A healthy dissatisfaction with the status quo is can be a spark for change. A new product, material, or process has to start somewhere in terms of how it will be produced. Ideas may come from individuals or collaborative team efforts. Usually the best ideas come from engaging the most diverse set of people and using a diversity of methods to facilitate idea generation.
There are many creative tools to enable idea generation and we can select the best ones for your goals, including the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving, use of analogies, patent data mining, and Design Thinking . We have deep knowledge of early-stage process development in a range of teams of various sizes and geographic locations.
Requirements
Knowing all the stakeholders for your new concept will help you define what is truly important to them and what your new idea has to accomplish. Empathy is key in defining what the end user really needs, but there are always multiple stakeholders that have to be considered. There are many different tools to capture requirements and we can recommend ones to meet your needs and help your team define the requirements their new concept must meet.
Selection
Ideas are not worth much, if you can’t converge on the best ones and drive them forward. There are a number of concept selection methods (from Pugh’s decision matrix to weighted criteria methods) and we can lead your team to narrow their focus and get started developing the best ideas.