145 aCtIVIty desIgn 145 Warm-Up: The Silly Cow Exercise To get your team’s creative juices fl owing, it can be helpful to start an ideation ses- sion with a warm-up such as the Silly Cow exercise. Here’s how it works: Instruct participants to sketch out three different business models using a cow. Ask them to fi rst defi ne some characteristics of a cow (produces milk, eats all day, makes a mooing sound, etc.). Tell them to use those characteristics to come up with an innovative business model based on a cow. Give them three minutes. Keep in mind that this exercise can backfi re, as it is indeed quite silly. But it has been tested with senior executives, accountants, risk managers, and entrepreneurs, and usually is a great success. The goal is to take people out of their day-to-day business routines and show them how readily they can generate ideas by disconnecting from orthodoxies and letting their creativity fl ow. desIgn 145 to fi rst defi ne some characteristics of a cow (produces milk, eats all day, makes a mooing sound, etc.). Tell them to use those characteristics to come up with an innovative business model based on a cow. Give them three minutes. Keep in mind that this exercise can backfi re, as it is indeed quite silly. But it has been tested with senior executives, accountants, risk managers, and entrepreneurs, and usually is a great success. The goal is to take people out of their day-to-day business routines and show them how readily they can generate ideas by disconnecting from orthodoxies and bmgen_final.indd 145 6/15/10 5:40 PM