The Three Stages of Successful Ideation

Ideation is the creative process of generating, developing, and communicating new ideas, where an idea is understood as a basic element of thought that can be either visual, concrete, or abstract.  Ideation comprises all stages of a thought cycle, from innovation to development, to actualisation.  Ideation can be conducted by individuals, companies, service providers and public sector bodies. It is an essential part of the design process.

An organization needs to follow three main stages of – generation, selection, and implementation  –  to achieve successful ideation.

Stage1 –  Generation

For a lot of companies, making use of ideation to address a specific problem or requirement is frequently a good starting point. The majority of companies can easily identify these kinds of needs – the main decision is whether they contribute to an ideation approach. After problem-solving, come two other key chances for utilizing ideation: core competencies and consumer insights.

Core competencies, in reference to ideation, have to do with leveraging ideation to develop upon a company’s abilities. In this kind of ideation, the organization is looking for fresh applications or new markets for existing services/products.

Consumer insights, with reference to ideation, have to do with utilising principles of conventional market research (for example focus groups and surveys) and implementing them in the context of a joint idea-sharing milieu. Surveys are effective though there are a few drawbacks: respondents would not be able to view other replies (to vote up/down or comment) and the response rates are usually pretty low. Even focus groups are effective though they fail to reach the heights of online ideation owing to factors such as price constraints that hinder them from accessing a bigger participant pool.

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Stage 2 – Selection

Picking the best ideas starts much before the beginning of the ideation process. It is essential that you fix the criteria by which the ideas are to be assessed, who would be responsible for evaluating the ideas, and how the top ideas would be given to the concerned internal teams for further assessment or execution. A proper selection process begins with the use of tags or labels to arrange the ideas into meaningful clusters. An example would be labeled being arranged along product lines (such as phone, laptop, tablet) and tags being a level lower, concentrating on attributes (easy navigation, portable, long battery life, lightweight) and/or on features (display, operating system, interface). Labeling and tagging should be followed by prioritization to be certain that the most essential ideas reach the stage of application/execution.

ideation

/ˌʌɪdɪˈeɪʃ(ə)n/

noun

the formation of ideas or concepts.

Stage 3 – Implementation

The success of implementation is dependent on an organization’s ability to choose the top ideas and take action based on them. It also depends on the organisation having appropriate workflows in place so that the right groups take part at the appropriate time in the three steps of the ideation process. The makeup of these workflows (that call out particular roles and aspects of responsibility) is very essential for organisations if they are to start any ideation endeavour. The people in the roles called out should be ready to take in new ideas that don’t come from within the company and possibly can be incentivized or otherwise acknowledged for their readiness to implement the new approach.