I’ve been using a cool thinking tool for many years, which seems to capture peoples’ imagination. Here’s how it works.

Picture the scene. You’ve organised a focus group to figure out how people buy cars. Or perhaps you’ve put together a brainstorm to develop ideas for a new model. You’ve got a room and you’ve got the usual suspects – and as a result you get all the usual ideas.

Nothing wrong with this up to a point, especially if you’re looking for incremental innovation. But I’d suggest that both approaches are next to useless if you want to uncover some really deep insights or develop something entirely new.

For example, what if instead of running the focus group with ‘ordinary’ people you jumped into a car with a series of extraordinary people and went to visit a few auto dealers unannounced? This is something I did for a Japanese company a few years ago. The unusual suspects included an architect, a product designer, an anthropologist, a psychologist, an MBA student, an insurance salesman, a supermarket space planner and an assorted bag of iconoclasts and revolutionaries. Half were men; half were women and ages ranged from 21 to over 60. Crucially, all of the people were an expert in a field other than auto sales or marketing.

On another occasion I put together a similarly eclectic group to talk about the future of aesthetics for a paint company that was interested in trends that were driving paint colours and finishes — only this time the meeting of minds met for a dinner discussion inside an art gallery. Why an art gallery? – partly because it was full of paint and aesthetics, but largely because it was an inspiring and usual space which I believe directly influenced the quality of the debate. Of course, you have to pay attention to what the group is saying (or doing) – or, as Procter & Gamble’s VP for Design and Innovation Strategy puts it, you have to “listen with your eyes”.

OK, so it sounds fun, but what are the practical benefits of such melting pots?

First, the groups are incredibly diverse in terms of skills and experience. This means you get a high level of cross-fertilisation, which results in new perspectives and horizons. People are also highly articulate and enjoy meeting people from outside their own discipline, which again sparks the conversation.

Second, the groups are not run as formal meetings with agendas, discussion guides or set timeframes. Groups are usually run in the evening, often over dinner, and the result is a relaxed atmosphere out of which come casual conversation, insights and ideas. There is obviously an objective buried deep beneath the surface and there is moderation too, but this is kept to a minimum. The best groups I’ve organised haven’t needed moderation beyond an introduction and the discussion has continued into the early hours.

Third, because ‘innocent experts’ are outsiders, they have no knowledge of what is politically correct or expedient within the host company. As a result they tend to ask quite fundamental or naive questions. They have no knowledge of ‘the rules’ and are therefore quite fearless. A good example of this was an innocent expert (in this case an historian) who asked a water (utility) company what it was for and what business it was in. The client (the head of R&D, who on this occasion attended the group) was at first insulted by the apparent stupidity of both questions, but eventually realised that they were catalysts for thinking about where the company could go in the future.

The answer to ‘What business?” included discussions about the transport of liquids, networks, telemetry, environmental monitoring, infrastructure development, purity, waste, drinking water, and even the role of women as gatekeepers to family health (the company was at the time exclusively run by male engineers despite the fact that over half their customers were women). Each of these ideas was then used as a springboard to develop potential strategies, products and services.

Where do you find these great people? As they say, there is no short cut to anyplace worth going, so you’ll need to do some research. There are a handful of companies like Fresh Minds www.freshminds.co.uk that can help you source some bright young people, but there’s really no substitute for building a brain bank of innocent experts yourself.

Obviously you need to be careful that innocent experts are not so removed from the area under discussion that they can’t contribute. This was a point made by Malcolm Gladwell a few years ago, who argued that “innovation comes from the interactions of people at a comfortable distance from one another — neither too close or too far”. I partly agree.
One of the problems with internal brainstorms is that people are too close to each other and meetings lack diversity and freshness. There probably is a sweet spot somewhere between knowing too much and too little, but my experience is that the more removed you are from a problem the greater your clarity of thinking. Knowing just enough has its uses, especially for evolutionary or incremental innovation, but naivety is probably what you really want if you are pursuing a more radical agenda. That’s why most paradigm shifts don’t come from industry incumbents or people with the most experience.

So what are my top 5 tips for using your own innocent experts’?

1. Spend time finding the right people. You can’t conjure up a great network overnight
2. Invest money on an inspiring thinking space or event. It will pay dividends
3. Watch the group dynamic and never mix people that are close in terms of skill
4. Don’t be afraid to let the group run — if it’s working don’t stop it or interfere
5. Innocent experts are generally more turned on by whom they’ll meet, the subject matter and quality of the discussion, than by how much you’re paying them.