This activity pays some playful homage to the Japanese art of creating inventions that are sort of useful, and yet not really useful at all.
It also delivers a fun opportunity to genuinely “war-game” your team’s innovative processes via exploring what behaviours are really needed to contribute to the innovative process.
We behaviourally profile individuals within teams and then allow them to compose some teams for optimal innovation (innovation being the full process from conception to developing plans, the production steps and finally the end product itself (as opposed to just creativity alone).
Almost useful, or as they are often described un-useless is the aim, and this requires quite a clever and innovative approach to solving a real world problem, but by meeting the criteria of Chindogu.
Chindogu in Japanese means “Curious Device” and to qualify as genuine Chindogu the results must not be for sale, be patented or made solely for cheap humour.
Furthermore amongst the tenets of Chindogu are considerations such as freedom of thought and action as well as inclusiveness.
Teams need to skilfully design and manufacture devices to solve actual problems and challenges, but in a way that creatively delivers in the manner of "un-useless".
Plenty of fun and a novel way to explore genuine approaches to team innovation.