching exercise that challenges people to sketch 8 ideas in 8 minutes (not 8 variations of one idea or 8 steps of one idea, but 8 distinct ideas). The goal is to push beyond your first idea, which is frequently not the most innovative, and generate a wide variety of solutions to your challenge.