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Tina Seelig: Innovation Demands Focus and Reframing

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Here’s why most brainstorming sessions are a waste of time

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While brainstorming sessions are common in many workplaces, psychological and social mechanisms can undermine our creative efforts.

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Every product, service, or solution starts with the same, simple process: idea generation (or concept development), but just as important is the process that follows: idea screening.

For every business, idea screening ensures that the product development process meets business objectives and customer expectations.

Without idea screening, new product concepts will often miss the mark, fail to gain traction, or even penetrate the market effectively. But by evaluating ideas before they go to market, you can reduce the risks associated with the new product development process and maximise your chances of achieving a positive ROI.

In this article, we're going to explore idea screening, including what it is, how it works, its benefits, examples of screening, and more.

What is idea screening?

Idea screening is a core part of any new product development process. It helps you to vet and evaluate potential ideas using set criteria, data (such as market research) or scoring models.

For example, with new ideas you may want to assess them against relevance, constraints, budgets, value, risks, and/or feasibility. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it should provide you with some context of how to approach idea screening.

As well as the above, you can use existing market research or customer data/feedback to ascertain the validity and value of a new idea. For instance, how receptive are your customers to new products, services, and/or solutions? Is there a gap in the market for your product ideas? How do your current buyers feel about your current offerings?

Lastly, is the idea abstract or complex? One of the most prevalent challenges for product developers and marketing teams is making sense of new product ideas that the C-Suite comes up with.

Idea screening steps

Now that you know what idea screening is, where do you start? Here are the most important steps to take to you sort the good ideas from the bad.

1) Brainstorm ideas

It all starts with your ideas. The best product ideas incorporate perspectives from multiple stakeholders and teams, as well as market and customer research (where possible).

Focus on customer problems that you can potentially resolve through a new product, service, and/or solution. After, think about how urgent their needs are (is your solution highly demanded by your target market?) and whether those needs are underserved (are there no available products to address their concerns?). Finally, is the idea unavoidable? Do you have to create it regardless of what's happening in the market?

It's also worth reviewing customer complaint records. If your past customers have provided negative feedback - in any form - regarding your other products (if you have them), assess those complaints against your new product idea. Does it address any of those complaints? Does it meet new needs?

Come up with as many ideas as possible and then work to eliminate product concepts that don't align with your overall business objectives using idea screening criteria.

2) Evaluate ideas against specific criteria

For your product, service, or solution to be successful, it needs to be graded against a list of needs specific to your company and target audience. For each of these needs, you should develop questions to ask about your products to see if they meet your standards. Some common criteria are:

Product benefits/value: How many ways can your customer benefit from this product and what are those benefits? If the benefits are minimal or non-existent, it's less likely that your new product idea will be successful.

Audience: What is the growth potential of your target audience and will developing new offerings bring you new audiences? What are the needs and expectations of your audience(s) and does your offering meet them?

Simplicity/complexity: Will it be easy to manufacture/develop the product, service, or solution? Can it be reasonably priced or will it be too expensive for the average customer due to manufacturing costs?

Profitability: How much money needs to be invested to successfully develop the product, solution, or service? How much profit can you make once it hits the market?

Market saturation: Is there an abundance of similar products, services, or solutions? Is there a clear need for your idea or a gap in the market? How many competitors will you have?

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but by looking at a few of these criteria, you can quickly ascertain your priority ideas and create a shortlist. You can also look to your competitors and customers to see what's working well or could work well.

For example, both Slack and Zoom are communication and collaboration tools, but one is geared more to team-wide collaboration and file sharing, whereas the other is more for video conferencing, webinars, and other forms of online events. In this case, both ideas are competitive as they address needs in the market that were (until their arrival) unfulfilled or not fulfilled entirely.

Another good example would be Uber. Uber didn't revolutionise ride-sharing, but they did come into existence at the right time: when people wanted a seamless way to book a taxi without waiting 30 minutes.

As well as doing the above, you'll want to:

One of the easiest ways to get stakeholder buy-in is to create a comparison chart between existing competitor products (and potentially your own, should your new idea be an add-on feature) and customer pain points. Tick the pain points the solutions solve. Ideally, your new idea should address the existing pain points and any new ones that you might have uncovered thanks to market research.

For an existing product, service, or solution that you have an idea for, consider a repositioning or rebranding strategy to demonstrate how that idea can help with specific issues. It could be that customers are exhibiting an appetite for a new feature, or that your offering is better tailored to a specific need or market.

Getting your product idea (or product ideas) past stakeholders and management is one thing; but what about your experts and other business partners?

Any new development idea needs to be put on the table for internal review, i.e. your experts and specialists (those creating and implementing the idea) should have a chance to input. This is, in essence, a proof of concept (POC).

The point here is that it's completely pointless to invest heavily in an idea that's not technically feasible. But as you've come to your development team with a shortlist, it should be far easier for them to strike off ideas (or for you to revise them).

3) Carry out qualitative and quantitative research

Having criteria to contrast your product concept against is a great way to successfully conduct idea screening. However, you may not have the necessary data to answer the questions posed by each type of criteria.

This is where qualitative and quantitative research comes in. A qualitative research study (such as a focus group or survey) could reveal how your target market feels about your new product idea. Quantitative research, on the other hand, will give you the statistics and hard facts to support any conclusions you come to.

You can find out more about qualitative and quantitative research here .

4) Concept Development & Testing

Having compiled your ideas and researched the market, the next step is to refine your ideas into actual concepts that can be scrutinised and tested by your target buyers. This stage is different from detailed design engineering as it's more about outlining the technical aspects and marketing considerations for your product, service, or solution.

Here you'll want to visualise your concepts so that they can be understood by your stakeholders and teams. Consider using CAD, photorealistic rendering, simulations, animation, sketches, and drawings. If possible, try to produce physical mock-ups so people can get a better feel for your product.

After putting together your concept, set up sessions with stakeholders and participating teams to test it. Also, it's worth using focus groups from your target market, or a small selection of loyal customers to get rounded feedback and possibly new product ideas.

Related: Check out our concept testing tool and validate your best product ideas before you squander valuable R&D efforts.

These sessions should include a thorough evaluation, along with questions about every aspect of the new concept. You should appoint a facilitator to manage the process and document the discussion. Alternatively, you can use customer surveys and one-to-one interviews to gauge opinions.

Finally, include some sort of approval process to ensure the project progresses to the next stage.

Transform your idea screening

With the tips outlined in this guide, you can take your idea generation and screening process to the next level and come up with ideas that truly resonate with your audience.

But to help you further, why not use our Idea Screening (XM) solution?

With our Idea Screening (XM) solution, you can evaluate ideas and discover which ones resonate most with your respondents. This solution targets early-stage innovation efforts to help you identify. the product lines with the most potential before investing in their development.

The idea screening setup asks for a high-level description to provide context around your set of ideas, then asks for a simple text description of each idea. You can then create idea screening surveys from within the platform.

Once you have created your survey and put together a contact list, you can easily distribute it to the channels most important to your audiences:

The solution also has a special dashboard with built-in pages to give you an overview of your results:

With our Idea Screening (XM) Solution, you have everything you need to assess your ideas: sophisticated surveys, distribution methods, results in dashboards, and much more.
Find out how to use the Qualtrics Idea Screening (XM) solution to create amazing products.

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The complete guide to idea screening | Qualtrics | Read Now

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Creating a new product, solution or service? Find out how you can ensure its success by using idea screening.

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In this edition of Author Talks, McKinsey Global Publishing's Raju Narisetti chats with Jeremy Utley, codirector of executive education at the Stanford d.school, about his new book, Ideaflow: Why Creative Businesses Win (Ebury Edge, October 2022), cowritten by Perry Klebahn. Although focus on innovation in the business world has reached a "fever pitch," many people still haven't developed a creative discipline, Utley says, but they can start with a 30-minute calendar block and the willingness to share bad ideas. An edited version of the conversation follows.
Aren't there too many books on creativity already?
There are a lot of books right now on creativity and innovation. When we started, there was a question of, "should we even bother?"

At Stanford, we had been leading the executive education programs for the past dozen years or so, and we'd seen that innovation, as a topic, had reached a fever pitch in its level of hype, and yet despite its emphasis and mentions in annual reports, our observation was that it remains one of the most underdeveloped or undernourished capabilities in any organization.

For us, the tension of if we should write another book, since there were already a lot of books out there, was counterbalanced-or overweighted-by a feeling that folks weren't treating innovation like a capability.

In a lot of organizations, innovation is an event. It's episodic. It's a moment in time. There's a sprint, or a hackathon, or a workshop, and that's innovation. That's what a lot of people think of when they think of innovation. What we believe is that it's not an event, it's a practice, and if you aren't practicing regularly, you aren't an innovator-just like if you aren't doing your scales, you aren't a pianist, or if you aren't doing laps in the pool, you aren't a swimmer.

Unfortunately, we reached an era in this innovation economy where folks do a sprint or a workshop, and they go, "I'm an innovator." They update their LinkedIn and put on a badge, and then they assume they're all good, without any further development of their skills. What we've tried to do is shift the narrative from a "done" mentality to a "begun" mentality.

No one would ever go to one swim lesson and then say that the next step is the middle of the ocean or go to one piano lesson and then say the next step is Carnegie Hall-no, they would keep practicing. Yet, for whatever reason, when it comes to innovation, sometimes people take a workshop or attend a sprint and then think the next step is enterprise-wide innovation.

Unfortunately, we reached an era in this innovation economy where folks do a sprint or a workshop and they go, 'I'm an innovator.' ... What we've tried to do is shift the narrative from a 'done' mentality to a 'begun' mentality.

What we felt was lacking [from existing books] was some of the routine behaviors and mindsets that drive a robust and healthy creative practice. For us, Ideaflow is meant to address some of these misconceptions, dispel some of the myths around innovation, and bring it to the level of daily practice in the context of business.

Creative practitioners in other fields like the arts or entertainment recognize the need for a creative discipline, but for a businessperson, if you were to ask them, "How do you build your creative muscles? How do you build your innovation capacity?" Most of the time you get a blank stare.

We felt like that was a fundamental problem that needed to be addressed. Our goal with Ideaflow is that when the folks who read it consider this question of "how do I practice?" or "how do I stay sharp?," they will have lots of answers that they can incorporate into their daily life.

We felt that it was time for innovation to get approached from a fundamental capability perspective where folks know how to routinely engage the practice so that they can really shine when it matters.

It's not that we despise a sprint or look down on a workshop-not at all. We leverage sprints and workshops ourselves, but when you show up to this sprint, are you warm? Have you stretched? Have you trained? The goal is that when you show up to the sprint, you can really get into the work.

Right now, what we see is people showing up to the sprint with Cheetos stains on their blazers, so to speak. They've been sitting on the couch. They haven't done any exercise. That's not how we approach any other capability.

We felt that it was time for innovation to get approached from a fundamental capability perspective, where folks know how to routinely engage the practice so that they can really shine when it matters.
What does it mean to 'put the lightning rod down and start making lightning'?
There's tons of fascinating research going primarily by Dr. Dean Keith Simonton, who recently won a Lifetime Achievement Award from Mensa. Simply stated, what Dr. Simonton found is that to get a good idea, you need a lot of ideas.

Linus Pauling actually said that-he's the only individual in history to win two individual [unshared] Nobel Prizes. When Linus Pauling was asked, "How do you come up with a good idea like your breakthroughs that won you the Nobel Prize?" His response was, "To have a good idea, you need to have a lot of ideas." And our observation is that folks dramatically underestimate the definition of "a lot."

According to research conducted by our colleague at Stanford, Professor Bob Sutton, something like 2,000 ideas are required to get a commercially viable idea. When we ask business leaders in organizations, their answer is more like 20. Folks are not just one, but two orders of magnitude off when it comes to the question of, "How many ideas do you need to have a good idea?"

To get good material, you need a lot more volume than most people recognize. This is perfectly illustrative of our tendency to think [of innovation] in terms of an event rather than a practice. At an event, my job is to come up with one good idea. In a practice, I'm routinely generating ideas as a part of my life.

My favorite example of this is from Jony Ive in [Apple's] memorial tribute to Steve Jobs. He said, "We ate lunch almost every day, and Steve would often say to me, 'Hey, Jony, want to hear a dopey idea?'" He said they were really dopey, and some of them truly terrible, but every once in a while, Steve said something that took the air out of the room and made them sit there in silence.

Something like 2,000 ideas are required to get a commercially viable idea. When we ask business leaders in organizations, their answer is more like 20.

To me, the reason that that's so special is that when we think about Steve Jobs, we don't think about truly terrible ideas. We don't think about dopey ideas. We think about consumer delight, product category, and redefining products.

What we've observed is that if you want to get to delight, you have to be willing to have and share dopey ideas. Dopey is the price of delight, and very few people seem to appreciate the significance of that.
Why is failing and rewarding failures key to successful Ideaflow?
It's critical to reward failures and to allow for failure, at the very least, because the reality is that innovation is a risky endeavor. If you're always succeeding, you're almost certainly playing it too safe.

Astro Teller, who's the captain of Moonshots at Google's Moonshot Factory, called Google X, says the same thing: failure is the seed of breakthrough innovation. What he's trying to get teams to do is to fail more quickly and kill ideas more quickly. If you don't like that word, kill, think about it as pivoting.

Failure sucks but instructs. The question is: is your ego so shattered that you can't learn from a failure, or are your expectations properly set so that you can learn quickly from it?

Moving quickly through ideas is a critical part of early-stage innovation. You have to be able to pivot, you have to be able to reorient, and that necessarily looks like failure. If people are afraid of failure or think that failure is a career-limiting move, then you're in trouble. If you want to reward innovation, you have to be prepared to reward failure.

If you reframe failure as learning, then that becomes more palatable. The learnings get harvested. The learnings can be repurposed. The learnings can be composted, as we say in our accelerator at Stanford.

Failure sucks but instructs. The question is: is your ego so shattered that you can't learn from a failure, or are your expectations properly set so that you can learn quickly from it?
What does it mean to 'make a habit of exposing yourself to unexpected inputs'?
When we think about creativity or innovation, we often think about output. However, innovators know that creativity is fed by input, and if you aren't seeking new input, then there's nothing new for the equation or algorithm to be processing.

There are some simple things that leaders can do to stimulate fresh inputs. In the early days of Amazon, Jeff Bezos had two days per week when he refused to schedule any meetings just so he could be available for serendipitous discovery.

The calendar is often one of the greatest vehicles that we can leverage, or one of the greatest weapons a leader can wield to seek unexpected input. Most of the time, the calendar is the reason why someone can't do something.

For example, we were working with the senior leadership team of a large tech company, and we were helping them think about experimentation in the workplace. One of their technology leaders is a woman based in Ireland, and when we got to her, we asked her to tell us about her experiment.

None of the problems we face have only one right answer. If you put effort into one idea, you should put effort into alternatives-into variation-because the truth is that you learn a lot more relatively than you do in sequence.

She said, "I wasn't able to run an experiment, unfortunately." Our level of experiment is at an exceedingly low threshold-it takes 20 minutes and is very simple stuff-so I said, "Why couldn't you run an experiment? You had two weeks." She said, "It's Wednesday. I'm on meeting number 32 for the week. When would you run an experiment?"

I realized in that moment that she legitimately didn't have space to do anything new. I said, "Okay, you can't do an experiment now. Look at next week. Do you have any time on your calendar?" She did not. "Look at the next week. Do you have any time on your calendar?"

She had half an hour, so I said to block that half an hour now and enter into the subject line of the calendar invite, "blank action." What we realized in that moment is that you can create space for experimentation and exploration if you think about wielding your calendar differently. What I would ask leaders is, are you creating space for folks' work to look different?

One simple thing that a manager can do is something that legendary Professor Bob McKim did at Stanford: if a student asked him what he thought of an idea, he would say, "Show me three."

He was helping the student realize that none of the problems we face have only one right answer. If you put effort into one idea, you should put effort into alternatives-into variation-because the truth is that you learn a lot more relatively than you do in sequence.

Watch the full interview

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Author Talks: The simple way to get more great ideas

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Stanford's Jeremy Utley proposes approaching creativity with a "begun" mentality, where innovation is incorporated into daily practice instead of occurring only in sprints.

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Finding your niche as an entrepreneur can be challenging. Here are six alternative routes to that perfect business plan:

Let go of originality

There are countless businesses already in existence, so it's very likely that you won't be the first person to think of an idea or product. Many talented entrepreneurs waste time and energy trying to think of a unique business, when they should be focusing on how to be better, rather than how to be different.

"Don't believe the myth that an idea isn't a good one because there is competition," says Marianne Cantwell, founder of Free Range Humans. "If it is a good idea there either will be competition already, or there soon will be. Remember Facebook was not the first social network and Google was not the first search engine."

Cantwell recommends keeping a list of businesses that you find inspiring, then asking yourself how you could put your own stamp on that product or industry. "This thinking will free you up to find more ideas than you imagine, closer than you think," she says.

Meditate

If you haven't already watched Headspace founder Andy Puddicombe's TED Talk, this is a great place to start. Puddicombe explains the importance of taking time to stop and look after our minds, and why this is an essential part of the creative process.

"We are so distracted, we are no longer present in the world in which we live," he explains. A busy, stressed mind is unlikely to be able to access the inspiration and clear thinking required to come up with a business plan, and build that plan into a reality. Taking some time to clear your head and become aware of the world around you could open up a myriad of potential ideas.

Use your skillset

If you're not trained in finance, you wouldn't open an accountancy practice. It's the same with any business - you're far more likely to make your idea a success if you focus on the skills you already have. Vicki Anstey, founder of Barreworks, quit her job to set up a dedicated barre studio after discovering a ballet workout technique that revolutionised her body, posture and confidence.

"My background in marketing and advertising gave me the right instincts and skills to turn a much loved hobby into a profitable business," she explains.

Solve a problem

"I get ideas about how to do things differently all the time," says Thomas Vles, who came up with his disposable cat litter product, Poopy Cat, after realising that his cat didn't associate the box as a toilet, only the litter.

If you look around your house or workplace, you'll see a huge number of problems or mundane tasks that could potentially be made easier by a new product or service. If you identify an issue that someone else hasn't already solved, chances are there will be a market for it.

"Being an entrepreneur has nothing to do with being the smartest or the best, it is only about daring and taking risk," Vles says. "Too many great ideas remain undeveloped, just get out there and do it."

Look abroad for inspiration

Jimmy Cregan, founder of Jimmy's Iced Coffee, came up with his business idea when he was travelling in Australia and discovered the iced coffee market there. Looking abroad for inspiration can be a great place to start - you might discover a product that hasn't yet been marketed in your local area, or you could discover a new way to present an existing product.

Cregan believes that you can recognise an idea that has real potential by its persistence.

"If you like the idea of quitting your day job and becoming an entrepreneur, that's great but you'll need to find something you will spend more time on than anything else in your whole life, aside from breathing," he explains. "The idea needs to be embedded in your brain like some sort of bug that won't go away. The idea won't let you go to sleep, the idea will wake you up in the morning and it won't leave your side."

Experiment with 'maybe ideas'

Don't be a perfectionist - if you wait for your idea to be perfectly formed, you could waste months that could be better spent testing out the "maybe ideas" that could potentially become something amazing.

"Sometimes the best ideas sound less than promising at first and only become brilliant in the execution," explains Cantwell. "In 2015 you are lucky enough to be able to get an idea out into the world, for free, in a very short period of time. So instead of shelving an idea for not being completely perfect from day one, challenge yourself to find the heart of your "maybe idea", try it out in a short timeframe, and improve it on the ground."

Often the biggest barrier to success is the fear of taking that first step. Jump straight in, experiment and see where it leads you.
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Six ways to come up with your ultimate business idea

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Finding your niche as an entrepreneur can be challenging. Here are six alternative routes to that perfect business plan: There are countless businesses already in existence, so it's very likely that you won't be the first person to think of an idea or product.

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Dr Samuel West, the psychologist who created The Museum Of Failure, argues that the best way to drive innovation within organizations is to remove the fear of failure. The fear of failure can lead corporate innovation teams to only pursue safe bets. When innovation teams work on safe bets, it is highly likely that they are simply improving the company's current products. To explore new opportunities, leaders have to create psychologically safe spaces for people to try new things and fail.

The best way for innovation teams to fail is quickly and cheaply. This means that leaders and teams have to be paying attention to early signals of whether the innovation project is on track. This has been a challenge for both corporations and startups. There is often a commitment to an innovation project that can drive leaders to keep making bets on an idea they believe in. This can quickly become expensive, like in the case of Quibi, which raised $1.75 billion from investors before failing within a year of launch.

Instead of investing in their pet projects, successful leaders manage their innovation portfolios like a funnel. They start by making multiple small bets with the expectation that those teams will go out and test their ideas. The choice of ideas to invest in should be based on clear strategic guidance about where the company wants to play when it comes to innovation.

However, getting an early investment does not mean that leaders are committed to any specific idea. Instead, the early investment provides teams with a chance to generate evidence on whether their ideas can be successful. Over time, leaders can then make decisions about which ideas to kill. There are typically four good reasons to kill an idea during the various stages of innovation.
Lack of Desirability
The first reason to kill an idea is whether there is anybody in the real world who cares about the product or service the team is thinking of creating. What problems are they solving and for which customer segment? Is there a real customer need out there? How do we reach these customers? It is often hard for innovators to accept that customers don't really care how clever they are. Customers care about their own problems and aspirations. As such, if the team does not have a value proposition that resonates with customers, that idea should be killed.
Lack of Feasibility
The second reason to kill an idea speaks to the technical risks in any innovation project. Does our organization have the capability to create the breakthrough technologies we are imagining? If not, can we find a partner that can help us to develop the technology? A lot of software products may not present that much technical risk. However, for more ambitious innovation projects in the automotive, healthcare or pharmaceutical industries, technical risk can be a genuine concern. If your company does not have the capabilities to create the product or service, there should be strong consideration to killing that idea.
Lack of Viability
The third reason to kill an idea is whether our company can create and deliver the value to customers at a profit. This question speaks to the viability of a team's business model. Where will they create and deliver value? How will they reach customers? How much will it cost our company to create and deliver value? How much will customers pay? How will the team get to breakeven or profitability? It is distinctly possible to make products people like and lose money doing it. If this is the challenge an idea is facing, that idea should be killed.
Lack of Adaptability
The final reason to kill an idea is whether our company can take the product or service to scale. It is important to note that finding a real customer need is not the same thing as finding a market. There are several reasons a business environment may not be ready for an idea to scale. For example, a product may depend on the successful commercialization of other companies' innovations before it can scale. In this case, timing is important. It is also possible that the costs of scaling can render a business model unprofitable and unsustainable. If a team cannot solve these scaling challenges, that idea should be killed.
What About The Pivot?
One common myth from the Lean Startup movement is that innovation teams can pivot any idea to success. This is not always the case. Sometimes ideas have to be killed. What the Lean Startup method provides is a process for finding the right ideas to scale and also the right ideas to kill. The goal is not to kill ideas the moment they run into challenges. Teams should be given some time to try different options for their business model (e.g. customers segments, value propositions and channels). The runway of resources that teams have to try these pivots should be known upfront. When that runway comes to an end and the teams are still not showing progress, those ideas should be killed!

_________
This article was first published on Forbes where Tendayi Viki is a regular contributor. Learn more at www.tendayiviki.com.

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Four Good Reasons To Kill Innovative Ideas

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Dr Samuel West, the psychologist who created The Museum Of Failure, argues that the best way to drive innovation within organizations is to remove the fear of failure. The fear of failure can lead corporate innovation teams to only pursue safe bets.

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Why teaching entrepreneurship students "idea generation" skills is so hard, and what to do about it. More at www.TeachingEntrepreneurship.org

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Business ideas must satisfy a wide range of criteria to be tenable. Many businesses fail soon after start-up because the idea - the impetus - is not commercially viable and cannot sustain a profit-making enterprise.

Business ideas must satisfy a wide range of criteria to be tenable. Many businesses fail soon after start-up because the idea - the impetus - is not commercially viable and cannot sustain a profit-making enterprise.

What is a business idea?

Broken down, a business idea is the reason for setting up a firm. It drives everything about the company, from what products and services are offered to how these products are marketed. This idea doesn't need to be unique, but it must have the potential to capture part of its target market. Put another way, it must offer something different from companies already working in the marketplace otherwise their credentials and head start will make it practically impossible for you to compete.

Types of potential business idea:

A gap in the market

New product, service or invention

Innovative solution to an every day problem

An interest or hobby that can be monetised

Utilised skills you've learned in your career

Enough of a market

There needs to be sufficient demand for your product or services or you won't be able to generate any profit. If the market is growing then this is even better as investors are more likely to contribute and there's more chance of your business growing in the future. Your market must also be sustainable; do not piggyback on trends as these wax and wane regularly, potentially leaving your business with no customers. Market research is essential to check if your business idea is viable; your market should not be devoid of players but neither should it be saturated. Read our guide to conducting market research for more information.

Able to generate a profit

Business idea must not only sound good; they must be commercially viable. Unless you can prove your idea can generate serious profit, it's unlikely investors will back you. This is where research is essential; you need to find out how much it'll cost to make your product and how much you'll sell it for, factoring it essential costs such as salaries, manufacturing costs, expenses and raw materials. If your idea can't turn a profit then you either need to pick another idea or find out why it won't be profitable and take steps to monetise it. Speaking to an experienced businessperson may help.

Potential for further growth

The best businesses don't only turn a profit but also show potential for further growth, whether this manifests as an expanded product range or activity in new markets. This is why operating in an expanding sector is preferable as you'll be more able to take advantage of emerging marketing avenues and ensure your reach is always maximised. The web is another very important topic; if you can't leverage the Internet to increase sales and expand your customer base then you may have problems in the future.

Serves a purpose

Products must solve a problem or serve a purpose or there's unlikely to be any demand. Customers must feel there is long-term value in your products or will be unlikely to buy from you. Also, this value must be clear - murky benefits will be difficult to sell. Unless you can quickly and clearly prove your products not only solve a problem, but also do so more efficiently than products supplied by your competitors, you'll have a hard time selling your services.

Commercial viability

Your business idea must work within the constraints of a start-up business. Conceptually, ideas may look like money-makers but unless they're able to be made and sold profitably and linearly then it will be next to impossible to commercialise the idea. Likewise, inventions may require such large amounts of start-up capital to render them untenable. If your business idea focuses on a product, speak extensively to manufacturers before starting-up to ensure you can get the product produced cheaply enough in the early stages. If you can't, it's time to have a rethink.

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What makes a good business idea? | Workspace ®

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What makes a good business idea?. Workspace is the leading provider of commercial business premises across the capital. Ideal for dynamic businesses looking to make their mark.

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The world's most successful creative minds and entrepreneurs all have one thing in common: they benefit from innovative thinking. Some people come up with a truly game-changing idea and they use that idea as the basis for a startup, which then can create an entirely new industry. Others use their innovative brains to solve problems in creative new ways, or to get the edge over a top competitor.

Innovative ideas are valuable, but for most of us, they're rare and nearly impossible to force. What does it take to come up with a truly innovative idea, and can you optimize your environment to help you generate more innovative ideas?

To start, let's delineate and clarify the different types of innovation from which you can benefit. Innovation can occur across many different scales, from system innovation to ground-level innovation. Big-picture system innovation requires you to rethink entire systems and bureaucracies from the ground up, or possibly come up with groundbreaking ideas that create new industries. There are also smaller-scale forms of innovative thinking; for example, you might figure out a new way to butter toast in the morning that saves you 45 seconds of effort.

We also need to differentiate between innovative organizations and innovative people. Innovative people, at the individual level, can come up with ideas that can improve their lives and change their environment. For an innovative organization to emerge, it needs the power of innovative individuals combined with internal mechanisms that allow those individuals and their ideas to thrive.

If you want to master innovative thinking for yourself and for your employees, you need to create environments that stimulate creativity and allow "outside the box thinking."

Allow more downtime.

It's commonly accepted that people tend to come up with their best ideas in the shower, but why is this the case? Science suggests it's because we're bored. When our minds aren't occupied with anything particularly interesting or important, they wander and that's when completely novel ideas can strike. If you want to think in a more innovative way, try giving yourself more downtime where you aren't focused on anything.

Encourage interaction.

People think in different ways and exposing yourself to intellectually diverse groups encourages you to think in new ways. The more people you talk to, and the more ideas and perspectives you see, the more creatively you'll come to think.

Get stimulated.

Innovative inspiration can strike you anywhere, from any stimulus, so get stimulated. Movies, TV shows, books, podcasts, works of art, and even nature can all help you get inspired, so find something that interests you and piques your creative thinking.

Learn from other innovative thinkers.

Find some truly innovative minds that inspire you and figure out what drives them. They may have certain habits, certain hobbies, or certain approaches to learning that help them think in dynamic new ways; try these techniques for yourself to see if they work for you just as well.

Those new individual ideas may not mean much in the context of an organization unless that organization is equipped to handle them. Here's how you can make your organization benefit more from individual innovation:

Embrace ideas from all people and all levels.

If you collect ideas from every member of your organization, you'll find innovative ideas almost constantly. For that reason, it's important to give everyone a chance to speak up and embrace ideas no matter where they originate.

Adopt a mentality that favors change and growth.

Old, massive organizations tend to be sluggish and unmovable. In some ways, this is a strength. It also means you're unable to adopt new ideas with any sort of agility. Your organization needs to be capable of turning on a dime and making big changes for ideas worth pursuing.

Encourage autonomy.

While it's certainly an advantage to have a consistent company culture that affects all people at all levels in the company, it's also advantageous to encourage isolation and autonomy. Let department leaders and supervisors make their own decisions and changes as they see fit, rather than forcing them to submit every idea to bureaucratic review; chances are, you'll see a lot more change and growth this way.

Innovation isn't entirely straightforward, and there's no way for you to force innovative ideas to come to you manually. However, if you're willing to make some changes to the way you think, act, and interact with others, you can create an environment that naturally fosters more innovative, game-changing ideas from the ground up.

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How to Come Up With More Truly Innovative Ideas

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The world's most successful creative minds and entrepreneurs all have one thing in common: they benefit from innovative thinking. Some...

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To my left, a business strategist and industrial designer heatedly debate the financial and social benefits of a "hand-me-down, doodle-me-up" backpack program to enable creative reuse in key lifestage moments across childhood. At the other end of the table, a designer prototypes an underground music genre using sound libraries sampled from hybrid species. This moment is so very weird, so very thoughtful, and so very much where dreaming up new and disruptive ideas begins.

When IDEO speculates about the future, we often start by gathering around a table and giving ourselves the creative oxygen and open space to explore the questions of tomorrow- What will we need to thrive in the climate era? How can we humanize technology?-with gluesticks and glitter, not just whiteboards and whitepapers. It is a practice of imagining with our hands, building to think, and blending strategic hunches with wild cognitive leaps. We're following the wisdom of our PlayLab, who have long argued that intentional play helps liberate thinking, slipping past the rational mind and inviting all the senses to be part of the conversation. This afternoon's makeathon was only the beginning of IDEO's larger efforts to reimagine tomorrow. Tomorrow we diagram. But tonight we dance.

Some call it ideation. I call it rebellion.A re-wilding of imagination. As a pink-haired hacker kid in the 90s, squirreled behind my CRT in the early days of digital, I was intoxicated by the electricity of possibility crackling in the air. Digital was going to change everything. Cut to today, and it's easy to feel that same kinetic energy all around us.
Design invites us to escape the gravity of the present in pursuit of the possible.
As we move through the Climate Era, organizations and individuals are beginning to recognize that, as the French writer and filmmaker Chris Marker put it, " Rarely has reality needed so much to be reimagined." Design helps conjure new possibilities from the air, bringing them down from the cloud of heady theory, up from the soil of day-to-day aspirations, and into the hands of people. When done well, design fundamentally redistributes the balance of power, changing both who is at the table, and what is created. It connects the street to the skyscrapers, the mothers to the policymakers, the ethically opinionated 12-year-old to the corporation, the makers to the strategists. When we shake off these divisions and imagine together, we all become magicians, conjurers, rebels. Together, we refuse to simply accept the world as is, and instead help collectively reimagine it as it could be.

For decades, IDEO has imagined what it would feel like to inhabit the future. As our timeline for implementing climate solutions and contending with emergent technologies grows shorter, we are recommitting to that practice-creating compelling, tangible visions for how we will live, work, create, and relate to one another, the planet, and to the world around us.
Dear future, we've got your back. Biodegradable glitter and all.

The Day's Agenda
Our speculation about what opportunities will arise as we do business in the Climate Era kicked off with an in-person makeathon.

To set the scene, we hosted a conversation in our San Francisco office between ​​ Alexander Rose, Executive Director of the Long Now Foundation, and IDEOer Tanja Dzambazova. Since 1997, Rose, Danny Hillis and The Long Now team have led a range of efforts encouraging imagination at the timescale of civilization-the next and last 10000 years-including a monumental, all mechanical 10,000 Year Clock. It was an excellent primer on long-term thinking.

Flush with inspiration, we gathered around a long table littered with raw materials: leather and felt scraps, leaves and twigs, markers, and glue guns. We gave each team a brief and an hour to rapidly prototype speculative products, services, and experiences for a potential client. The point in a makeathon isn't to come up with a perfectly viable concept, it's to slip beyond a rigid, legacy mindset and enter a more flexible, generative mode where you can come up with new-to-the-world ideas.
OUR BRIEFS

1. Electrify Everything
How might we live differently in a world that is running off of renewable energy? What is unlocked in a world where all industrial machines, homes, neighborhoods, and appliances are intelligent, efficient, connected, and powered by renewables?

2. Waste-Less Living
What might everyday life look like if the products we use, clothes we wear, and industry standards and systems are waste-less, adaptable, and regenerative? What could more intentional "design for immortality" look like?

3. Frontline Futures
How might we design new experiences, products, and services for those on the frontline of climate impacts? What new mitigation, prevention, and adaptation opportunities can we surface through a human-centered lens rooted in the experience of those most at risk?

4. Carbon Transparency
How might we live differently in a world where carbon transparency (scope 1,2 & particularly 3) is fully complete? What is unlocked in a world where consistent measurement and blockchain logging produces a live carbon score for any object or activity on earth?

5. New Nature Rites
How might a globally viral belief system responsive to climate change create new rituals, symbols, events, holidays, and social narratives?

With those prompts in hand, teams split off and started making. Here's some of the output.

Remember, these aren't meant to be realizable ideas. They are jumping off points-kernels of business opportunities that we'd like to explore further:

Client: Target
Theme: Electrify Everything

Design Concept: "Anti-Extinction Kit: Fireflies Edition"
A set of globe lights powered by fireflies is one in a series of kits to help re-nature our backyards and cultivate anti-extinction habitats. As climate change starts to affect food sources and safe places for firefly larvae dwindle, these backyard accessories are safe havens for fireflies to fuel up, lay their eggs, and lend their glow to light up a backyard. Also comes in glowing fungal and pond editions.

Client: Amazon
Theme: Waste-less Living

Design Concept: "Trash Rabbit: A rewards based packaging system"
An on-demand service that comes to your home and breaks down your trash-preserving valuable metals and other raw materials, disposing toxic elements, and processing recyclable elements. Users earn rewards and cash back when they purchase simpler, mono-material products.

Client: Ford Carbon Transparency

Design Concept:
A globe you wear as a necklace, like a Magic 8 ball. When shaken, it displays the most efficient, carbon-neutral way to get from point A to B, offering options that require tradeoffs and offsets. An intuitive sensory companion helps you make hard choices.

Client: REI, Patagonia Nature Rites

Design Concept: "Intergenerational rites of passage"
A program in which gear is intentionally designed as a blank canvas to be passed down from generation to generation with a hand-me-down or yearbook element: You customize the backpack, sleeping bag, jacket, and other products with badges and add-ons to celebrate rites of passage like a first camping trip.

Client: Dating apps Carbon Transparency

Design Concept: "Carbon Dating"
Matchmaking service based on shared environmental goals and behaviors. This is a time in which your carbon score makes you more desirable. Benefits include having similar habits and values-making moving in together a lot easier. Unintended consequences include creating an elitist competitive set where having the lowest score becomes more important than other human qualities.

Client: United NationsNew Nature Rites

Wheat Pins Alliance
Made with the last piece of non-GMO wheat on earth, it's our new cross-national symbolic pic worn to show allegiance to the earth. Due to monoculture farming practices, a future fungus wiped out the world's wheat supply including GMO and non-GMO strains that weren't strong enough to fight it

Lingering Scent Library
Last of their kind scents that were collected and stored in anticipation of climate change-the smell of snow on granite, an aroma of crushed almonds-that are offered to diplomats to remind them of what has been lost and what is still to be protected.

The New Earth Flag
Emblazoned with the shapes and colors of our last remaining shrubs, it represents Earth's ecotone as it becomes increasingly desertified.

Will we see these ideas come to fruition? Probably not. But like any thought experiment that asks "what if..." they can lead to new ways of thinking and future business opportunities. The organizations that can anticipate what people will want and need in the next 10 years are the ones who will thrive in the Climate Era. What will technology make possible? What will dwindling resources make scarce? What will it take for humans to adopt planet-friendly solutions at scale?

Design's role is to consider all of those factors and lovingly break, shape, and remake. To escape the gravity of the present in pursuit of the possible. And that starts by making a giant mess.

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The Messy Business of Coming Up With New Ideas

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Every opportunity starts with a prototype

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This lesson plan will help you increase the quality and creativity of the ideas your students work on.

As we've talked about before, we know that most successful entrepreneurs don't focus on products, they focus on problems. So idea generation should really start with identifying the problems we can solve.

Successful business ideas solve problems by addressing the emotional needs of their customers.

Whether by solving problems, or offering pleasurable experiences, all successful business ideas resolve an emotional desire of customers.

Knowing that, one way to come up with business ideas would be to brainstorm lots of different options, and then hope that one of them will resolve an emotional need of your customers. Of course that means your students spend a lot of time coming up with ideas - most of which will have no substantial emotional impact on their customers. Instead, they will go the other way around.

Your students start by understanding the emotional needs of potential customers, and then use their needs to come up with ideas on ways to resolve them.

For this post we will be using the Your Ideal Customers worksheet from the Lesson Plan below.

This exercise will show your students how to develop meaningful ideas that solve problems by helping them...

1. Identify the customers they are ideally suited to serve.

2. Hypothesize the emotional needs of those customers.

By the time they're done with this exercise, they will have a set of potential customers they can serve, and some ideas about problems they can solve for them.

Step 1

Your students will make a list of the groups of people they currently belong to, and all the groups they used to belong to. Each is a group of people whose problems your students understand better than the average person. If they serve members of this group, your students have a competitive advantage because they know them better than other people. The more segments they come up with, the more problems (i.e. ideas) they can come up with. Tell your students to come up with at least 10.

Step 2

Your students will list the groups of people they are not part of, but are excited to help. In this list, the passion your students have for helping these people will be their unique advantage.

Your students don't have to know these segments intimately, they just have to want to serve them.

Step 3

From all the groups of people brainstormed in steps 1-2, students pick the three they would be most interested in helping solve a problem they are facing. Next, it's time to brainstorm what problems, or emotional needs, your students might be able to help them resolve.

Step 4

Students will brainstorm the biggest challenges members of the first group face. Once your students have a couple problems written down, imagine "A Day in the Life" of one of these people. What's it like when they wake up? What do they do after that? Think about how the rest of their day is affected by being a member of this group. Once your students have a rough sense of their average day, ask them to try to identify the hardest part of their day. This process may help your students identify even more challenges they can help them solve.

Steps 5-6

Students will repeat that process for step the second and third potential customers "segments." In this scenario, we're using the word "segments" to describe a group of people with a common set of problems that might ultimately become your students' customers.

Step 7

Go to the second page of the worksheet, and list they three potential segments again. For each segment, use the questions to identify emotional situations that either cause members of the group pain or pleasure. These situations are additional scenarios that your students might be able to build a business around resolving for the particular customers - which they can test in future exercises.

Steps 8-9

Looking at all of the challenges on the first page of the exercise, and the emotional situations on the second page of the exercise, students should identify:

The situations they hypothesize are the most emotionally intense for their potential customers. Circle the two most intense situations.

The problems or emotions they are most excited to resolve for their customers. Put stars next to two of those.

Step 10

Looking at the problems or emotional situations circled and starred, students should choose three combinations of customers and problems/emotional situations they would like to explore going forward. These will serve as their first "Customer" and "Value Proposition" hypotheses, and they will use them as the basis for their first set of business model experiments! If their assumptions are right, they may have just identified their ideal customers, and how they're going to serve them!

Summary

Your students just identified the customers they are most passionate about helping, and the problems/emotions they're most excited to help them resolve. In doing so, your students identified several potentials paths that could lead them toward creating a profitable business. By focusing on the people and them as inspiration for business ideas, your students have an infinite source of potentially successful businesses to choose from now, or in the future.

Get the "Your Ideal Customers" Lesson Plan

We've created a detailed "Your Ideal Customers" lesson plan. This exercise walks you, and your students, through the process, step-by-step.

It's free for any/all entrepreneurship teachers, so you're welcome to share it.

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Missed Our Recent Articles?

Whether you are new to our community of entrepreneurship educators, or you've been contributing for years, we wanted to give you a list of the posts our community finds most valuable:

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Improving Student Idea Generation - Teaching Entrepreneurship

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Build ideas around the customers you are most passionate about helping, and the problems you are most excited to help them resolve.

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CEO of It's about the beauty of all things transformational. Make money and meaning without compromise.
We all believe that we are unique, even though we have never tested that notion. I have also never met someone who thinks that their idea is not unique. However, we all know that the one who implements an idea and does the work will find out one way or the other. But the ones that take their ideas to market and succeed are those who share the following seven common principles:

1. Ideas coming from your experience are bounded by your experience. So, you might need to gain more experience when you want to solve bigger problems. If your ideas only come from your experience, you are coming from a somewhat narrow focus. I meet entrepreneurs who, when asked why they believe their products will succeed, say that it is because they would use the products. That is the reason why products can fail - they are dependent on the experiences of the person creating them. Instead, consider others' experiences, especially those of people you may not normally relate to. The narcissist solves problems for themselves; the transformative leader finds injustices to solve for others.

2. Ideas that are just ideas are just ideas. If you struggle to execute your ideas, there could be a few reasons. For instance, you might be thinking at too high of a level and the idea is just too impractical. Your idea could require more development, and you miss the product/market fit. Or it is just a bad idea. Beware, because if you design an idea that is easy to implement, you may be too conforming; if you dream too much and cannot implement, you may be too unrealistic. It is about getting what I call the "three little bears syndrome" just right when you find the bed that fits you perfectly to rest your idea.

3. An idea without a plan is just an idea. Some of us are planners - we never start executing until we have planned everything out. Others are leaders who see their vision and jump on it. Some plan just enough to execute and learn along the way. Plan out what you are going to do with the idea, test it against many hypotheses and then get it into action right away. Everybody thinks their children are the best in the world, and justifiably so. But when your idea is your baby, beware. It may not be that beautiful to others and you must listen and have a plan to ensure that the beauty within escapes when it grows.

4. Ask your friends if they like you, and they will never let you down. Do not ask your friends if your idea is worth it. Ask them if they would invest in it. Then, they will show you how much they believe in your idea. They will tend to the affirmative when asked to enable an idea because they do not want to reject you. But you are not your idea; you are much bigger than that. So, do not ask only your friends - ask the real customers who you are building the idea for. Also, do not just ask them about the idea - ask them if they will pay for it and how much. Many people will say great things about something until they are asked to fork out money.

5. If your idea is not worth your time, why expect it to be worth the time of others? If you submit an idea, then you must commit to working on it. The most common excuse is that "I don't have the time." This can be interpreted to mean, "I don't want to waste my time on non-value-added actions." Well, if that is the case, then why should anyone else?

6. An idea pitched in an elevator falls to the ground. Very often, I get the "I've got a good one for you" comment in the elevator. It takes six floors, and you feel good you divulged the world's most compelling idea. But I will not pick it up until I see your plan, insight and tenacity because an idea cannot be great without a powerful entrepreneur or passionate leader behind it. You may not be that leader in your mind, but when passion hits you, everyone can be a leader.

7. A courageous idea is always worth the time. Often, we pick safe bets because we do not want to risk much. But in idea generation, the wildest solutions to the currently unsolved problems are appealing because they tend to challenge the status quo. Then, one can turn the statement "How to solve A" into the question "Why do we even need A in the first place?"

I have reviewed and heard over 5,000 ideas in the last 10 years. The ideas that struck me the most were not because they might be a good market fit; rather, they inspired me to investigate them further. I want to believe that we are all born unique, but something happens to us as we grow in business and life. We become similar in thinking, approaches and our discernment of what we see, speak, taste, smell and touch. Ideas are our inner voice reminding us of our uniqueness. Listen to them when they awaken you.

Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?

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Council Post: Is Your Idea Worthwhile? Seven Ways To Discover If You Have "Idea Mojo"

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CEO of It's about the beauty of all things transformational. Make money and meaning without compromise. We all believe that we are unique, even though we have never tested that notion. I have also never met someone who thinks that their idea is not unique.

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Idea generation tools for creative professionals By Juggi Ramakrishnan and Todd McCracken

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Video - Steven Johnson - Where Good Ideas Come From 

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Video - Steven Johnson - Where Good Ideas Come From 

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WHERE GOOD IDEAS COME FROM by Steven Johnson

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What are some great business ideas that you wouldn't mind giving away for free?

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Answer (1 of 422): Start a business online! Here is my side hustle which I spend around 4 Hrs/week to make $4000/mo I see many people posting about what business to start but no one really seems to explain HOW to start your business.

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Article - Why Your Idea Isn't Worth Anything

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Article - Why Your Idea Isn't Worth Anything

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We're not venture capitalists, but since our business involves partnering with companies to build and grow businesses, we end up in a lot of conversations with entrepreneurs who say they have a "great idea." We've written previously about why execution is everything and ideas by themselves are not all that valuable. Far more important is a solid business model that will make money.

It's astonishing how many entrepreneurs and even corporate executives focus on the great idea while looking past the fundamentals of how a business will make money and provide a return to capital providers.

Some of the entrepreneurs we've spoken with recently have pretty good ideas. All they need is $2 million to get it started.

First thing's first. We immediately ask them 10 questions to see if the idea is worth our time--just as any investor would. These questions usually distinguish the CEOs and entrepreneurs who have a good shot at being successful from those who will not:

1. Who is your customer?

2. What are their needs and why will they buy your product or service?

3. How can you prove that the need exists--either through an existing market or a proof of concept?

4. What is the customer willing to pay for your product/service and how do you know they are willing to pay this amount?

5. Once you have built your business (presumably that's why you need the money), what will it take for you to deliver your product or service on an ongoing basis?

6. What is the estimated cost to deliver your product/service to the customer on an ongoing basis?

7. What am I buying for my investment? In other words, what will I "own" when you are finished spending my money?

8. What additional investment will be required once you burn through the initial capital investment?

9. What would it take to do it for less? Could we invest less and learn more before committing the full amount of capital?

10. If I believe in the above business model, why should I believe that you are the ideal person/team to build it for me? Would I be better off investing in the business model with someone else?

Each of these simple questions can be answered in a sentence or two. Most seasoned investors will tell you that at least nine times out of 10, the average entrepreneur is too busy focusing on the "idea" to think through the basic business model. Those who have a solid understanding will easily find investors who are willing to back them.

Share your thoughts and questions with us at karlandbill@avondalestrategicpartners.com.

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We're not venture capitalists, but since our business involves partnering with companies to build and grow businesses, we end up in a lot of conversations with entrepreneurs who say they have a "great idea." We've written previously about why execution is everything and ideas by themselves are not all that valuable.

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Answer (1 of 43): Virtually never. Since this question about ideas keeps coming up, I'll try a different approach to help non-startup investors better understand why we virtually never invest in ideas. Unlike some (most?) other investors, I believe a great idea is necessary. But it's not enough...

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Jim Kalbach
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Generating ideas is fun - addictive even. I should know. As a design lead, I've facilitated many ideation sessions in my career.

You've probably experienced this, too: a team gets together for a few hours or days to brainstorm ideas. "Go for volume," they're instructed. At the end, there may be hundreds of ideas on the workshop room wall. Success is tacitly measured by the number of sticky notes used.

But volume of ideas is rarely the problem in most companies. I've never come across an organization that doesn't have enough ideas. In fact, most are swimming in ideas they don't know how to act on. Yet, we continue to engage in exercises that add more and more ideas to the pile.

Part of the problem is an erroneous Darwinistic view of the idea lifecycle. We assume that the best ideas will simply rise to the surface on their own merit. If you can just collect enough ideas, the chances of a few of them surviving will simply increase mathematically.

That's a false hope. The best ideas don't always win.

Instead, natural forces within any organization act to keep ideas down, regardless whether they're good or not. Chief among these is uncertainty, a leading idea antibody within enterprises.

New concepts represent a gamble to risk averse managers, even if they are well-expressed in a high-fidelity prototype.

Many ideas seem great at the time we have them. "This is it! We're going to save the company!" we think with confidence. But when hard decisions need to be made and those innocent ideas hit reality, even the best ones wither quickly.

Michael Schrage, MIT fellow and author of The Innovator's Hypothesis, goes one step further. He believes good ideas are harmful. He writes:

"Good ideas are actually the enemy of productivity. A focus on good ideas inflicts terrible damage-operational and emotional-on good managers and good businesses alike. Business ideaholics, not unlike meth addicts and other junkies, are always looking for the next fix."

Good ideas overpromise and underdeliver, Schrage contends. They distract our energy away from the "ugly duckling" ideas that could turn into swans, if given the attention.

Part of the problem is that we place too much on the face value of ideas. In reality, it's difficult (if not impossible) to recognize a great idea in its infancy. We assume there will be some "a-ha" moment when everything feels just right.

The history of innovation, however, shows that even the most profound innovations weren't recognizable as such at first. Scott Berkun makes warns of the false notion of epiphany in his book The Myths of Innovation. He writes:

Most innovations come without epiphanies, and when powerful moments do happen, little knowledge is granted for how to find the next one. Even in the myths, Newton had one apple and Archimedes had one Eureka. To focus on the magic moments is to miss the point. The goal isn't the magic moment: it's the end result of a useful innovation.

Take the Wright Brother's first flight. There were only a handful of people watching the historic event, and it took them six years to even sell the first airplane. No one saw a multibillion dollar industry stemming from their invention. It's just hard to recognize a truly great idea in its infancy.

Still, we're obsessed with the origin of ideas. What is the inspiration for having a great idea? How can we tie insights about human needs and desires into ideas?

Just look at Steven Johnson's book, Where Good Ideas Come From, for instance. This is a fantastically detailed look at how ideas get started. He investigates the rise of the most significant innovations of mankind and their origins.

Johnson recommends that organizations "...create an open database of hunches, the Web 2.0 version of the traditional suggestion box. A public hunch database makes every passing idea visible to everyone else in the organization, not just management."

We should of course be concerned with the natural evolution of ideas and pay attention to where they come from. But that's not enough. Successful companies are able to convert ideas to delivered value.

We need to consider where ideas go to in organizations as much as where they come from.

A "VALLEY OF DEATH" FOR IDEAS

In the startup world, the term "the valley of death" refers to the difficulty of covering negative cash flow in early stages of a company. It's the period of time it takes for their new product or service to earn revenue and become a viable business. Startups survive on early stage investment from "Angel investors."

Ideas have a valley of death, as well. Sure, R&D labs protect nascent concepts from the financial forces of the business world. But ultimately a go/no-go decision will be on business viability.
Valley of death: applies to idea in any organization
Ideas follow a similar path into the valley death, but perhaps at an even quicker rate. In many cases, the lifespan of ideas is only hours. They die in the valley immediately after a brainstorming session.

Relying too much on ideas alone asks our business partners to take a leap of faith. Instead we need to prove the market viability of new concepts in a conclusive way.

Set the right expectations around ideas. You won't go from sticky notes the workshop room wall directly to implementation. (I actually had this happen to me on one project). And generating cash flow within a quarter or even a year is also unrealistic. Instead, it may take several years or even decades before ideas come to full fruition as revenue generating products and services.

Bill Buxton, well-known computer scientist and principal researchers with Microsoft, shows us there is a long nose to innovation. The lifecycle of ideas after they've been hatched requires both patience and hard work. He writes:
The long nose of innovation
"An idea may well start with an invention, but the bulk of the work and creativity is in that idea's augmentation and refinement. The newer the idea, the coarser the granularity of most analysis, and the more likely people are to say, "oh, that's just like X" or "that's been done before," without any appreciation for how much work and innovation is involved in taking an idea from concept to wide practice.

Take the iPod. Contrary to popular belief, Apple didn't invent digital music players. If fact, the first digital music player was created in the early 80s, nearly 20 years prior to the iPod. And the Diamond Rio pre-dates the iPod by several years as the first commercial digital music player.

Naturally, organizations strive to shorten the long nose of innovation. It starts with a recognition that thoughts expressed on a sticky note are merely nascent ideas, and there's a long, long way to go.

Innovation is re-invention. A lot of it. Ideas go through many iterations of conceptual, technical, and business development before they are the shining examples we point to today.

READY. FIRE! AIM.

To be clear: ideation and brainstorming do play an important role in our teams and organizations. They bring people together to creatively envision a future that doesn't yet exist. There is also engagement on a personal level, strengthening collaboration and bringing teams closer.

What's more, there is also alignment of perspectives around a common cause. Groups form a shared sense of reality by working through problems together creatively. This is all important for the collective health of an organization, and I'm not advocating curtailing these types of activities.

The disappointment, however, comes after the fact, when everyone goes back to their "regular work." The energy and excitement a brainstorming session can quickly fade. The hope of getting a new idea through vanishes instantly.

First of all, "workshop amnesia" sets in. Within days workshop participants are asking, "What did we decide?" and "Who owns what?" and "How are we going to find time to do any of this work?".

But also, the momentum needed to get out of the valley of death for ideas is lacking. Remember: there forces working against even you best ideas-uncertainty, short-term financial goals, and lack of resources.

Getting new ideas through the normal decision-making gates of an organization involves commitment, time and perseverance. It requires action first in order to build momentum to the point where ideas have a chance. It requires experimentation.
1. Manage ideation as an ongoing project
Yes, you want valid, comprehensive insights from the market as your starting point. And yes, you need to get the right group of people together to creatively problem solve. But don't omit planning for a strong follow-through well in advance and have a path to move forward on.

Luckily, there are some fairly simple things you can do to keep the momentum going:
2. Aim for experiments as outcomes
Invite a project manager to your ideation or brainstorming session. After participating in the action, their primary function is then to break down the outcomes into actionable steps. Have them create a plan for the continued development of ideas as they emerge.
We believe providing <product/service/feature> will have <benefit> for <customers>. We'll know this when we see <measurable outcome>.
Bringing in project management from the outset shows a recognition of the challenges ahead. It also shows commitment from a broader set of stakeholders in the organization. Idea generation is just the beginning.
3. Make small bets
Your innocent idea on a sticky note is not ready for implementation, nor for making a final decision. Instead, target experiments as the outcomes of a work session. First, express ideas as hypotheses:

This takes some humility, but sets the right expectations. You won't go from brainstorming to implementation without proving the business value first (i.e., emerging from the valley of death). Coming out of a brainstorming session with statements that begin with "we believe" shows you don't know if the idea has legs yet. Experiments let you do that.
4. Commit resources before you start
Ironically, decision makers are attracted to big ideas. They want a home run and are swinging for the fences. "I want the next iPod for the our industry," they'll request. There is this glorified notion that big ideas are better.

Instead, make a lot of small bets. You don't know how big an idea will be. Big ideas have less and less chance of getting implemented because the stakes are higher. What's more, sometimes small ideas morph into a valuable business idea.
5. Conduct cheap tests
Get a commitment for continued experimentation in advance, even before you start generating ideas. Line up small teams who'll have dedicated time to conduct experiments. Clarify the budget in advance as well. A cheap experiment may only take 4-8 weeks to complete and require a budget of a few thousand dollars.

Give that team complete autonomy to conduct experiments. The goal is to get real-world feedback and understanding market reactions, business implications, and technical implications at once.

Be prepared to re-invent over and over again. After getting real-world feedback, your original idea may not even resemble the initial concept.

This need not take much investment. Ask yourself, what's the shortest possible way to get results about the potential impact of your idea? A simple set of experiment is all that's needed in most cases- a simple proof of concept that validates your hypothesis or not.

For instance, after one workshop I conducted a few years ago, we developed both an explanatory video and a landing page. Visitors could view the video and then sign up to be notified for a beta release. There was a short, three-question survey we introduced after signing up as well.
"FAKE STOREFRONT" EXPERIMENT TO COLLECT EARLY FEEDBACK AND DEVELOP IDEAS.
From these touchpoints we were able to measure traffic to the website over a given period of time, the number of sign-ups, and responses to our survey. We also spoke with selected individuals to better understand their motivations and what excited them about our value proposition.

The concept was transformed all along the way. It eventually didn't resemble its original form. Our great idea turned out to not really be a viable business or stand-alone product. Instead, it was really more suitable as a new capability within an existing flagship product.

LONG LIVE IDEAS!

To reiterate: generating ideas is healthy for any organization. It brings people together and provides a safe forum to exercise creative muscles.

But ultimately ideas themselves are overrated. Business decisions don't get made based on a sketch or half-baked description of a concept. Organizations need a more realistic view of how ideas survive (or don't). It starts with the recognition that forces will be working against you from the beginning.

Avoid the valley of death for ideas. This includes managing outcomes as projects, identifying hypotheses (not concepts for implementation), and following through action.

Cheap experiments trump good ideas every time. This takes commitment at all levels of the organization, but the results are much more satisfying than putting too much faith in ideas alone.

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Generating ideas is fun - addictive even. I should know. As a design lead, I've facilitated many ideation sessions in my career. You've probably

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Anthony Onesto

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General Manager @ Digital Innovation Company

I pride myself on being an "idea guy." I often contemplate changing things that are working, just for the sake of breaking things. My years working in startups is likely the reason why I love being in this space. In these companies, there was no roadmap, especially during the first dot-com boom. No one ever did streaming video on a mobile phone before, so we were trailblazing on the product, but also organization.

In my last year at Razorfish, I helped to build something called Proto, which was a play on the word prototype. It was an "innovation as a service" offering. We'd bring this offering to clients challenged with innovation. They weren't sure where to start, how to start, or even what process to follow. They've read the latest articles on lean startup or agile methodologies or saw the most recent unicorn news on a startup that just disrupted X or Y. Maybe they even caught a glimpse of Salim Ismael's talk about Exponential Organizations and were like "now what?"

So like all good consulting companies, we attempted to fill the gap. At first, we realized that the requests were more for an event aka " Hackathon" because that was what others were doing. Soon we figured out that is more about developing new programs, products, and lines of services than hosting an event. We would never get there with a 24-hour event where sleep-deprived developers, designers, and strategists would provide an MVP. That could be a goal, but we needed to define the path first.

We found there was no absence of ideas. In fact, everyone had ideas. Ideas are everywhere in an organization from the CEO to front-line employees. In fact, some of the biggest game-changing ideas come from within the organization. But this is not a post on democratizing your idea generation (which is a good idea, think Kodak), but a post on what to do with all these ideas. How do you pick the RIGHT ones? More importantly, how do organizations eliminate the WRONG things? Well, we had an idea at Proto, and in the spirit of Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson, we decided to Race WITH the Machines.

There's a small group of super smart data scientists located in Portland in a company called Growth Sciences. They came up with a plan on how to de-risk the choices companies make when investing in a product or new service. At the center of their process is the MESE or Market Exaptation Simulation Engine (yea, say that three times fast). In simple terms, it's a proprietary system that uses real-time data and pattern recognition to model businesses in their market. It allows companies to assess the statistical likelihood of new product launches, acquisitions, and other investment activities. I call it the IDEA KILLER.

If you strip down the fancy words and data jargon, you find at the core the system tells you whether or not that idea just brought to you by your head of design, recent Harvard MBA, or even your trusted head of strategy is a good or bad idea. By using data science, you can premortem ideas before they even get to an MVP. Well, it's not that linear, but for storytelling, it works. In fact, their model predicted that Nike's Fuel Band would be a consumer success. It also predicted that Nike would retire it if it stayed within the walls of Nike. Here's what happened.

What if you can have ideas generated from every cubicle, workstation, field office, and retail store within your organization? What if you could take those ideas and filter them through a system, using data science and modeling, to essentially kill the bad ideas. The ideas that come out of the other side are likely to be the best, right?

On their site, Growth Science exclaims that an estimated 70-90% of corporate growth efforts typically fail. 90%! 9 out of 10 growth efforts fail!

While you don't want to be the idea killer, you do want to premortem ideas allowing the best ideas to flow through the process. This allows your executives to quantify decisions better and manage risk to deliver results faster and more consistently than your competitors.

General Manager @ Digital Innovation Company

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4 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Whether it's brainstorming a new company, a new product or a new service, most entrepreneurs love the idea-creation part of business more than anything. This brings out the inevitable fear of sharing, where entrepreneurs range from staying tight-lipped to shoving an NDA in front of anyone who wants to hear what they're up to.

It also begets the "how do I protect my idea?" question over and over. The answer is, "you don't" and the reason is that your ideas are basically worthless.

That's right: ideas have little to no value. It's the execution of the ideas that holds value. It's why Facebook is worth billions of dollars (although that valuation is a debate for another day) and why myriad other social networks aren't. It's why the same company can be worth nothing or millions at different points of its lifecycle or under different ownership.

Let me give you some insight.
Related: Attention Entrepreneurs: Compromise, But Never Compromise Your Standards
First, with rare exception, your idea already exists in some form. Most ideas are an improvement or a different take on an existing idea. Additionally, regardless of which components of your idea are actually "new," there are probably many others that have thought of it as well. This is a main reason why venture capitalists will not sign nondisclosure agreements. Frequently, the same ideas come to light independently at the same time or near the same time.

Moreover, the component of your idea that differentiates it -- you -- can't be replicated. You and your team are what differentiate how you frame a problem and its solution, the technology and other resources that you bring to the table and your willingness to do anything it takes to make it happen.

My favorite example in this space is Google. When Google started as a mere search engine, the idea to create a search engine was not new. There were many search engines that preceded Google, including OpenText, Magellan, Infoseek and Snap. What was different was the way the founders envisioned search, their competencies and, ultimately, their code. The idea for Google wasn't valuable, but the execution of Google was and remains so.

Speaking of execution, it is really all that matters in determining value. It's why VCs back founders more than anything -- they are investing in the people that they believe will execute well on any given idea. There are stupid ideas that become home runs (Snuggie, anyone?) and great business ideas that fall apart because of the execution (or lack thereof). There are also companies that have different fates under different management.
Related: Entrepreneurs Are Forgotten in the Minimum Wage Debate
If you know anything about mixed martial arts, you are probably familiar with the Ultimate Fighting Championship or "UFC" league. It was created by Semaphore Entertainment Group in 1993. As I explain in my book, The Entrepreneur Equation, it almost went bankrupt. Years later, two casino moguls -- Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta along with Dana White, the current UFC president -- bought out the struggling business. Less than a decade later, the UFC was valued at approximately $1 billion.

So, one company was once worth nothing and later worth $1 billion. It's because the idea for a mixed martial arts league was worth nothing. It was the execution that created the value.

Since I brought up my book, you may ask why I decided to copyright it if ideas have no value. The answer is straightforward: I didn't protect the idea of the book, I protected the final work product.

Here's the differentiation. My idea was to write a book around the framework of evaluating the risks and rewards of entrepreneurship. Had I done nothing with it, it would have no value. Only after writing the 80,000-plus words and then revising, editing and packaging it into a final product did I seek protection.

So, get over holding onto your ideas and get out there and do something with them. When you have put the time, effort and money into generating something of value, you can protect that, but don't let your fear of sharing ideas hold you back.
Related: The Best Type of Social Network Is a Phone Call Away

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4 min read Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. Whether it's brainstorming a new company, a new product or a new service, most entrepreneurs love the idea-creation part of business more than anything. This brings out the inevitable fear of sharing, where entrepreneurs range from staying tight-lipped to shoving an NDA in front of anyone who wants to hear what they're up to.

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Should Budding Entrepreneurs Share Their Ideas

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Should Budding Entrepreneurs Share Their Ideas

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There's a general school of thought among a number of new entrepreneurs that one should not share their business idea with anyone else. The reasoning behind this is that you need to protect your ideas and what you regard as your intellectual property.

On the face of it all it sounds like logically sound argument. A business is after all quintessentially an idea that has been executed into a product which hopefully has a large enough market to sustain its expenses.

New entrepreneurs network with the mentality that they will not share their ideas and try as extract as much value from their networking endeavour. This is where the logic behind the argument begins to fall away.

Criticism breeds critical thought. By not sharing your idea you cannot expect to get any real feedback on your idea. This doesn't necessarily mean that every startup can afford to plaster their secret algorithm on GitHub, but you can nevertheless learn a lot about transparency from the likes of Buffer.

As much everyone is told that you have to believe in your idea when no one else does, you cannot logically believe in an idea you have not tested in the social context.

The last thing on your mind should be worrying about whether or not people will steal your idea. If you are truly entrepreneurial you will know that ideas are as abundant as the hydrogen molecule. As the founder of the Javelin customer validation board, Trevor Owens, once said, "There's no marketplace for ideas."

You have to come to the realisation that the more you put your idea out there, the more people question your idea, the merits of your idea and even the reasoning behind it.

Adding value to your networking

The very purpose of networking in the entrepreneurial context is to connect with other entrepreneurs, Venture Capitalists and Angel Investors who could invest the necessary finances and expertise to turn their ideas into reality.

Aside from carrying an IP assignment agreement around, if you do not share your idea with anyone you cannot expect to fully exploit the networking process to your advantage. As a budding entrepreneur it is your job to turn that valueless idea of yours into a business. The defining characteristic of every successful entrepreneur is the ability to build something from nothing.

As an entrepreneur you are in the business of growing your network in a manner that is advantageous to your business idea. This includes establishing key partnerships, learning as much as possible about your market (through other entrepreneurs in some cases) and ultimately turning your idea into a business. Not sharing your idea only inhibits your ability to meet these objectives.

You are not Steve Jobs or Tim Cook hiding details of the new iPhone or Macbook prior to its keynote launch, the circumstances are entirely different.

The true value of a business

From a cold and realistic perspective no-one really cares about your idea enough to steal it. As Howard Aiken once wrote, "Don't worry about people stealing your ideas, if your ideas are good you will have to ram them down people's throats." The real value of your idea comes in its execution and the team behind the idea.

Assuming the unlikely did happen and your great idea was stolen and implemented by someone else you would be incredibly lucky because that highly unlikely occurrence would give you an opportunity to learn how to implement the idea better. Assuming your idea a pioneering idea one could argue that you are at an advantage if someone else steals your idea and implements it first.

You do not necessarily have to be first on the market to dominate or to have a successful business. If that was the case Altavista, ICQ and Friendster would be dominating the search engine, instant messaging and social networking market respectively.

The downside of being a pioneer is you have to convince a market that your product is something they need. This could mean spending large amounts of money marketing to teach and acquire customers. As the adage goes: "Pioneers get slaughtered, but settlers prosper."
Image by Julian Santacruz via Flickr

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Should budding entrepreneurs share their ideas? - Ventureburn

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There's a general school of thought among a number of new entrepreneurs that one should not share their business idea with anyone else. The reasoning behind this is that you need to protect your ideas and what you regard as your intellectual property. On the face of it all it sounds like logically sound argument.