desIgn 135 IdeatIon 135 M a r c h , 2 0 0 7 Elmar Mock is listening carefully as Peter elaborates excitedly on an idea amid a sea of Post-it™ notes smothering the walls . . . . . . Peter works for a pharmaceutical group that has hired Elmar’s innovation consultancy, Creaholic, to help with a breakthrough product. The two men are part of a six-person innovation team holding a three-day offsite meeting. The group is deliberately heterogeneous, a pastiche of differ- ent experience levels and backgrounds. Though all members are accomplished specialists, they joined the group not as technicians, but as consumers unsatisfi ed with the current state of affairs. Creaholic instructed them to leave their expertise at the door and carry it with them only as a “backpack” of distant memories. For three days the six form a consumer microcosm and unleash their imaginations to dream up potential breakthrough solutions to a problem, unbridled by technical or fi nancial constraints. Ideas collide and new thinking emerges, and only after generating a multitude of potential solutions are they asked to recall their expertise and pin down the three most promising candidates. Elmar Mock boasts a long track record of breakthrough inno- vation. He is one of two inventors of the legendary Swatch watch. Since then, he and his team at Creaholic have helped companies such as BMW, Nestlé, Mikron, and Givaudan innovate success- fully. Elmar knows how diffi cult it is for established companies to innovate. Such fi rms require predictability, job descriptions, and fi nancial projections. Yet real innovations emerge from something better described as systematic chaos. Creaholic has found a way to master that chaos. Elmar and his team are obsessed by innovation. bmgen_final.indd 135 6/15/10 5:40 PM