In an ideal world, we could push a button to get excellent ideas any time we need them, and then implement them with confidence. Unfortunately, innovative ideas don’t tend to behave like that. They have a reputation for being elusive, more like events that happen to us, rather than thoughts we formulate.
However, in the world of professional innovation, idea generation can’t be relegated to chance flashes of inspiration. You need a system for reliably generating ideas you can validate, prioritize, and implement.
That’s what this guide is all about.
Idea generation: coming up with innovative options
Idea generation methods: four modes of collecting input
Popular idea generation techniques
Idea generation is just the beginning
Idea generation: coming up with innovative options
Idea generation—also known as ideation—refers to the processes organizations use to produce and develop new, innovative options.
People usually associate ideas with “light bulb moments” in which inspiration strikes suddenly and unexpectedly. While this is a common ideation experience, an organization can’t relegate ideation to random strokes of genius. Instead, they create processes that allow them to reliably and consistently generate ideas to solve problems, stay competitive, and drive change. The degree of structure and definition around the idea generation process varies from one organization to another, but any intentionally innovative company will have some ideation system in place.
There are several approaches that an organization can take when it comes to ideation—all designed to produce ideas that contribute to the company’s success. The best approach depends on context. And when organizations find the right idea generation process for their environment and needs, it gets the best ideas out of their talent and creates a strong sense of buy-in on their teams.
Ideation vs. innovation
Before we get into the process and methods of idea generation, it’s important to note that ideation is only one component of innovation. True innovation creates value by addressing unmet needs. That goes a lot further than simply having a great idea—the idea needs to be developed, tested, implemented, and brought to market.
Innovation is doing something new. It involves identifying problems and needs, discovering options, prioritizing activities, and analyzing outcomes. Innovation is an ongoing life cycle, and ideation takes place toward the beginning of that life cycle. Because of this, ideation is often called the front end of innovation (FEI).
Ideas come from people, not process
One other important thing to keep in mind: the idea generation process is not the source of ideas. People are. A good ideation process reliably facilitates the production of ideas by people.
This means any idea generation practices you put in place at your organization should be chosen in context of your talent. Consider available time, seniority level, subject matter familiarity, and other factors when developing an ideation system. For example, the way you collect ideas from peers within your organization should probably differ from the way you gather ideas from customers. The best idea generation process is one that gets the best ideas from your people.
Idea generation is subject to innovation and improvement just like everything else. So as you explore and institute ideation practices, be sure to pay attention to how your people use them. Be ready to attune your idea generation approach to your people—it’s often more effective to fit processes to people than it is to fit people to processes.
The idea generation process
There is no singular process for idea generation: different organizations have different structures and procedures for prompting, producing, and collecting ideas. However, most ideation processes will incorporate the following disciplines in some fashion.
- Identifying problems and needs. These are the issues that necessitate a reliable ideation process. Identifying needs and problems gets the ideation wheels turning and concentrates your attention on meaningful opportunities.
- Clarifying constraints. This is the process of understanding what resources and restrictions you’re working with when it comes to solving the problem. Time, budget, labor resources, and physical capabilities are some of the common constraints that need to be clarified—but depending on the nature of the problem, there may be more. Some constraints are inescapable (e.g., you can’t postpone Black Friday), while others are self-imposed (e.g., “we want our next big offering to prominently feature AI”).
- Collecting input. This is where ideas begin to emerge. Capturing input can take many forms. For example, you can capture input regarding new product ideas by putting an open suggestion form on your company website, conducting a mass survey, and/or holding a series of brainstorming meetings.
- Developing ideas. Ideas come at varying stages of maturity, and unless an idea emerges fully developed, it will need some work before it can be prioritized and implemented. Idea development may involve aligning the idea with strategic objectives, creating proposed plans for implementation, and projecting outcomes.
Of course, this is not the extent of an idea’s journey. If the idea is attractive enough, it will move on to testing, prioritization, and implementation phases. However, once an idea is fully developed, it’s outside of the true ideation phase.
Note: Sometimes great ideas spontaneously emerge, unprompted and unbidden. This article focuses on building reliable processes for prompting, producing, collecting, and developing ideas. Doing so will give these spontaneous ideas a place to land when they occur!
Idea generation methods: four modes of collecting input
When people think of idea generation, input collection is what tends to come to mind. You can source ideas in many ways, so it helps to have a framework for grouping the various routes you can take. One way to group idea gathering methods is by plotting them on two axes:
- Active/passive input collection. This addresses which party initiates the ideation process. In active input collection, the party collecting ideas initiates. In passive input collection, the source party initiates.
- Directed/undirected input collection. This deals with how focused the input collection process is. Directed input collection approaches the input source with specific problems or subject areas in mind, whereas undirected input collection is open to any subject matter that the source party wants to ideate on.
We can take both of these axes to arrange idea collection methods into four quadrants—each of which presents its own advantages and disadvantages. A comprehensive idea generation approach will treat each of these as levers to pull for the appropriate type of inputs.
Open suggestions
Passive, undirected
This is the easiest mode of idea collection to set up: all you have to do is make it available. Open suggestion idea collection is simple and straightforward, in that all you really have to do is indicate that you’re open to new ideas. The classic example of this is the physical office suggestion box, but it can take the form of website feedback forms, call-in phone lines, open door policies, etc.
This form of idea generation gives you the benefit of communicating that you’re open to input, and it can give employees, customers, suppliers, and anyone else you make it available to feel like they can make a small contribution to your innovation efforts. In addition, it allows for input to come from a broader set of idea sources—so people who might not always have a voice can still make their ideas known.
However, passive, undirected input collection methods tend to lack quality control on the front end, so you’ll have more work to do when it comes to finding great ideas in the mix. Furthermore, indiscriminate collection points can deter more developed ideas—people with enough expertise to know they have a good idea don’t want to let it sit in a box full of other random ones.
Idea campaigns
Passive, directed
Like open suggestions, idea campaigns rely on people to come up with ideas to submit. However, idea campaigns solicit input with more specificity. Whereas open suggestions welcome ideas on any topic, an idea campaign might:
- Ask customer service reps to submit common reasons an item gets returned.
- Encourage sales staff to submit common objections from prospective customers.
- Survey prospective buyers in a target industry on pain points.
This approach still allows for open, free-form ideation, but it applies intentional focus to the idea generation process. It also requires you to do the work of sorting, filtering, and developing incoming ideas, but it gives you the advantage of knowing what incoming ideas pertain to.
Brain trusts
Active, directed
Sometimes you know what problems you want to solve and/or who should solve them. When this is the case, idea generation efforts become more concerted. Idea generation efforts in this quadrant bring together people with relevant knowledge, skills, and abilities to think about a given issue and ideate solutions collaboratively.
Brain trusts come with the disadvantage of potential narrow-sightedness: limiting the source of ideas limits the perspectives at play when coming up with solutions. However, the average level of pertinence and development of the ideas generated is usually far greater than anything the other quadrants can offer.
The common conception of brain trust activities involves a small group of people devising solutions in a closed room—but it doesn’t have to be that way. An organization can commission task forces, create dedicated chat spaces (e.g., a Slack channel devoted to a certain problem area), arrange one-on-one interviews with select people, and more.
Perhaps the greatest advantage that this mode of idea generation boasts over the others is the level of selection, preparation, and orientation you can apply ahead of time. You can select people based on relevant work experience, credentials, track record on previous projects, and more. In some cases you can give them the direction they need to bring fully developed ideas to the very first meeting.
Observational analysis
Active, undirected
This mode of idea generation seeks to draw ideas from social interactions that may or may not be happening in an intentional ideation context. This may involve analyzing the topics of blog articles and LinkedIn posts within a target industry, mining customer shareholder calls for recurring themes, taking inventory of Q&A panel content at industry events, and more. Market intelligence and technology scanning tools (such as Scout and CB Insights) can help a great deal here, as they use artificial intelligence to comb vast databases for useful information.
This type of ideation can apply to internal organizational conversations too. Depending on how your company treats meeting information (and how queryable your internal messaging tools are), mining internal chatter for topics and themes can lead to new ideas.
Crowdsourcing in this manner involves three steps:
- Identifying and extracting ideas from publicly available information
- Prioritizing these ideas based on their potential contributions to your organization
- Turning ideas into proposals and introducing them to the innovation pipeline
While this approach is the least filtered, it is also the most comprehensive. When done well, observational analysis can draw your attention to needs you (and potentially your market) didn’t even know existed.
Using AI with crowdsourcing
No matter which method (or combination of methods) you use to collect ideas, you’ll quickly discover one of the biggest problems in front-end innovation: there is no shortage of ideas. Manually checking submissions for quality and sorting them by theme and subject matter can be time-consuming, if not impossible.
Fortunately, artificial intelligence tools can do much of the heavy lifting when it comes to idea collection and sorting. AI tools can be used in sourcing ideas (e.g., scanning shareholder calls, venture capital investments, patent applications, etc.) and can also lend a hand in summarizing the ideas collected from humans. AI isn’t going to do the actual work of ideation for you, but it can help process raw data into fodder for real, human ideas.
Popular idea generation techniques
When asking people to generate ideas, it usually helps to give them some degree of prompting. Below is a list of popular techniques used to get groups of people into ideation mode—especially in brain trust situations. Organizations employ many idea-generating exercises, so this is by no means a comprehensive list.
Five Whys
The Five Whys technique is a useful way to get to the core of a problem. It helps refine your problem statement and generate new ideas. Using a screen or a flip chart, display the problem you’re looking to solve. Ask the group why this problem exists, and use the results of the discussion to form a new problem statement. Repeat this four more times, then set to work on establishing how this new problem statement can be resolved.
What? Where? Why? When? Whom?
Originating from Techniques of Structured Problem Solving (Van Gundy, 1988), this exercise encourages participants to look at a problem from every angle. Divide a group up into teams, with one tackling each question, or simply go through the questions in order in a larger group. Use each of the five words to ask different questions about the problem, and document the results on a mind map (one spoke for each question) to get a clearer view of the bigger picture.
3-12-3 method
In this activity, ideation is divided into three stages, with the name referring to how much time in minutes is given to each stage. In absence of a deadline, brainstorming sessions can easily get bogged down or sidetracked—but in this exercise, the entire ideation process is put on a strict timeline.
After defining a topic, which should be communicated in one or two words, the three stages used to brainstorm ideas on that topic are as follows:
- 3 minutes to generate a pool of aspects: Encourage participants to think about the characteristics of the topic, writing each one down on a separate index card. This should be a pure brainstorming phase: no filtering allowed.
- 12 minutes to develop concepts: Divide your participants into pairs. Each pair should pick three index cards from stage 1 at random, using these cards as thought starters to define and develop a concept to present back to the wider group. The aim here is to prepare a three-minute presentation for stage 3, which could incorporate prototypes, sketches, or any other form of media.
- 3 minutes to make presentations: Each pair takes turns presenting their concept to the wider group, revealing the three cards they originally chose and explaining how these cards influenced their thinking. After every pair has presented, the wider group can discuss what the exercise uncovered.
Make ChatGPT go first, then do better
Because ChatGPT is trained on the public internet as a whole, it can be a useful source of generic starter ideas. One effective way to begin an ideation conversation is to feed a detailed prompt describing the problem at hand to ChatGPT and see what ideas it returns.
Any outputs from ChatGPT will be generic at best (if not downright untenable), but that’s what makes this a good ideation starter. Have people point out where the AI is wrong or nonsensical, and how the problem might be more intelligently or creatively approached.
ChatGPT can generate infinite dummy ideas. It never gets mentally fatigued, and no matter how much criticism you level at its outputs, you’ll never hurt its feelings. This can make it a useful icebreaker for kicking off ideation sessions—or a good way to get human innovators unstuck.
Lotus Blossom
In the Lotus Blossom exercise, one central theme forms the framework for ideation. From this central theme, eight further conceptual themes will blossom, with each of these then becoming their own central themes to develop eight more. There are four stages to this process:
- Draw a square in the middle of a large piece of paper or flip chart, and write your central theme in the middle.
- Using this central theme as a foundation, think of eight ideas that are related and create eight new squares around the outside of your central theme, writing the new ideas inside.
- For each of these eight new themes, think of eight further related schemes, again adding these to the paper in separate squares when done.
- Continue as far as you feel is relevant.
Reversal, or the Bad Idea
Sometimes, thinking about how not to do things can help us establish how they should be done. After putting up your problem statement on a screen or flip chart, ask participants to share the worst possible ideas they can think of to solve the problem. Add these ideas to the board, then discuss.
SCAMPER
Taken from Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Business Creativity (Michalko, 1991), SCAMPER is an acronym of seven different elements you can use to examine your problem:
- Substitute: What could you use instead?
- Combine: What ideas, products, groups, etc. that are currently separate could be brought together?
- Adapt: What else is like this? Is there anything you can learn from similar projects?
- Modify, magnify, minimize: How can you make this bigger or smaller? How can you add things or take things away?
- Put to other uses: Can you use the same ideas or tools, but for a different purpose?
- Eliminate: How can you strip it back—make it less cumbersome, expensive, bulky or complicated?
- Rearrange and reverse: What would be the opposite? What would happen if you did it the other way round?
De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats
Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats enables your team to divide their thinking into six different roles and functions, each symbolized by a different colored thinking hat. It’s a great tool for developing and communicating solutions to problems, allowing you and your team to redirect or focus your thoughts.
The colored hats are as follows:
- White: A call for information that is either known or needed.
- Yellow: A symbol of optimism and brightness, where you explore the positives and seek benefit and value.
- Black: Signifies difficulties, risks and problems, allowing you to understand why things might not work, where things could go wrong, and how to overcome these problems.
- Red: Signifies intuition, hunches and feelings—a time to share loves, hates, likes and dislikes.
- Green: Signifies creativity, new ideas, possibilities and alternatives—a way to express new perceptions and new concepts.
- Blue: Used for management of the thinking process—the control mechanism that ensures that you observe the guidelines of the Six Thinking Hats process.
Idea generation is just the beginning
Ideation is where great innovations begin—but it’s only the beginning. An ideal idea generation system welcomes new ideas, captures them, and prioritizes them based on how they can influence your bottom line.
If you want a more strategic approach to ideation and implementation, you should look into Accolade. It’s a portfolio management system that empowers you to prioritize projects and optimize your new product portfolio, keeping your innovation efforts aligned with your organization’s strategy.
Uplevel your innovation game and book an Accolade demo today!
