IDEATION
What does ideation mean?
Ideation is the practice of generating new ideas to improve business outcomes. These ideas can be for both incremental improvements to an existing business or organization or disruptive ones that may involve creating a new venture.
What are some best practices for ideating within a company?
Good ideas can come from anywhere, can be unexpected, and are often created by ‘happy accidents’. You can increase the chances of this happening with five practices:
- Define the problem or opportunity space for which you want to generate an idea,
- Learn where your customers are struggling to achieve an outcome or goal that they care about that you and then find ways you can help,
- Engage a wide group of people with diverse experiences in generating potential solutions to a problem, there is a strong correlation between the diversity of a group and the quality of ideas,
- Bring in people from another domain, industry, or specialism, who can look at problems without the biases that form from constant exposure to the same experiences,
- Generate a large number of new ideas without filtering out the ones that will not work, humans tend to fixate on the first idea they have and so limit the range of possibilities.
What role does ideation play in corporate innovation?
Ideation is the first of three corporate innovation disciplines – incubation and scaling, being the others. Ideation initiates the innovation process by generating possibilities for future value creation. It enables people or teams to think without constraints of day to day activities and imagine ‘what if?’
Change Logic Awarded Fast Company’s 2021 Innovation by Design Award. 