What is an idea, anyway? What’s the unit of thought that constitutes an idea?
These are not an angels-dancing-on-a-pinhead questions – if you are going to systematically come up with ideas, you need to be able to identify them so that they can be evaluated and built on.
This was brought home to me recently during an online ideation project I was running when a client, a senior product manager at a Fortune 500 company, confessed to me that she could not see “where the ideas are.” Meanwhile, looking at the same output from consumers, I had identified more than 200 ideas, many with multiple builds!
According to BIF-2 speaker Rick Borovoy of nTag Interactive, a single idea is “the one thing it has to be in order not to be anything else.” This may sound simplistic, but it actually is true. Ideation is loose, dynamic, free-flowing (one hopes, anyway), but going back to the output to gather the ideas requires the application of logic. There may be five discrete ideas in one long, complex sentence. They have to be identified and separated so that you can figure out where to go with them.
Another idea-related theme – how does one come up with ideas? Innovation star Ivy Ross of Old Navy, formerly of Mattel, addressed this in her story, which was about how she created an environment for collaborative creativity among designers at Old Navy. This was tricky, because she was new and brought new designers with her. She and the new designers needed to be able to connect with the “old” designers. She described a process of fostering connections and relationships between people to build the necessary “atmosphere of freedom and trust and freedom” for innovation. One way she did this was to hire a documentary filmmaker to create short film “biographies” of each person talking about what was important to them everyone, to foster connection. She also brought in improv companies in to teach people how to build on each other’s ideas. So much of creative output, she said, depends on the quality and amount of information input, because creativity is “taking information, rearranging it, connecting it in new ways and spitting it back out” in creative ways. So people must be given information, context, and time to absorb that information.
One last idea-related theme involved making meaning from the intersection of ideas. This is – where meaning is. For Jane Fulton Suri of Ideo, meaning comes from a blend of rational and intuitive thinking. Suri is at heart a researcher, and since research gets such a bad rap (unfairly, in my opinion), she talked of wanting to redefine research for innovation.
I completely agree with her that research has an important role to play in innovation. Research after all is the gathering of information, or input, such as Ross talked about. Suri spoke of doing “research in a forward thinking way – going out into the world looking at reality and making sense of it” then letting that spark the imagination. The process here is “looking for patterns and themes that take us into looking at possibilities for the future.”
For Suri, too much research thinking is focused on rational thinking models, while too little is focused on intuition. This to me is not just another call to ditch focus groups and do more observational research and ethnography! My take on this is that for a disciplined thinker, the blend of rational thinking and intuitive thinking necessary to use research as a springboard for innovation is possible regardless of the source of the data input.
Renee Hopkins Callahan started IdeaFlow and serves as chief blog-wrangler. She is 
1. Sanjay Dalal on October 17, 2006 6:30 PM writes...
According to Matthew E. May, a senior University of Toyota advisor, and the author of “The Elegant Solution: Toyota's Formula for Mastering Innovationâ€, Toyota implements One Million new ideas each year (not a typo), or over 2,500 new ideas daily.
Three guiding principles drive new ideas:
1. The Art of Ingenuity - ask the question "Is there a better way?" and be both an artist and scientist at the same time to design elegant solutions.
2. The Pursuit of Perfection - rigorously search for an optimal solution through systematic pursuit of perfection at every level, every department, in everything Toyota does.
3. The Rhythm of Fit - May propounds that great innovation has to fit – fit the innovator, the times and the larger system. How can a great innovation shape and then change the attitudes and behaviors of people, the way they think, they work, they live?
The three principles create both the policy and framework at Toyota for driving innovation and creating elegant solutions.
When it comes to putting these principles into practice, and creating new ideas, the following techniques are implemented at Toyota:
1. Let Learning Lead
“Learning and innovation go hand in hand, but learning comes first.†Education and Learning can drive substantial innovation.
2. Learn to See
“Elegant solutions often come from customers -- get out more and live in their world.†The key is to unearth the latent needs of the customers, and perceive the emerging needs.
3. Design for Today
“Focus on clear and present needs, or your great ideas remain just that.†Innovation that drives business in today’s market is likely to get funded and succeed.
4. Think in Pictures
“Make your intentions visual -- you'll surprise yourself with the image.†In Six ways to find innovation, we talked about the need for visual imagery.
5. Capture the Intangible
Permalink to Comment“The most compelling solutions are often perceptual and emotional.†This is where the product manager needs intuition and the ability to read their customers’ minds.
2. Martin Silcock on October 18, 2006 2:14 AM writes...
I think another key factor in identifying what an idea is, is "context."
The meaning of information and ideas requres a context
The experience of looking at the same data and A seeing different things is to do with the context in which you are observing it. More contexts, more ideas.
The other aspect is having a framework for recording and structuring an idea so it can be handled and related to others. A kind of "standard" way of describing and idea.
What would be the best representation system - visual, text, etc [multi-media]
A thought experiment: What might be the equivalent of XML be for the transmission of ideas I wonder?
Probably would be many depending on the context?
For what its worth
Martin
Permalink to Comment3. Renee on October 18, 2006 8:22 AM writes...
Martin, I totally agree with you about context. The other issue -- the framework for recording and structuring -- is definitely a challenge. I am currently using software called "Incubator" from OVO (www.ovoinnovation.com) in order to do this. It works very well for me. But I'd love to hear any ideas you have about an XML-bsed solution.
thanks! :) renee
Permalink to Comment4. adam on February 10, 2007 12:57 AM writes...
I was surfing the net on the subject of where idweas come from when I came across this posting. Like other discussions of 'where ideas come from' I am disturbed to see that the key point is being missed. I do mean to criticize but rather re-direct the focus toi the most important issue at hand.
Often when we rfer to ideas it is to ideas which make an appearance in business, and of course which work. In the course of my own work I find I am blown away by big businesses complete lack of knowledge in how to locate and secure great ideas.
It is wearying to hear the same bizspeak coming from the droning PR departments across the world. Innovate, think outside of the box, etc. Frankly there's little evidence to suggest that businesses care much about new ideas. evidence to support this statement is abundant: simply make a list of 20 MNC's and then visit their websites. You'll no doubt find that few of them even have a bizdev contact email or phone number.
Most North American companies list 1800 numbers, which of course do not work from outside the country or continent.
Then from personal experience I can say that when one writes to companies the results are roughly this:
50% do not reply at all
40% of those that do decline to hear out the idea
10% who do listen only listen within the context of their CURRENT thinking (which obviates any chance of new ideas to innovate their core business will be considered or accpeted).
I spent some time considering this conundrum and then realized that businesses must start doing things in a radically different manner., They must start searching for THINKERS who staff a newly created THINKING Department. Of course I laugh when considering how they'll get this done, but after some effort they'll find one thinker, and she'll find the second, and so on.
The merits of Thinking Departments (TDs) are many: outsiders tend to see the business from a different perspective. True thinkers don't format their idea generation - they don't sit down and say "Let's do some brainstorming." the ideas hit them in the middle of their dreams, while they are changing a diaper or in casual conversation. true ideas come from as much the air and luck as they come from effort.
Much has been written about the genius of ideas, or those geniuses with great ideas, in much the same way we've examined writers and painters and other artists and studied incidents of insanity and madness in them (poets are nuttier than fiction writers who are crazier than painters who in turn are more prone to breakdown than biographers, etc.).
I posit that ideas people are in the same category, and one would usually find them described at times as "strange, mad, odd, different, unique" etc. One need only read the quotations of many a famous inventor to know that they themselves haven't a clue where ideas come from. One moment it is sunny, the next it is hailing ideas, like a deluge of sparks.
I doubt books on how to create ideas people are worthwhile. I doubt you can teach the skill. I doubt big business has any clue how to process or absorb the very best ideas, because usually the best ideas are so way out they appear to the normal person as "stupid, silly, odd, strange" etc.
So THIS is the key question. How does a Google hook up with an Einstein? How do VC's find the true geniuses - not the ones that have one brilliant idea in a lifetime but the ones that have one brilliant idea once a day? What in short do we do with those invisible Leonrado da Vinci's who walk amongst us?
When we answer that question, the world will turn much more efficiently.
In the meantime, there's a few truths about the chasm between true idea generators and the rest of humanity:
1) ideas people often do grasp the thinking of the masses, but the masses almost never understand the ideas people.
2) the best ideas are generally accepted as having certain traits (ie. they fulfill a need or produce a demand, they are applicable in the present, they improve, etc.) but often the ideas people see all the characteristics and their benefits just by hearing the genral concept, whereas the listeners (the masses) don't get the genius, and are prone to dismiss the idea as unworkable. So the ideas people are FAILING the masses by not conveying what they have in a way that the 'other side' will grasp things.
3) great ideas involve change, chance, and choice. The 3C's are three things businesses are eager for but the people who work in the businesses are NOT eager for them. They fear being made redundant (why would a marketing person take up a marketing idea since by doing so they are immediately acknowledging someone else is doing their job?), they fear more workload, they fear the unknown (if they don't get it then they are facing an idea which represents the unknown), and lastly, the risk of introducing an idea and the conceiver of this idea to their own company embodies a risk to their own reputation. the 3C's scare the #$%^ out of people.
Progress is based on two things: cooperation and ideas. Seems to me neither is functioning at better than 1st gear. Do I have the answers? Seems to me, you wouldn't want to know anyway.
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