A fast way to shortlist and select the best ideas to take forward.
Categorising Ideas
At this stage, people have already started making up their minds about which ideas they prefer. And that's not usually a good thing, especially if you're looking for disruptive ideas.
Even though one disruptive idea can deliver higher returns than a string of incremental ideas,1 they usually get filtered out at this stage. And two overlapping perceptions are to blame: ‘It's too risky,’ and, ‘It's too difficult.’
Both may be true, but it's too early to make those assumptions. So, to help keep the ‘crazy’ ideas alive a little longer, start to categorise them according to their potential impact and ease of implementation:
How to Use It
Sketch the above diagram on a flipchart.
Take each idea and ask the group in which area it should sit.
Now take a step back and see what you're left with. Ideally you'll have some Hot ideas that you can take to the next stage of development – ideas with a lot of potential impact and that are reasonably easy to implement. But don't wrap things up here.
Create a Monster…On Purpose
Sometimes, great ideas emerge by accident. Serial innovators like Amazon, Google and Pixar know this and design their buildings to ...
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