From the ubiquitous Post-it® Note to Post-it® Dry Erase Surface, Post-it® Brand offers a number of tools to bring out the very best collaborative experiences amongst your colleagues. However, we know that collaboration isn’t simply limited to tools — nor is it confined to a handful of techniques. To offer new perspectives on collaboration and its benefits, we partnered with IDEO.org — a non-profit design organization dedicated to alleviating poverty — to showcase how human-centered design and Post-it® Products can unlock incredible ideas.

Suggested Time: 30-45 Minutes

What you’ll need: Pens, paper, Post-it® Notes, Post-it® Big Pads or Post-it® Easel Pads

A Ways to Grow Framework is a quick and visual way to understand just how difficult your design solutions might be to implement. This exercise will help you identify whether your solutions are incremental, evolutionary, or revolutionary and whether your solutions extend, adapt, or create a totally new offering. You’ll also clarify whether your solutions are targeted at your current user or whether it expands to a new group. By seeing your solutions in relation to each other, you’ll quickly ascertain which ones your organization has the means, manpower, and capacity to undertake.

Draw a 2x2 matrix on a Post-it® Big Pad or Post-it® Easel Pad. The vertical axis represents the novelty of your offering and the horizontal axis represents its users. Totally new offerings land above the horizontal axis and existing ones land below. An idea aimed at new users falls to the right of the vertical axis and one that affects existing users falls to the left.

Now, write your solutions on Post-it® Notes and plot them on the map. Revolutionary new ideas that will attract new users will fall in the top right quadrant. Incremental ideas that offer small builds on existing services will hit below the horizontal axis.

A Ways to Grow Framework is a quick and visual way to understand just how difficult your design solutions might be to implement. This exercise will help you identify whether your solutions are incremental, evolutionary, or revolutionary and whether your solutions extend, adapt, or create a totally new offering. You’ll also clarify whether your solutions are targeted at your current user or whether it expands to a new group. By seeing your solutions in relation to each other, you’ll quickly ascertain which ones your organization has the means, manpower, and capacity to undertake.

Lots of organizations say that they’re interested in revolutionary thinking, but often, incremental change can have the greatest chance for big impact. Think hard about what your organization can realistically achieve and what will benefit your constituents most.

Born in 2011 out of the global design and innovation firm IDEO, IDEO.org is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to alleviating poverty through human-centered design. IDEO.org believes that by understanding and working alongside those in the greatest need, we can design solutions that create prosperity. Partnering with nonprofits, social enterprises, and foundations, IDEO.org practices human-centered design to solve some of the world’s most difficult problems. Visit IDEO.org and Design Kit to learn more about human-centered design.