close
Choose your region
west The Hyper Island Toolbox

Mash-Up Innovation

schedule
Time Frame

60-120 min

groups
Group size

40+

emoji_people
Facilitation lvl

medium

window
Comfort zone

medium

Mash-ups is a collaborative idea generation method in which participants come up with innovative concepts by combining different elements together. In a first step, participants brainstorm around different areas, such as technologies, human needs, and existing services. In a second step, they rapidly combine elements from those areas to create new, fun and innovative concepts. Mash-ups demonstrates how fast and easy it can be to come up with innovative ideas.

Materials

Sticky Notes (physical or virtual sticky notees)
Markers
A4 Paper
Flipchart Paper
Online: Use a Digital Whiteboard and breakout rooms

Step 1

First brainstorm:

Ask the whole group to brainstorm around the areas of:
- TECHNOLOGIES (e.g. telephone, 3D printing, GPS),
- HUMAN NEEDS (e.g. love, transportation, waking up in the morning), and
- EXISTING SERVICES (e.g. Google Translate, Spotify, Candy Crush).

Spend 3 minutes brainstorming around each area. Have participants write one idea per sticky note (physical or virtual sticky note).

Make the brainstorming active and fast-paced.

Have participants call out each idea as they place it up on the wall. By the end of the brainstorming, there should be three large clusters of sticky notes on the wall (or virtual board), one for each area.

The more the better!

Facilitator notes:

The three areas above can be adapted for different contexts. For example SOURCES OF DATA (e.g. health records, subway timetables, census data) or GLOBAL CHALLENGES (e.g. climate change, income inequality, pandemic) can be added to give another dimension to the exercise.

Step 2

Mashups: Organize participants into small groups of 3 - 5. Explain that they will have 12 minutes to come up with as many mash-up concepts as they can.

A mash-up concept consists of 2 or more elements from the wall combined together to create a new concept.

For each mash-up that a team creates, they must give the concept a catchy name and capture it on an A4 paper. The A4 should include the elements that combine to make a new concept (e.g. iPads + Doing Laundry + Paypal) and the name of the concept (eg. Launderfy).

Online instructions: Create breakout rooms for the groups to work in and capture the names on paper or virtually. Every few minutes broadcast a message to breakout rooms with the time left to increase the feeling of fast-paced.

Facilitator notes:

Face-to-Face facilitator note: During these 12 minutes, put on upbeat music and encourage the participants to be on their feet, active, and working quickly. Every few minutes, the time left to increase the feeling of fast-pace.

Step 3

Presentations: Once the time has elapsed, have each small group present their mash-up concepts back to the rest of the group. Put up all the ideas on the wall to visually display the volume of concepts generated.

Online instruction: Place all of the ideas in one area to display all the concepts generated.

Facilitator notes:

Here, emphasize the volume of ideas created in the short amount of time.

Step 4

(Optional) Develop: A final optional step is to have participants choose their favorite and/or most feasible mash-up concept and develop it further for 30 minutes, exploring the details of the concept, its functionality and a business model. Each team uses one flipchart paper to visualize the concept and then present it back to the rest of the group.

Step 5

Debrief the experience, by inviting participants to reflect on questions such as:

- How did it feel to work creatively in this way?
- What was easy about it? What was challenging?
- How did you feel? How did you behave, react, respond?
- What insights or learnings do you have about yourself?
- What insights or learnings do you have about idea development?
- How can you apply your learnings going forward?

Card

Staff Picks