Presentation of an idea prospect in front of (many) peers to maximize creative dialogue by use of sketching, underlining ambiguities and showing physical stuff.
Why unplugged?
Pitching ideas to others should be more about participation, less about selling, more about sketching and less about 100 slides of power point. The best presentations at MIT Media Lab invite more than they convince. The stories that evoke the largest interest typically involve breaches from normality and areas of indeterminacy.
Unplugged in practice
Tell a story of your idea/prospect through three levels of expanding detail, in the following sequence, each level being conclusive in itself:
# Verbal (less than one minute): Tell about the history & the effort of developing the idea, qualify the main business implications and the core of your propositions.
# By sketch (less than 10 minutes): Make a sketch that describes the details of your idea/prospect.
# By electronic devices (less than 20 minutes): Elaborate upon all the details of the preceding sketch, use visualizations (if possible), explicate risk assessment and barriers to realization.
# Emphasize surprise, breaches from normality and unanswered questions to invoke curiosity and enlist your audience in taking the prospect further.
# Show any visual data/objects that directly underpin your prospect and/or that present areas of ambiguity and unanswered questions.
# Provide at least one alternative prospect along with your main conclusion.
Literature
Bruner, J. (1990) Acts of Meaning, Harvard University Press
Schrage, M. (2000) Serious Play, Harvard Business School Press