Ideation Information, Techniques and Resources

Ideation Is The Ultimate Blend Of Creativity And Science.

It is the process of turning ideas into reality.

If implemented correctly, ideation should enable your network (customers, clients, employees, shareholders, business partners and supplies) to share their ideas, feedback and suggestions. Chances are, during this part of the process, you’ll discover answers to questions that you never thought even needed to be asked.

The next step in ideation is evaluation and prioritisation. It should allow your team, and all members of your organisation to collaborate effectively and efficiently to enhance and whittle down all the ideas that you’ve brainstormed, to end up with a practical action plan for immediate implementation. Once implemented, the entire process should be evaluated and assessed to determine areas for improvement and enhancement.

Given the broad nature of ideation, and the fact that it touches on so many different disciplines, from market research, and research and development, right through to marketing and advertising, we thought that everyone involved might need a helping hand. We’ve come up with a variety of information and resources to make the ideation process as simple as possible:

Definition

Basically, ideation is all about coming up with ideas.

Sounds simple, right? The thing is, ideation is not just about brainstorming. It’s not just about throwing together every idea possible in a huge, jumbled melting pot. It is a much more selective, targeted process. The end goal of the ideation process should be one, single, shining idea. A big-picture idea that ensures the largest possible number of clients or customers are able to get a job done faster, better or more effectively, or that they are able to purchase a product or service that enables all these benefits, at a price point that they are only too happy to pay. Ideation should meet the wants and needs of customer or clients that have previously gone unmet.

As such, ideation can be broadly defined as a creative process, through which new, big-picture ideas are generated and then developed. The process of ideation is one which is present throughout the entire lifecycle of a new product or service line, from innovation and development, right through to sales and marketing. Ideation is, therefore, an essential element of a number of disciplines, including market research, research and development, marketing, advertising, design, brand management, public relations and communications.

Ideation draws upon user behaviour and experience, as well as a raft of analytics to formulate practical, hands-on strategies that validate new product and service line ideas to ensure that products, services, and even marketing and advertising campaigns are based on real data (rather than simply taking a shot in the dark). Ideation incorporates strategy, design, analytics and creativity to produce a holistic, more successful approach.

While the definition of ideation is not quite as straightforward as one might first think, it can be summed up as follows: Ideation is the ultimate blend of creativity and science. It is the process of turning ideas into reality.

Process

The ideation process will vary from sector to sector, and will be dependant upon whether you are looking to innovate products, services or experiences. However, some basic elements of the ideation process will remain, regardless of your circumstances:

Understanding client or customer needs: every ideation process should begin with discovery of client or customer needs. Unless you fully understand which of your customers needs are going unfulfilled, the ideation process will remain unfocused and abstract. It will be like taking a shot a shot in the dark. The best way to get a handle on your customer needs is through market research:
- Quantitative research captures and prioritises all of your customers’ wants, needs and desires. It is all about asking your customers for their opinions in such a way that produces hard facts and specific statistics. Customers must be surveyed in relatively large numbers to ensure as accurate as possible representation of your target market.
- Qualitative research also helps determine customer needs and desires, but in a much less statistical manner. Often undertaken through the use of small focus groups, qualitative research is more about observing customer behaviour and responses.
Fulfilling client or customer needs: once you have a complete picture of the unmet needs and desires or your clients or customers, ideas should be generated which specifically target each of these needs. Every single idea should be linked back to how to improve the lives of your clients.
Distilling ideas: once of all your ideas are out on the table, you will need to distill and filter them down. Less feasible or useful ideas should be discounted. Ideas that cannot be demonstrate as fulfilling a customer need should be discounted. Smaller ideas should be combined as one, and woven into a single, big picture idea. Ideas should be tested, trialled and ranked against one another to determine likelihood of success, cost, return on investment and likely market impact.
Building a plan of action: once your ideas are finalised, a practical, hands-on action plan should be created. Your plan should include specific, actionable tasks, assigned to specific people within your organisation. Tasks should be given a completion date, and have realistic, clearly defined KPIs.
Assessing impact: the last step in any ideation process should include evaluation of success. Did the process work? Have previously unmet client needs now been met? Or even exceeded? What was the cost of the process? And the benefit? What have you learnt? What can be improved upon next time round?

Benefits

At the very heart of ideation lies market research. It is the building block upon which a successful ideation process is built. The benefits of properly implemented market research include:

Minimises risk: through market research, you come to understand your customers, your competitors, and the marketplace in general. With such a wealth of knowledge at your finger tips, you are able to make fully information decisions (rather than guessing on the fly), thereby substantially minimising any risk.
Identifies opportunities: you will already have a full understanding of all the opportunities available, and can act on these quickly and efficiently to boost sales, productivity and profits.
Guides communication: with a full characterisation of your target market and potential customers, you’ll fully understand the best way in which to communicate with both existing and potential customers. This will help ensure that any advertising and marketing programs hit their mark first time around.
Unearths problems: oftentimes, rather than discovering new product or service lines, market research can help you pinpoint where your existing products and services are lacking. Armed with this vital information, you can make a few small tweaks and improvements to existing products or service lines, which can result in huge improvements in terms of efficiency and profitability.
Confirms brand identity: by identifying exactly how your customers or clients view your brand, you can take steps to either heighten or improve upon their existing perception, or implement a program to change their view entirely. Either way, at least you’ll be informed.

An actual ideation session, in which all team members are involved, also offers a range of specific benefits:

Ensures all team members are on the same page: all too often, in our busy lives, we forget that we are members of a broader team. We get lost in the daily avalanche of emails and phone calls, operating as an island. An ideation session brings team members together, to work in unison towards a single goal. It often brings together people less inclined to work together, such as members of the research and development team and members of the sales and marketing team.
Makes implicit knowledge explicit: through ideation assumptions and stereotypes are either validated or vindicated. Ideation ensures that beliefs and generalisations about brands and their clients are actually real.
Facilitates sharing of different perspectives: when people from different teams come together (such as the head of IT and the head of marketing, for instance), beautiful things can occur. Holistic solutions that have a real chance of success can be devised, made possible by the sharing of different perspectives, knowledge and experience.
Generates enthusiasm: exciting new projects, exhilarating new ideas, and challenging prospects all generate enthusiasm in team members. Working on the same projects day-in, day-out, year after year results in boredom, frustrating and stagnation. Ideation can change all this, and inject new life into any team.

Techniques

There are literally hundreds of different techniques that can be used in ideation. Not all techniques will work for you, your organisation, your product and services. It may be a case of trialling a few before you determine that perfect means by which to generate that next big idea. Some of the most popular ideation techniques are included below.

Vision Circle

All participants sit in a circle, with one person nominated as the facilitator. The facilitator is responsible for asking all questions, and recording all ideas.
Each ‘Vision Circle’ should focus on one specific idea or topic. For instance, it may focus on ‘Ideas to Make the Company More Innovative’.
The facilitator should then ask questions related to this idea or topic. In this example above, one question might be, ‘It is five years from now. We have implemented a range of innovative projects and programs. What does the company look like?’
Going around the circle, participants should answer the questions.
The facilitator should bring the session to the end once all participants have contributed.

Alter Ego

The group should be broken into smaller teams of no more than five people each.
Each team should be assigned a well-known personality, who is responsible for leading the project (that is the result of the ideation process). Well-known personalities might include: Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, Arnold Schwarznegger, Barack Obama, Hitler or Madonna.
It is 12 months down the track, and the project is running very successfully, due in part to the leadership style of the personality.
Each group should describe how the project became so successful, including:
- The process that was implemented
- The tools and technologies that were used
- How people have worked together
- Specific attributes of the leadership style that have been successful
- Vision, mission, values and objectives

Nature Symbol

The group should pinpoint a goal or objective towards which their organisation is working.
Each participant should then choose an element from nature that captures the essence of achieving the goal or objective.
Each participant will then need to list the specific attributes of the element. For example, if a flower was chosen, these elements would include its roots, stem, leaves, petals, pollen, and so on.
Each element should then be aligned with a step through which the organisation’s objective can be achieved.

Software

Ideation software can be used to help support the ideation or brainstorming process. If used correctly, ideation software can be one of the key components, or tools that supports organisational growth, development and innovative. The best ideation software packages go as far as supporting innovation and development beyond merely the first project phase of brainstorming. It will assist during the development and filtering of ideas, design and implementation of a program that will the idea come to fruition, and even monitoring and evaluation of the project once it has been implemented.

Given the broad project scope in which ideation software is involved, the best interfaces are those that are quite sophisticated, and analytics and data-driven. This focus on data ensures that the software can be used throughout the ideation lifecycle.

There are a number of ideation software packages on the market, including:

Spigit: their platform uses a whole range of advanced algorithms to identify the best possible ideas from your customers, business partners and employees, and then predict their value, likelihood of success, and even pinpoints challenges that might arise along the way.
Crowdicity: boasting clients like Proctor & Gamble, the BBC, the ABC and Oxfam, Crowdicity makes collaborating with your customers and employees easy. By using this software you can innovative, communicate and improve your company’s chance of success.
eXo Platform: this particular platform is more geared around social media, and mining social channels as part of the ideation process. An open-source platform, it allows organisations to mine social media for innovative ideas and even to build social employee intranets, through which more ideas can be generated.
Kindling: according to their website, Kindling has been built as an idea management and innovation platform. It can be used by all sorts of teams to chat about and formulate ideas, solve internal and external problems, and then pursue those opportunities that are most likely to succeed.
IdeaScale: this software platform is a little different to all the rest. It uses crowdsources to help organisations come up with the next big idea. It enables you to share and collaborate using ideas from anywhere, then evaluate and prioritise all your ideas, before designing, developing, and delivering your innovative project.
Coggle: this little gem is basically an online app that helps with mind-mapping. Best of all, it has an extremely simple and easy-to-use interface.
The Brain: Similar to Coggle, this is another online mind-mapping app. It captures all your intelligence digitally, allowing you to access websites, documents, images, notes lists and ideas, from all sorts of people on all sorts of projects.
Stormboard: this online tool is focused on real-time mind mapping, using an interface designed to look like a sticky-note whiteboard.
MindMap: a Google Chrome extension, MindMap has Cloud, Google Drive and Dropbox support built right into. So, you can save your work in any number of places, before printing or exporting finished mind maps as an image.

Resources

When it comes to ideation, there are so many resources available, it would be nearly impossible to cover them all, particularly given the broad cross-section of disciplines that ideation covers. We have tried to outline as many resources below as possible—happy reading!

General Ideation Resources

Ideation Challenges, from the US General Services Administration DigitalGov
MIT Ideation Laboratory, part of the world-leading education institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
OpenIDEO Innovation Tools, from leading ideation company IDEO

Ideation Articles

Market Research Tools

SurveyMonkey, for creating online surveys chock full of data and analytics
Survata, another online survey-creation tool
Userlytics, allows you to undertake user testing of mobile apps, videos, display ads and more
PersonaApp, is a great way to build customer and client personas quickly and easily
Market Research Kit, from the Queensland Government is designed help you conduct your own market research

Market Research Data Sources

Audit Bureaux of Australia, provides verified circulation data for Australian print and digital publications
Audit Bureau of Circulations, audits the circulation of magazines and newspapers in Australia
Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australia’s official national statistical organisation in the areas of economy and social development
AGB Nielsen Media Research, provides demographics on more than 40% of TV audiences across the world
OzTAM, measures TV audiences in Australia
Roy Morgan, is a global public opinion and market research company
IbisWorld Australia, provides in-depth market research on over 500 Australian industries
Australian Market and Social Research Society (AMSRS), is the association for Australian market research professionals

Videos

When it comes to ideation, there are any number of instructional videos readily available on the topic. It’s really no wonder that there is such a proliferation of resources, software and videos on this topic—the benefits are well-documented, and wide ranging. We’ve put together a few of our favourite ideation videos below, to give you some more in-depth insights into this all-important process.

The Ideation Framework with Josh Wexler

In this video, Josh Wexler, the CEO of the Occom Group shares his views on the ideation process. A web and mobile software development company, Occom Group works with some of the biggest companies around, from Johnson & Johnson, KPMG and MTV through to Avon and the United Nations. Wexler discusses how ideas can be validated before they are built: through ideation. He describes how ideation can help give clarity to an entire team or company department, while at the same time reducing risk and minimising technical errors. He even provides examples of techniques that can be used for a successful ideation process.

Brainstorming and Other Ideation Techniques

Our second video is quite a bit shorter than the first, although it still manages to pack a punch! David Kelly and Tom Kelley, founders and partners of IDEO discuss alternatives to more traditional brainstorming techniques. An international design and consulting firm, IDEO was founded in California some 25 years ago and now has offices in Boston, Chicago, London, Munich, New York City, Shanghai, Singapore and Tokyo. The Kelly brothers contend that at IDEO, brainstorming really works—it is one of their go-to techniques. However, they are quick to point out that if brainstorming doesn’t yield results for your company, then you need to try something different. Regardless of what ideation technique you use, they do believe that you need to involve all the relevant stakeholders. So, if you’re trying to improve a piece of medical technology, then you need the surgeon, the hospital administrator, the nurse, the instrument company, all in the same room. You need a synthesis of ideas to create one single solution.