Much U.S. business jargon comes our way, and one of the more recent examples is the "straw man" model or architecture. This is an acknowledged business tool for driving worker and user engagement. It can also help a business in communicating a strategy and sharing knowledge.
The straw man itself is a rough concept, model or ideal that everyone is encouraged to flesh out. Whatever the idea, use of Noddlepod can help improve it, or can help the creator see how other people might use the idea. Noddlepod assists by helping to build a community, to encourage engagement and improve people's learning and feedback skills, all within a safe and encouraging online area.
Most ideas are better with third-party input
Only in very rare Eureka-moments is a personal, business or group idea perfectly formed. In most real cases, they go through many iterations and revisions to get to a finished concept. Using a straw man can help accelerate the process and bring the best end result.
Common questions include "how can we use this," "what are the technical requirements to do this" "is anyone an expert in a specific area that can help," "what are the planning considerations," or "what should be our priority be" and so on. Running this debate in an online internal forum allows people to consider their responses and make the best possible contribution, or put up an alert that more information is required, allowing people time to gather data.
People can discuss the idea, the uses for the end product, what to add or remove from it, and how to build it. Noddlepod can help by bringing a social-media-type environment that allows free discussion while bringing the best ideas or most contentious points to the fore, to help focus the debate and remove the frustration that so many traditional product meetings can get bogged down in.
Blending knowledge sharing with a focus on valuable contributions can show up the potential and flaws in a product, with categories and tags helping add structure to a discussion. This can also help the team or company skip over the same old arguments when it comes to future products or debates.