POWER is a tool that we will use to power-up the most appealing solution that came from our ideation session.

POWER asks five basic questions:

• Positives: What’s good about the idea? Why might it succeed?
• Objections: What are the idea’s flaws? Why might it fail?
• What else?: What else might be in the idea that hasn’t been articulated yet?
• Enhancements: How might the positives be made even stronger?
• Remedies: How might the objections be overcome?

By answering theses questions, we will be able to come up with an improved solution.

This activity usually takes place during:

• The Forge the Solutions phase of a Productive Thinking project
• The Formulate Solutions phase of a Creative Problem Solving project
• The Ideate or Prototype phase of a Design Thinking project
• The Improve phase of a Six Sigma DMAIC project
• An Interactive Event, or meeting, as a way to give a quick feedback after a presentation of a project or a strategy

POWER has been invented and designed by Tim Hurson and is one of the Productive Thinking tools presented in his book Think Better.

The Productive Thinking model is a six-step problem-solving and opportunity-finding methodology that builds on 50 years of research by the Creative Education Foundation, 30 years of research by NASA, and five years of field testing. It combines the situation analyses and ideation strengths of CEF’s methodology with the success criteria and project mapping techniques of NASA’s iDEF methodology.

1. Formulate your initial concepts or solutions

Please formulate the initial concepts or solutions, the ones that you want to Power-Up in 1 to 3 sentences.

You can also attach any additional documents that might be needed for the session.

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Note: POWER has been invented and designed by Tim Hurson and is one of the Productive Thinking tools presented in his book Think Better.

2. Analyse with P-O-W

Analyze your concepts or solutions:

• Positives: What’s good about the idea? Why might it succeed?
• Objections: What are the idea’s flaws? Why might it fail?
• What else?: What else might be in the idea that hasn’t been articulated yet?

Click on each card and fill-in the answers.

3. Improve with E-R

Now it is time to improve your solutions or concepts:

• Enhancements: How might the positives be made even stronger?
• Remedies: How might the objections be overcome?

Again, click on a card to write-down the answers to the questions.

4. Assess the concepts

Click on each card to assess the different solutions or concepts around the 2 criteria.

• Is it Useful? Do you agree that the concept/solution/product actually solve the problem or fulfil the need?
• Can we do it? Do you agree that we have the resources, the knowledge and the skills to build the product/concept/solution?

5. Decide on the next steps

Look at the results of the votes and decide on the next steps.