You are sitting in on a meeting with the Acme Corp. new product development team

Question

You are sitting in on a meeting with the Acme Corp. new product development team. The team is comprised entirely of design engineers and is meeting in the engineering conference room. The team leader is the Chief Design Engineer, Michael Carroll, who invited you to sit in today. Michael addresses the team. “We’ve been tasked with designing a new mouse to sell with the next generation of personal computers. We have six months to have working prototypes ready to present to marketing and three months after that to have the new mouse in production. It’s very aggressive schedule – we have no time to waste. Let’s start by brainstorming ideas for the mouse. Please be as innovative as possible.” Michael stepped to the white board prepared to write all the ideas that emerged from the meeting. Ideas began to surface: “Why does a mouse have to have only 2 buttons and a scroller? Why not add an additional button for the thumb that can be programmed to serve as a function key?” “Why not make the mouse available in many colors rather than just the drab black, grey, and off-white?” “Why not send power to the mouse using RF rather than using a battery?” “Why do we need a mouse anyway? Why not implant a chip into user’s index fingers?” “Let’s make the mouse a glove. Just move your fingers to move the cursor.” As the ideas were offered, Michael wrote them on the white board. After about 30 minutes the flow of ideas had about stopped. There were a total of 28 ideas generated. Michael divided them loosely into categories: electrical; physical; functional. He asked the team to divide themselves into three groups along functional lines and each group to select a category to develop further. “Please pay particular attention to technical feasibility and manufacturing cost when you evaluate the ideas. Let’s plan to meet again in two weeks with each group giving a report on their ideas. We’ll try to narrow the ideas down and start tough prototyping the most promising ideas.” After the meeting, Michael asked you for comments about the process he is using to design the new mouse. What comments and suggestions would you make to Michael?

1)What is the role of the facilitator in this type of meeting?
2)Describe some of the key tools that a facilitator can use to gain group alignment
3)Why do you think the room was filled with only design engineers? What should be done about this situation?
4) Describe some of the tools that would allow this group to gain a better understanding of what the customer would want. How could this group use this information to build a better computer mouse? Why is this important?

Explanation / Answer

I would suggest that in such scenario, to bring creativity you need to give people time to think rather than just asking them on spot about it. Also it should be on research basis rather than suggestion by team members.

Answer 1)

Facilitator should explain the situation and the need of the hour to all the members. He should ensure that all the relevant people from all departments are present with their data and knows the agenda well in advance to make the meeting productive. Facilitator also should be questioning things and not simply writing it off on the board as it comes.

Answer 2)

There are tools like Participatory Action Research which provides the facilitator to control the situation along with bringing participation from all the members and bring the best productivity out of the time.

Also for today, Online conferencing is ahead and two weeks of time is too much of wasted if no solution is feasible at the point. So this way he can keep track of the progress for the suggestion made on timely manner and can take quick decisions.

Answer 3)

Room was filled with only design engineers because Micheal thought that to design a new generation mouse only relevant people were the designers and they only can give the best solutions to it. While actually he should have involved the research team, marketing team, analysis team also to grab their point of view also in designing the new mouse which would be used by customer s and not only designers. Also few market research consultant should also have been included to provide the study reports and feedback to him for the design and functioning of mouse.

Answer 4)

There are some tools for group like Mindmapping and Brainstorming that can be used for effective use of the meeting. These tools would allow the group members for the better understanding of each others idea and arrive at decision making faster rather than just two weeks after. It would also align the thoughts of the group members into one and best of the inputs so that the final out come will combination of all which is why they will have greater chances of building a better computer mouse.

It is important because it brings all the ideas on table and bring mutual agreement of the members along with ideas to make the decision making more quick and for effective working.

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