Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire

Chapter 5. Shining a Light on the Customer Problem: IDEA GENERATION BLOCKAGES

The Key Dangers

• Idea generation quantity started off strong, but lately it has tailed off.

• We get a lot of really random, useless submissions.

• Idea quality was good at first, but it is decreasing.

• Only a small number of people participate and it is always the same people.

• Our brainstorming sessions aren't very productive.

Overview

It is very common for companies to be at least partially blocked in their ability to generate enough quality ideas. Idea generation in some organizations is blocked by a failure to include the successful creation and management of policies, processes, and systems for idea generation and management into their innovation strategy and goals. Not clearly communicating the innovation vision, strategy, goals, and insights driving the organization can also cause a majority of employees to have no clue that innovation ideas are being sought or proposed. In other organizations, idea generation and idea evaluation inexplicably collapse into a single activity, greatly reducing the number of ideas that surface. Now let's explore some of the methods for maximizing the idea generation capabilities of the organization from a systemic perspective, but also on a project basis (see Figure 5.1).

Figure 5.1. Innovation Is a Numbers Game

Generating Ideas

There are three main ways that companies try to generate ...