The Innovator's Toolkit: 50+ Techniques for Predictable and Sustainable Organic Growth, 2nd Edition

Part II

Discover the Ideas

Successful innovation is about capitalizing on an opportunity to fulfill unmet customer expectations in a superior way. But finding that superior way is far from easy, because at the core of most opportunities lies a difficult problem. Customers, for instance, want wrinkle-free clothes but no current solution meets their expectation very well. This is an innovation problem as well as an opportunity.

In this second phase of the innovation process, your goal is to generate substantive ideas for closing outcome expectation gaps (or innovation opportunities) within the confines of a smartly scoped project. But first you'll want to refine the opportunity using the Resource Optimization, Functional Analysis, Trend Prediction, and Creative Challenge techniques.

Then, you need to bring out the best of what's in your mind and accelerate the creative process using the techniques of HIT Matrix, SCAMPER, Brainwriting 6-3-5, Imaginary Brainstorming, Concept Tree, Random Stimulus, and Provocation and Movement. All of these techniques enable you to leverage latent brainpower beyond what resides in your immediate consciousness, or what can be surfaced with only classic brainstorming.

Still, the power of your team's collective mind might not be enough to ideate a sufficient innovation. The prescription is to search knowledge bases that exist outside your self, finding clues and direction. One knowledge base is the problem-solving wisdom held by other industries and enterprises ...