IDEATE No matter how you start innovation, without any ideas there is no innovation. Ideation is an essential activity, incorporated in every route to a new offering. I would like to start this chapter discussing the moment ideas pop into your mind. Then, I will discuss the features of great ideas. In innovation your ideas will be about original new products, services, business models, experiences or processes. I will give you a great framework to come up with original ideas, called ‘the 10 types of innovation’, which I have used myself with great success. In a lot of cases you will ideate in a team and that’s why I would like to help you with some practical tips on how to hold a great ideation workshop. Finally, I would like to share with you my five favorite idea generating techniques. In chapter 21, you’ll find a full range of 21 ideation techniques for both generating and selecting ideas.
IDEAS ARE MOSTLY SLOW HUNCHES Steven Johnson, author of Where Good Ideas Come From, describes ideas as slow hunches. He tells the wonderful story of how Tim Berners-Lee, invented the World Wide Web. “From a child’s exploration of a hundred-year-old encyclopedia, to a freelancer’s idle side project designed to help him keep track of his colleagues, to a deliberate attempt to build a new information platform that could connect computers across the planet, Berners-Lee’s idea needed time – at least a decade’s worth – to mature: Journalists have always asked me what the crucial idea was, or what the singular event was, that allowed the Web to exist one day when it hadn’t the day before. They are frustrated when I tell them there was no
“Eureka” moment… Inventing the World Wide Web involved my growing realization that there was a power in arranging ideas in an unconstrained, web-like way. And that awareness came to me through precisely that kind of process. The Web arose as the answer to an open challenge, through the swirling together of influences, ideas and realizations from many sides, until, by the wondrous offices of the human mind, a new concept gelled. It was a process of accretion, not the linear solving of one problem after another.” An innovator like Richard Branson recognizes this ‘slow hunch concept’ in his daily work. He says: “Light bulb moments make for great stories, but we can’t all be fortunate enough to come to realizations in the same manner as Sir Isaac Newton. For many, it’s a gradual awakening rather than a sudden flash of genius.” Breakthrough innovations just don’t happen overnight. Take a look at Nespresso for example, which very successfully commercialized the coffee-per-cup concept. The technology Nespresso uses dates back to the 1960s. Nestlé’s R&D department had worked for about ten years tweaking the technology until it made a great cup of coffee. And after that it took another ten years in which Nestle worked out their innovative business model and marketing approach.1
YOUR BEST IDEAS POP UP IN YOUR MIND DURING SLACK TIME It’s scientifically proven that slack time sparks creativity. Let me ask you the question: At which moments of the day do you get your