Sidney Parnes, Not IDEO
Humantific CoFounder GK VanPatter posts to his LinkedIn blog:“Hello again Humantific readers. In the spirit of proper crediting and on behalf of Dr. Sid Parnes [1922-2013] we are returning again to this slippery subject. It keeps popping up and up! An often seen crediting error that seems to keep repeating itself over and over again in the business community media, now in the government community media is in reference to where the now widely used invitation stem How Might We? came from.
Humantific readers will already know it came from Dr. Sid Parnes not IDEO.
Sid is no longer around to speak up for himself and IDEO never seems to step forward to correct the often appearing misdirected crediting. We have ourselves written extensively on this subject crediting Sid.
The most recent appearance of this misdirected crediting can be seen here in this article entitled “The Three Words That Make Brainstorming Sessions at Google, Facebook and IDEO More Productive” appearing on July 10, 2017 in the publication “Government Executive” written by Leah Fessler.
To be fair to Dr. Parnes we have repeatedly pointed out that How Might We? actually has its roots in the CPS (Creative Problem Solving) community, not the design community. Sid is internationally recognized as a pioneering figure in that community of practice. His contributions are many.
“How Might We?” “How Might I” and “In What Ways Might We?”were all first introduced publically some fifty years ago by Sid Parnes in his groundbreaking book Creative Behavior Guidebook published in 1967.”
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