Box UK: BBC Innovation Labs Blog

Before I got to the labs, I always wondered why more of the participants didn’t blog the experience (or lifestream it, etc). Now that I’m here – bloody hell – I can see why. They work you hard. It’s currently the middle of the second day, and I’ve just wolfed down my lunch in record time so that I can have 20 minutes to write this before it all starts again. So excuse me if it’s a little brief; I had planned on writing up lots of the interesting things we’re being asked to do in great detail, and include some of the diagrams, but it’s going to have to be more of a high-level overview.

After an early morning and long drive, we all arrived at the hotel, ready for the day. We all gathered in a circle in a room (which is the main room for the week, though we do often break-out into separate groups), and Frank (one of the oragnisers/mentors) talked us through the creative process. The first-half of the week is about ‘yes, and’, where we expand on our idea. The second half then becomes ‘yes, but’, where we focus it back down to the important parts, ready for the final pitch to the commissioners on Friday (they arrive on Wednesday). We’ll be expected to be able to pitch our idea through four stories: Users, BBC, Technology and the Product/Service itself. Having said that, it was made very clear that the week isn’t really about winning a commission – that’s like “icing on the cake”. This is a chance to build-up a relationship with the BBC, which can then lead on to a future working relationship, Friday-commission-or-not.

The morning was mostly about getting to know each other in the room (and the projects), through about 4 different games. These included introducing the person next to you (after you’d been given a chance to chat to them), some kind of ‘yes, and’ drama-like story making, some throwing of BBC mints tins (I won’t go into it), and standing in a line, with our eyes closed. Yes, it sounds bizarre…and actually, was a bit.

We then moved onto the ideas themselves, and were introduced to the ‘N-A-B-C’ method (Need, Approach, Benefits, Competition) of analysing them.

Lunch was huge. HUGE.

We returned after lunch to find a dog in the room.

Anyway, we were then split into groups, where we had to explain our idea to three other people, who then had to pitch the idea for us, back to the main group. This was made a bit more interesting through Edward De Bono’s ’6 hat thinking’ technique, where two of the people who were pitching the idea would each wear a different ‘hat’ – a ‘black’ hat who was critical/negative, and a ‘yellow’ hat who was optimistic/positive. The third person would introduce the idea, with neutrality.

I got to be the black hat for Andy (from Wyndham-Leigh), which is a shame – even though I am normally a particularly critical person, and I like to be negative (!), I actually really like his Backyard Olympics idea, and hope it gets a commission (even though I do have a slight conflict of interest with Smynx, a social networking site we’re about to launch…).

We managed to finish around 6:25pm, but were then given homework to develop at least 2 personas, including their services, content, devices, places they hang out, their motivations, how they spend their time, and their attitude towards the BBC. So we managed to squeeze some of that in before and after dinner (at 8pm – again, HUGE), and then I flaked out about 10pm.

A lonnnnnng day, but really good – we uncovered (through the exercises) a couple of new flaws in our idea (which we should be able to tackle), and know a bit more about which of the ‘problems’ we’d already thought about are the ‘big’ ones, from the BBC’s perspective.