Technological Think Tanks

Think Tanks for Innovation

A think tank is not a new idea and there are many think tanks that exist to find solutions to geopolitical problems and public policy problems, such as the Hoover Institute, but think tanks can be used for and are very appropriate for brainstorming about technological problems, solutions, and futures.  

Some rules for think tanks are the following.  It may be wise to have a diversity of participants to yield the most diverse ideas.  Different viewpoints, experiences, and values are encouraged.  This is clearly important in geopolitical think tanks, but even in technological think tanks, where mostly experts are utilized, a diversity of experience and perspectives is valuable.  Transparency of funding may be important to show that the think tank is independent and not tied to a specific group or interest (McGann, 2015).  This is especially true for geopolitical think tanks, but also for business think tanks that are not tied to a certain company and to technological think tanks that are industry specific but not company specific.  Having standard policies and procedures for think tank activities may be important to keep the output consistent.  Collaboration should be encouraged.  Often the best think tanks include a mix of people with industry experience and academicians.  This is especially true for technological think tanks where some of the best research may occur both in industry and at universities.  In modern think tanks there should be both personal contact and the utilization of digital technology for communication.  Finally think tanks should be somewhat lean, i.e., not big groups but smaller effective groups with qualified participants.  This is especially true of technological think tanks where the members may largely be experts related to the technology.

Different Think Tank Methods

One Roof.  The One Roof Method involves gathering a set of thinkers in a common place.  Through the process of interactive discussion a concept or problem may be expanded and moved toward a solution.  The one roof may be literal (i.e., a set of thinkers in a room) or electronic, as a set of thinkers interacting through a collaborative audio-video link.  Sitting in a circle may be an effective method, where those proposing and considering proposed ideas can directly look at each other and confront each other.  This think tank method may include a facilitator for the confrontational discussion.

Forced Connections.  Thinkers think about two disparate things and then look for links between them.  In identifying the links, many new words and concepts emerge.  This is the language of the concepts that link the two original concepts.  The thinkers than think through the problem they are addressing (the problem identified by the two original concepts) by using the new link concepts.  Some drawbacks may be, if everyone starts with the same two initial concepts, there may be a limit to out of the box thinking.  

Mind Mapping.  Mind mapping is a graphical technique to perform think tank work.  The thinkers take a main idea (a problem, or concept) and determine its subtopics which radiate as branches from the main topic.  The branches continue to branch out into more subtopics and form a topology like a tree (in the computer science sense of an inverted tree with the root at the top) or a graph (i.e., the computer science concept of a graph which is a set of nodes or vertices interconnected by a set of links or edges).  The sub-topics help ground the idea and connect it to specific possible practical ideas that help the innovation process.  Mind mapping is particularly good when confronted with a complex idea or difficult problem.  Breaking the problem or idea down into its components and then linking the relationships between those components can move on towards a solution.  A mind map could be produced as a UML (Unified Model Language) diagram.

References

McGann, T. (2015).  The 2015 Global Think Tank Innovations Summit Report.  Located at:  http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1015&context=ttcsp_summitreports

What is Mind Mapping at:  https://litemind.com/what-is-mind-mapping/