One of the most overlooked activities in a company’s Product Development Process (PDP) is the systematic search for new products, new markets, and high-value features. This process of discovery is often called “Ideation” and is one of the major elements that can transform a standard PDP into a Product Innovation Process (PIP). This article explores:

1. An overview of Ideation and why it is important.

2. The three general categories of Ideation.

While many consumer packaged goods companies such as Procter & Gamble, Hallmark, and Hershey Foods routinely rely on ideation as an integral part of their development processes, technology companies have not embraced ideation tools and techniques.

What is “Ideation”?              

To quote our Webster dictionary, ideation means:

“The faculty or capacity of the mind for forming ideas; the exercise of this capacity; the act of the mind by which objects of sense are apprehended and retained as objects of thought.”

Our definition is a little simpler; Ideation is the systematic search for targeted opportunities in the form of new features, new products, new markets, and new services (well... it's almost simpler.)

We have discovered, in our work with client companies, that there is often a reluctance to seek more ideas for new products, markets, or features because they often cannot manage the quantity of ideas they already have. One client literally had the same six opportunities listed as an appendix in their annual strategic plan for five straight years without doing anything about them. Unfortunately, if sustained, this way of thinking can result in a culture of complacency toward seeking new ideas and opportunities until it is too late. As an additional result, clients also find their idea generators seeking new environments where their talents will be appreciated.

Here are some reasons it is important to systematically seek targeted ideas:

1. The quality of ideas is directly correlated to the quantity of ideas at a company’s disposal.

2. Ideation provides a mechanism for the discussion and building of all known possibilities.

3. Ideation uncovers or “discovers” new high-potential products, markets, needs, and features.

4. Ideation adds significant confidence and efficiency to the product development funnel.

Ideation Basics

Basic brainstorming is usually not enough to generate high-potential opportunities. These sessions are good to get current thinking on the table and share ideas, but typical brainstorming has several drawbacks:

1. People often use it as a forum to sell old ideas that have been shot down before.

2. Ideas generated are often the same ones that have been floating around in your team’s heads.

3. New ideas generated are usually slight variations of current products or services and not innovative

Ideation is different than traditional validation market research. Ideation is about exploring possibilities, generating new concepts and discovering new opportunities, whereas traditional market research (focus groups and surveys) is about validating ideas, weeding out bad concepts, and correcting current concepts. They are both important components of Product Innovation Processes.

Targeted ideation is designed to transcend your product team’s current ideas to find innovative products, features, and services that will drive your vision and beat your objectives.  When conducting ideation sessions, you are seeking divergent thinking; that is, to look for as many ideas as possible without ruling anything out. 

Doing Ideation

When you practice Targeted Ideation, think of it as an idea-shooting shotgun. You aim generally at a given target, fire, and then go see which of the shots have hit the target. The beauty is that you only have to keep the individual shots that actually hit the bull’s-eye. The exact time to conduct ideation techniques depends on several factors. Generally you should consider conducting ideation techniques and sessions at the beginning of a product planning session, before you’ve determined which products and services will be on your 12-month roadmap

There are literally hundreds of techniques and tools to generate new ideas, but they can be grouped by their fundamental methodology. I have broken down the areas of ideation techniques into three general categories based on the type of required activity.

Ideation Type 1: Trend and Industry Analysis

Understanding trends is one of the best ways to identify very high potential opportunities, and is typically the source of today’s call for “radical innovation”. This is a must-do ideation technique for technology-driven companies.  One example of trend ideation is the early identification of hard drive memory prices and digital compression chip trends made it possible to enable a whole new category of products - Digital Video Recorders (DVRs).  Once you add a program guide and some dedicated features, “Voila!” the DVR industry (a.k.a. Tivo) is born.

Many of us have personally observed O’mara’s Law, which states, "We tend to overestimate the short-term impact of technological change and underestimate its long-term impact." History has often proved this correct. The telephone was a nifty gadget; the airplane was only for the wealthy. DVRs are in the early stages of being underestimated by many.

Industry analysis can take many forms as fuel for ideation. Instead of having one of your Harvard MBAs send you a detailed value chain analysis of your industry, have your cross-functional planning team get in room with a whiteboard and draw out the value chain from your suppliers and customers to their suppliers and customers. Then brainstorm where you may be able to take value from others or add more value to the chain.

Ideation Type 2: Customer Interaction

Customers are a great source of new opportunities and innovative thinking. The challenge with customers is that they can’t always articulate what they think about current products or unmet needs. They often don’t even think they have unmet needs since people get accustomed to dealing with their current situation. I still have a hard time believing that people once loved WordStar (that nasty word processing software before WYSIWYG software).

When looking for forward-thinking ideas, it is best to work with forward thinking customers. Eric von Hippel of MIT calls these “Lead Users”. Others call these types of users “pro-users” or the more generic “innovators” or “early adopters”.  At Planning Innovations, our mantra is, “Ideate with a geek, validate with the meek”. This may not be politically correct, but since we are pretty much “geeks”, we feel safe in revealing this. Translation: work with your forward-thinking, early adopters to discover unmet needs and brainstorm new products and features. Once you are ready to test new products, see how your average customers (the “meek”) react to the new products and features. Even if “Joe” meek doesn’t get it at first, this doesn’t necessarily mean you should pull back on the product! He may get there quickly in the market place based on the trend analysis you already did.

Many purists may not consider this a form of "ideation", but just conducting customer interviews isn't enough (but it's a great start!) Once you get this insight, you must brainstorm (or ideate) possible solutions to respond to this insight.

Ideation Type 3: Creative Thinking 

When many people think of “ideation”, creative thinking techniques usually come to mind. This is an important component of ideation, but not the only one, as we’ve discussed. Creative thinking should be used in all aspects of your Product Innovation Process and even during other ideation sessions. The general goal of creative thinking is to be free of constraints and apply creativity to identify new opportunities.

Creative thinking is an activity where most technical people just feel plain silly, as it goes against their analytical nature. But when applied correctly, the techniques can add a high level of energy and fun to your planning activities as well as generate a large number of exciting ideas. 

In this type of ideation you would use tools from creative thinking gurus such as Dr. Edward DeBono (Lateral Thinking), Tony Buzan (Mindmapping), or Michael Michalko (SCAMPER) to consciously manipulate current thinking and open your mind to divergent thinking. These techniques will challenge your technical team to come up with compelling and exciting features and products that will beat your competition.

Conclusion

Ideation by itself will not guarantee success. However, the large pool of targeted opportunities generated from ideation techniques is a powerful start toward a winning product plan.

Done