Developing Generation After Next Concepts

What is Generation After Next (GAN) innovation and why is it important?  Simply put, GAN is looking for ideas beyond the “next generation”, that is beyond the immediate future. How far into the future depends on the sector and the speed of change so, for example, in the technology industry this would be much closer to now than, say, car manufacturing. By developing GAN concepts companies can deliver transformational change, developing things that haven’t been considered yet, things that maybe aren’t even possible yet. This delivers many benefits:

• Ensures strategic advantage vs competitors

• Provides long-term vision to support organisational planning

• Enables organisations to be more adaptable to change as they have considered multiple future scenarios

• Helps organisations prioritise research and development funds in areas that could play a significant role in the future

Treehouse’s IMAGINATE approach is proven for generating GAN concepts. It has been tried and tested with clients across the defence industry.

The approach is made up of a series of workshops, both virtual and face-to-face, with work in between. Participants (we call them Imagineers) use carefully curated stimuli to create a future world scenario, identify challenges that this future world could bring about and then generate ideas and concepts to address the challenges.  

What does the approach look like?

During Imaginate, hand-picked Imagineers work in pairs we call “forced opposites” – where there is enough in common to have a useful conversation, and enough that’s different to stimulate creativity. The workshops are designed to build on one another:

• In the first workshops, Imagineers use stimuli to create a written narrative of a future world. 

• In the next workshop, the narratives are peer-reviewed to stimulate further creative thinking. Then the pairs identify potential challenges that the future worlds may pose which are articulated as “How to…?” questions.

• In the final workshop, Imagineers answer the “How to…?” questions by generating ideas to address the challenges. The ideas are then clustered and expanded to form concepts which are visualised by our team of Visioneers.

The concepts can then be reviewed by your in-house specialists and enter the feasibility and maturation process. 

One of the success factors of innovation is ensuring the right people with the right behaviours are involved. We guide you in selecting the right people to be. Alternatively, through our extensive network, we have access to a range of technical experts and highly creative people who we can recruit for the project to deliver transformational ideas for your business.

If you would like to explore further how developing GAN concepts could help transform your business get in touch below!