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Ideation is a process which helps to create new, creative solutions in life. It helps especially in everyday situations but mostly in your professional career, even more when you run your own business. Without ideation you may stop yours and your company development. That’s why it is so important to know few techniques which can help you to overcome difficulties and move on with your business.
What is ideation?
According to the Cambridge Dictionary ideation is “the activity of forming ideas in the mind”[1]. Another definition taken from Merriam-Webster says that ideation is “the capacity for or the act of forming or entertaining ideas”[2]. Longer description of the term we can find on Investopedia. It explains that ideation “refers to the process of developing and conveying prescriptive ideas to others, typically in a business setting. It describes the sequence of thoughts, from the original concept to implementation”[3].
Source: https://pixabay.com/pl/photos/w%c5%82%c4%85cz-wy%c5%82%c4%85cz-innowacji-lampa-2933029/
Ideation techniques – finding a new use for old things
There are many ideation techniques which you can use to develop your company. One of them is Questioning assumptions which focuses on finding new ways of development for the normal, well-known products. One example is a story of the Gary Fraser – producer of Mentadent toothpaste, who had to find innovative solution for such a simple thing like toothpaste to compete with big producers like e. g. Colgate. He decided to abandon traditional thinking about toothpastes’ ingredients and add something new, universal. The result was the world’s first baking soda and peroxide toothpaste which was very successful.
Brain, brain, brain…
Until now science can not stop admire human brain – one of the most complexed and complicated organs which all of us poses. It was given to us to make a good use of it so let’s focus how it can be used in any of the ideation techniques.
There are some which consist the word brain in their names: brainstorm, braindump, brainwrite and brainwalk. Each of them put an accent on creating ideas in different way.
Brainstorm focuses on making big discussions with other people about new ideas e. g. for the marketing strategy in the company. The point is to listen carefully all of them and connect them together to create something new and innovative. Noone should be judged and everyone should have opportunity to share the ideas. The environment must be friendly and create the atmosphere that everyone is welcome in the ideation process.
Braindump is focused on individual work of finding solutions. All ideas must be written down and ready to present to the whole group before brainstorm.
Brainwrite is also about writing but in this case we describe our ideas only in few sentences and pass the paper to another person. He/she writes continuation of the idea related to what was written by the first person and pass the paper again. After few actions like that we can collect many ideas from different perspectives and point of views.
Brainwalk lets ideation process participants to walk around the room and stop in some “Ideation stations” where some of them talk about specific ideas. At the beginning few generate aspects of the problem are written on the small sticking notes and placed on the walls in the room. After that people gather in the stations and talk about described problem[4].
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Let’s be the artists!
Most of the people are visual learners. The good idea during ideation process is to create some visual description of the problem and ideas which relate to it. It can be done on few several ways.
Firs of all the group can create mindmap where, on a big piece of paper or on the whiteboard in the center, we put the title of the idea process. It can be problem which must be solved or the topic of discussion. Later all of the ideas which will appear must be written next to it and connected with arrows. If another idea related to the previous one will be identified it must be connected to it in the picture. In this way we will have everything noted, connected with lines and easy to look at[5].
You can use another method – Sketchstorm where instead of writing you will draw the ideas which were said by the participants. The drawings can be as simple as possible and have form of diagrams and tables too. Visuals have a way of provoking further ideas and providing a wider lens of thinking. With many small pictures visible on the whiteboard the imagination of all participants will be encouraged to work harder and to implement new ideas connected to the previous ones.
Another similar method is Storyboarding which is also about drawing but not random pictures connected to the ideas which were said by participants. In this case we build a whole story with characters and their own adventures. The problem which they have must be related to the problem we are focusing on. Thanks to that we can find a solution of it for the characters we created and also for us[6].
Why so serious?
There are some days, when even if you try your best to create some new, innovative ideas nothing comes to your mind and you feel totally helpless. The same can happen to the whole group of people while doing ideation process. Good thing in a moment like that is to stop thinking about good ideas and try to create… some bad, terrible and useless ones. No, this is not a joke! This method named “Worst idea” was created to increase the level of energy among tired participants, make funny atmosphere, bring laugh and relax.
After naming the worst and the most stupid ideas we can focus on the actions which can help to avoid them in our company. We never know if some of the bad ideas contain the “seeds” of good ones. Consider each bad idea as a step to find a good solution.
As we can see there are many different idealization techniques which can help you and your team to find some perfect strategies for your business. The most important thing is not to give up easily and try to use many of them to find the one which really gives good effects. You can find more examples of those techniques on other websites too. Good luck!
[1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/pl/dictionary/english/ideation
[2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ideation
[3] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/ideation.asp
[4] https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/introduction-to-the-essential-ideation-techniques-which-are-the-heart-of-design-thinking
[5] https://innovationmanagement.se/2013/05/30/the-7-all-time-greatest-ideation-techniques/
[6] https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/introduction-to-the-essential-ideation-techniques-which-are-the-heart-of-design-thinking