How to Pick the Right Idea?

By: Gijs van Wulfen

Often times coming up with new ideas is not the hard part. In this example, a team came up with 752 new business ideas in a single workshop. But how can you pick the ‘right’ ideas? Gijs van Wulfen shares five lessons that he has learned in his innovation practice.

In my last post I wrote how an innovation team of G+J Publishers in Amsterdam generated 752 new business ideas in 4 hours. Of course, that is impressive. A lot of people asked me how to pick the right new business ideas from such a huge wall full of post-its.

In my innovation practice I learned five lessons, which I like to share with you.

1. Take your time. You should spent at least 2/3 of your ideation process on picking the right idea and 1/3 on getting a lot of ideas, instead of the other way around. Promising ideas at the front end of innovation are like rough diamonds, which look like other regular stones but will shine beautifully in the end. You have to take your time to be able to recognize them. And be sure to converge in several steps. Even in several workshops.

2. Have a clear vision of what you want. How can you choose ideas if you don’t know what you are looking for? Especially when converging, selecting and improving ideas is a group process you should have a shared vision on where you want to go. That’s why G+J Publishers started their innovation project with a clear and concrete innovation assignment, involving their top managers. From the start it was clear for which market/target group the innovations must be developed and which criteria these new concepts must meet. We used these concrete criteria to help to identify the right new business ideas.

3. Reflect from the customer’s perspective. In converging, selecting and improving ideas it is very important to criticize and challenge them from the perspective of their potential customers. And that’s why we organized idea reflection workshops with potential target groups last week. We will improve and pick the right ideas based on their feedback.

4. Make a mini new business case. Ideas are often too vague for managers to decide on. They are used to business cases: a clear, strategic, commercial, professional and financial plan for a new initiative or a new investment. So be sure you make a Mini New Business Case for attractive ideas. In this way you strengthen the persuasiveness of your ideas by highlighting the attractiveness of the strategic, commercial, and professional aspects of the innovative product or service.

5. Make a feasibility road map. Companies need to work on ideas which will be attractive and innovative on the one hand and at the same time are realistic and feasible on the short term on the other hand. You should pick great ideas, which combine attractiveness with feasibility. Otherwise your innovation won’t make it to the market. Make a feasibility road map, which will support the feasibility of your innovative product or service idea.

So how did we continue the ideation workshop, looking at this wall with 752 ideas? No we did not start grouping them. This would take you hours and you would lose a lot of energy spending time discussing non relevant ideas. Instead I asked each participant the read the innovation assignment and take two ideas (one evolutionary and one revolutionary) from the wall. We transformed these ideas in idea directions. After a second round and a final selection from the wall we ended up with 49 idea directions as first step in the convergence phase. The participants selected the 12 best ones fitting the assignment. We worked out these 12 idea directions as idea mind maps and on the second day of the ideation workshop as concrete concepts. The 12 concepts were improved a week later and were tested in 3 focus groups a week later. Right now four of them are worked out as mini new business cases in the final four weeks of the FORTH innovation expedition for G+J Publishers.

I hope my practical learnings will inspire you to become even more successful in the early stages of your innovation process.

By Gijs van Wulfen

Image: businessman holding lightbulb from Shutterstock.com