How to Think More Innovatively Before and After Ideation
I think many people who have been through an innovation process or sprint would agree: the idea generation portion is exciting, memorable, energizing and inspirational. This is what we hear over and over from clients: they love co-creating with our Creative Consumers® associates, they love being together in person to collaborate, our creative exercises are so much fun, and so on. This, of course, is all true!
In this article I want to highlight two other pieces of the process that are lower profile, but just as important to successful innovation as an inspiring ideation. In fact, these two pieces are so incredibly impactful to the final outcome of the overall innovation initiative, they are the pieces that I personally am the most passionate about.
1. Opportunity Exploration.
Before we start generating ideas, we need to decide where we’re going to go looking. Most of our ITG clients have done some foundational or preliminary research and they have consumer insights, demand spaces, Jobs To Be Done, problems to solve, etc. These are all excellent sources of information to use to identify Ideation Opportunity Spaces. What I have noticed over my years as an Innovation Designer is that, across categories, the opportunities that tend to emerge from the information we have are all starting to sound the same. And to get differentiated ideas we need to generate and then prioritize differentiated Opportunity Spaces. Here are my tips for generating and prioritizing truly high potential Opportunity Spaces.
Generating Opportunity Spaces:
Go deeper! Look beyond what consumers are saying; look at what they are doing and why they are doing it. Consumers will tell you they want things because you asked, not because those things are truly crucial in their lives.
Go for quantity! Generate a much longer list of Opportunity Spaces than you need. Say the same thing a few different ways. It’s not uncommon for us to have 20-25 on a list of potentials before we prioritize.
Be specific!! One of my first innovation process trainers, Gerry Tabio, taught us to go for Opportunity Spaces like this: How might we get teenage girls in New England to purchase the new Revlon Berry lipstick in Walgreen’s this spring? While this level of specificity (we were working in advertising at the time) might not be absolutely necessary, it is amazingly helpful in generating ideas that feel different. Different really does live in the details.
Be consistent! Agree on a phrasing construct. Examples I like are “How might we get (our target) to feel….” And “Help (our target) to….” I find this encourages specificity more than single words or phrases like “confidence” or “trust”.
Prioritizing Opportunity Spaces:
Be clear! Make sure everyone in the group understands every Opportunity Space on your list. If you are deciding by vote, everyone needs to understand what they are voting for.
Be choosy! Some of the items on your list will be similar, if not the same space in different words (see bullet #2 from Generating Opportunity Spaces). Choose the one with the most compelling and specific description.
Go for range! Consider your prioritized items both alone and as a set. Make sure you have selected 3-4 that are different from each other and will take your thinking during ideation in diverse directions.
Be choosy part 2! Resist the urge to prioritize more than four. Also resist the urge to bucket or lump similar spaces together. This is hard; our tendency is to want to cover as much ground as possible. By forcing yourself to be choosy, you have to get real with yourself about what is truly important to you. And when you get to ideating, you want to make sure that you give each of the spaces you chose a solid amount of time, attention and thought.
Go rogue! Go back and pick an Opportunity Space that seems off the wall. THIS IS SO IMPORTANT!!! Too often we get the same types of ideas because we keep doubling back over the same ground. Sometimes you have to force yourself to think differently, and that is OK. I promise it will make a huge difference!
2. Idea Prioritization.
Once you have generated a mass of exciting ideas, because you crushed the Opportunity Space generation and prioritization using my killer tips, you must figure out which are the ones you’ll develop. It is likely that you and your team will have some criteria in mind to make these selections, which is an excellent start. Hopefully, you also have access to a way to have your team vote on all the ideas; ITG’s e-deation® platform makes this so quick and easy. Something I have noticed over the years in this stage is that many of the ideas that make the cut for development are more conservative, including plenty that are either already in the market OR already in development by the team with whom we are working! It is incredibly tempting to prioritize ideas that feel comfortable; this is like watching Downton Abbey through for the fifth time so you don’t have to face the uncertainty of trying a new show. Hopefully, the tips below will help!
Stay loose! Make your criteria fairly broad at this point. There will be a time for feasibility and financial checks later. Now is the time to see if you can figure out how to make some things work that are a little bananas, so keep the weird stuff alive until it’s completely impossible to continue.
Put a stake in the ground! Prioritize ideas that you have vision and heart for. If you can imagine what it will be and why people will love it, move it forward.
Be specific! This one… again! Prioritize ideas that have potential for specificity and detail because that will make them more unique, more interesting, and more likely to continue on throughout the development and testing phase.
Be empowered! Keep in mind that at this stage, ideas are highly mutable. If you like even a small part of it, move it forward. You can change the rest. You can make it whatever you want it to be. You have the power!
Trust yourself! It’s ok and even desirable to have to fight a little for the ideas you like. Even if no one else can see it yet, get out there and rep your choices. Having to explain why you like an idea to your colleagues helps everyone figure out the path forward.
Be bold! Now is the time to go for it. Even if you have to force yourself, move forward a few ideas that are exciting, yet scary. You should find yourself saying, “I have no idea how this could work, but I love it.” This is what innovation is all about.
Hopefully, I have convinced you that ideation is not the only exciting part of innovation and given you some food for thought on identifying differentiated opportunities and choosing high potential ideas to develop. Once you have prioritized a set you feel inspired by, the fun is really only beginning as you prepare to add in details and build them out into full-fledged product or service propositions.