Ideation Services Designed to Drive Your Vision and Beat Your Objectives
Applying the Creative Process
Ideation is about exploring possibilities and discovering new opportunities.
What is Ideation?
- Webster’s dictionary definition of ideation:
- “The faculty or capacity of the mind for forming ideas; the exercise of this capacity; the act of the mind by which objects of sense are apprehended and retained as objects of thought.”
- Our definition of ideation:
- “The systematic search for new products, new services, new features, new user interface designs, and new ways to best apply technologies.”
Why Seek New Ideas?
- The quality of ideas is directly correlated to the quantity of ideas at a company’s disposal.
- Ideation provides a mechanism for the discussion and building of all known possibilities.
- Ideation uncovers or “discovers” new high-potential products, services, markets, needs, designs, and features.
- Ideation provides a mechanism for defining and shaping the product vision to match market needs, regulatory requirements, and industry standards
- Ideation adds significant confidence the technology choices meet scalability and flexibility requirements in a product’s design.
Robert Fritz: “If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise.”
Types of Ideas
Ideation generates both big and small ideas
- Incremental
- Incremental ideas are improvements to existing products or services.
- Substantial
- Substantial ideas expand or create new added value to existing products or services.
- Disruptive
- Disruptive ideas lead to the creation of a new product or service.
Ideation Keys
Come with an open mind and be ready to share!
- Fluency – Lots of ideas
- Flexibility – Lots of different ideas
Types of Ideation
Different types for different outcomes and businesses
- Trend and Industry Analysis
- Creative Thinking
- Brainstorming
- Customer Interaction
- Open Innovation
- Innovation Teams
- Venture Teams
- Crowd Sourcing
- Co-Creation
- Collaborative Reconstruction
- Knowledge Management
- Business Design
- Triz
- Kaizen
Ideation VS Brainstorming
- Ideation
- Ideation is about exploring possibilities, generating new concepts and discovering new opportunities.
- You’re seeking divergent thinking; that is, to look for as many ideas as possible without ruling anything out.
- Targeted ideation is designed to transcend your product team’s current ideas to find innovative products, features, and services that will drive your vision and beat your objectives.
- Traditional Brainstorming
- People often use it as a forum to sell old ideas that have been shot down before.
- Ideas generated are often the same ones that have been floating around in your team’s heads.
- New ideas generated are usually slight variations of current products or services and not innovative
Getting Started – The Rules
Nothing is impossible and time and money are not a limitation – give me your ideas!
- The Rules
- No bad ideas, no criticism
- Focus on pain points and opportunities
- The reward is for quantity, not quality!
- Don’t spend a lot of time on any one idea
- Draw! This is not an essay test!
- Use the whole space
- No multitasking
- Fixed time limit
“Erroneous assumptions can be disastrous.” –Peter Drucker
Ideation Questions
Staying focused on pain points and opportunities
- Is it fun or inspiring?
- Are its revenues reoccurring?
- Is it protectable/licensable?
- Does it fall within our mandate?
- Is it the target market sizeable?
- Does it fit within our budget?
- Is it a rare idea?
- Is it a non-substitutable idea?
- Is it a “destiny” idea?
Next Steps
Your action is required!
QAT Global’s ideation services are designed to surpass your product team’s current ideas to find innovative products, features, and services that will drive your vision and beat your objectives.
Explore the possibilities and discover new opportunities.
Do you need to find the next great idea for your product, service, or business? You may have relied on classic brainstorming in the past to generate these ideas, but there are more methods to generate ideas..
Learn how to get started with ideation in our new innovation guide, “Applying the Creative Process,” which will walk you through what you have to gain from ideation, the rules of effective ideation sessions, and the questions to ask about each idea generated to determine usefulness.
In this 19-page guide, you will learn:
- Why it’s important to constantly seek out new ideas.
- Types of ideas.
- Types of ideation.
- How to get started with ideation.
