Hello all you cool cats and kittens! Hard to believe that Tiger King will be one year old come Saturday (March 20th). But that’s not the subject of this post. It’s “think tank methods.” In the Air Force, there is always a drive to innovate. Leadership has offered cash prizes, sometimes even five digits. It was based on the amount of money that the idea would save. Currently, there is a competition, started out called “Shark Tank” at the 694 ISS, Osan AB, and caught on. For legal reasons, the name was changed (Spark Tank), and it is now an Air Force wide program.
There are some will know think tanks in the US. The ones I hear the most about seem to always be the political ones with The Heritage Foundation and Council on Foreign Relations immediately coming to mind. In a 2014 report, the author speaks to globalization, growth of international; actors, and democratization as current trends with these types of think tanks (McGann, 2015).
But how do these think tanks work, and how can my office leverage a think tank style of meeting to develop better ideas for the team? Well, the first method that you come across is called the One Roof Method. It basically comes from the days before IT when people had to physically meet to be able to efficiently share ideas and knowledge. Now we have the new age (I feel like I should capitalize that) and the Think Tank Without Walls. This leverages cyber resources, such as Duo, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, etc. to virtually bring everyone together.
Names aside, the key points on how to keep a functioning think tank going have similarities, and can be located when searching for innovation ideas and methods. The first thing that I want to bring up here is the risk adverse culture that many organizations have. For a proper think tank to work, you can not be too risk adverse. On the contrary, participants need to welcome risk in their ideas. Like the Air Force is doing, reward good ideas. This can very from bonuses to a gold star, but acknowledge the contributions. Size of the tank need to be manageable (Monet, 2017). Too few and you won’t get ideas or be able to appropriately develop the ones you have. Two large and it becomes unwieldly. If you want a large number of people to work on creating an idea, split them into smaller groups, and then have a bigger tank after to present these refined ideas to the large team. A think tank tank (Copyright 2021, Scraper).
References
Monet, M. (2017, Sep 26). The Best Think Tank Methods. Retrieved from bizfluent: https://bizfluent.com/info-8018836-think-tank-methods.html
McGann, J. G. (2015). 2014 Global go to think tank index report. University of Pennsylvania. Retrieved from http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1008&context=think_tanks
There are some will know think tanks in the US. The ones I hear the most about seem to always be the political ones with The Heritage Foundation and Council on Foreign Relations immediately coming to mind. In a 2014 report, the author speaks to globalization, growth of international; actors, and democratization as current trends with these types of think tanks (McGann, 2015).
But how do these think tanks work, and how can my office leverage a think tank style of meeting to develop better ideas for the team? Well, the first method that you come across is called the One Roof Method. It basically comes from the days before IT when people had to physically meet to be able to efficiently share ideas and knowledge. Now we have the new age (I feel like I should capitalize that) and the Think Tank Without Walls. This leverages cyber resources, such as Duo, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, etc. to virtually bring everyone together.
Names aside, the key points on how to keep a functioning think tank going have similarities, and can be located when searching for innovation ideas and methods. The first thing that I want to bring up here is the risk adverse culture that many organizations have. For a proper think tank to work, you can not be too risk adverse. On the contrary, participants need to welcome risk in their ideas. Like the Air Force is doing, reward good ideas. This can very from bonuses to a gold star, but acknowledge the contributions. Size of the tank need to be manageable (Monet, 2017). Too few and you won’t get ideas or be able to appropriately develop the ones you have. Two large and it becomes unwieldly. If you want a large number of people to work on creating an idea, split them into smaller groups, and then have a bigger tank after to present these refined ideas to the large team. A think tank tank (Copyright 2021, Scraper).
References
Monet, M. (2017, Sep 26). The Best Think Tank Methods. Retrieved from bizfluent: https://bizfluent.com/info-8018836-think-tank-methods.html
McGann, J. G. (2015). 2014 Global go to think tank index report. University of Pennsylvania. Retrieved from http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1008&context=think_tanks
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