Reflection: choosing the mind-mapping tool to derive innovative ideas    Challenge    In 2008, I did an internship at an international company from the oil & gas industry.  This company has a large chain of filling stations across central and south Eastern  Europe. My internship was in the international marketing department, working under  the senior brand strategy and foresight manager. This means I was supporting my  boss in looking for trends and innovations that could easily and cost-effectively be  implemented at filling stations internationally.     The way I describe it here was exactly the brief I got on my first day. So I saw it as a  challenge because I didn't know where to start, didn't have any criteria to narrow my  search and also had no knowledge about the mind-set of the top-management (if  they were really innovation-ready). However, I choose to see it also as an opportunity  to think outside the box and to imagine that anything was possible. My direct  manager supported me with this throughout my whole internship, however as it often  happens in corporations, she was not as supported by the top-management, which  only recently had created the foresight department themselves demanding  innovations in their retail sector.    I started to look where I knew for innovations, according to my experience: the news,  technology websites, then decided to dive into the renewable energy discussion and  looked at everything from websites of companies like Shell and BP to specialized  blogs. As you can imagine, I started to deal with an information overload and decided  I need some structure in my search for innovative ideas.    Selection of tool    At first, I gathered as much information as I could and made a list of sources for the  secondary data that I used. Under each source, I additionally added links with  interesting articles – some sources were dealing with one topic only, others with  many topics of interest. I started building clusters of themes resulting from the  sources and from the topics the sources were dealing with. Many insights resulted  from this process which now, after this course, I recognized as the mind-mapping  process/tool. As we learned, the mind-mapping tool helps you to look for themes and  patterns in your data and hence helps you create more structure. With the help of this  tool I could derive insights from my data and more easily present the relevant trends  to my boss.    Application of tool    I am going to go in more detail as to how I applied the tool. Firstly, I sorted the  resources into: news websites, blogs, trend research reports, big data companies  that create reports (e.g. Euromonitor, Accenture, PlanetRetail) etc., meaning I sorted  the sources according to their type. Then I sorted all my data: sources, articles and  studies, according to themes like technology (/tech trends), energy, mobility, retail etc.  In order to help me narrow down the data I, firstly, turned again to (more) secondary  data; more specific I consulted trend reports from trend research agencies to see  what macro and micro trends were relevant for 2017/2018. Keeping in mind this was  an idea finding process, I, however, kept all ideas inside this framework.

In my opinion, this was the effective part of how I used the tool, it helped me derive  insights and create structure. My boss and me crosschecked and co-created this  insights/challenges we would like to address with the top-management. As an  example we derived that in the energy sector the main trend is the focus on electro- mobility and that in the retail industry it would be beneficial to consider the  convenience, since that was what customers were longing for. However, I was  working only with my boss on this, and hence, what I would call the ineffective  application of the tool, was the fact that only her and me curated these ideas. In light  of this course, I know now that it would be a much better approach to bring more, if  not all, relevant stakeholders into this process. There was a lot of room for  improvement in this part of the process.    Insights    The best thing that came out from applying the mind-mapping tool to my challenge of  finding innovative ideas was that I suddenly knew what to do with all the data and  didn't feel overwhelmed by it anymore but rather thankful that I have so much to  choose from and that all possibilities of change were open to me.    I was not aware during my internship that I was using the mind-mapping tool/design  thinking. I only new I was part of the innovation research team and had lots of  possibilities to create ideas. I think that not many companies, except maybe really big  ones, have an innovation/trend research department and I think design thinking  theory could make them accept it more easily, as it explains innovation with structure  rather than with an "you're either creative and you can do it or you can leave it"  approach. I know, because I am not a creative person myself, but this process lets  even a not-so-creative person thrive in an innovation department.    Approach    There are, of course, a couple of things that I would do differently if I would deal with  this challenge again. First of all, as above mentioned, I created themes and insights  rather well but didn't think of the benefits of inviting many stakeholders in the idea  curating process – I would definitely try and do so. It would be an alternative to my  past approach that I'm sure would prove more efficient when pinning down good  ideas or choosing relevant ones.    Secondly, what I would like if I was to repeat such a challenge again is to have more  theoretical knowledge in innovation research/design thinking. This course is a great  base for a theoretical framework and I think every innovation but also any classic  marketing department could benefit from it. I am sure this course is going to help me  with new innovative challenges and also in pitching new ideas to my managers – I  look forward to it.

