Ideation: The Power of Ideas (and a Model to Unleash it)

A Universal Model for Articulating Business (and other) Ideas

Ideas are powerful constructs; provided that they are articulated in the proper way and handled efficiently, they can become the starting point of impactful initiatives.

The problem with business ideas is that they can come in a wide range of formats and varying levels of detail and sophistication: On the one hand, an idea is ‘expressed’ on a sticky note and put on the wall for ‘evaluation’; on the other hand, ideas may be presented through lengthy and difficult-to-consume decks or documents, that usually receive limited attention and engagement.

Organizations need a standard, compact way for articulating ideas. As a user story may describe the user's need or a feature of a product, the Idea Model can capture any idea in a concrete, ‘executive summary’ statement as shown below.

The Universal Idea Model

This is a simple construct abstracting an idea to an object that performs a kind of function or operation to deliver value to a particular category of users. More specifically, the Idea Model can take the following form:

Examples of Real Ideas: Product Concepts

To illustrate the power of the model, we list a set of examples, and instances of real ideas expressed via this model.

1. An Ideation Assistant powered by Artificial Intelligence

Suppose that there is an idea about a technology that helps the participants of a brainstorming session to articulate and organize their ideas.

The idea could be described in a free-form, lengthy text as “An idea recognition tool that utilizes natural language processing techniques to capture, understand, and identify ideas that are mentioned by speakers during a conversation involving multiple speakers, and tag ideas attributed to their speaker accordingly. The idea recognition tool also autonomously triggers search operations to obtain supplemental information for enriching the underlying identified ideas. The identified ideas are grouped, classified, and formatted into a dedicated format for further analysis, as well as considered for implementing relevant actions”.

By applying the Universal Idea Model, the ideator can focus on the important components of the idea and quickly structure an informative executive summary of the concept in a clear and concise way. In this example, the summary could be:

2. An AI-powered Recommender for Meeting and Project Participants

In another scenario, suppose that the idea was about a system, able to identify and recommend relevant and/or valuable participants for a meeting, project, or other collaborative engagement.

One way to describe this is through lengthy, unstructured, detailed descriptions - as an example (to avoid): “In a collaborative engagement the system may connect to a ‘meetings service’ — e.g., an email/calendar client — which may create the collaborative engagement based on user input, and automatically recommend one or more candidate participants for the engagement. In one example, these candidate participants may be recommended based on a candidate score calculated for each candidate participant. A candidate score for a particular candidate participant may be calculated based upon a variety of factors, including (1) the particular candidate participant’s relevance to the meeting topic, (2) the extent to which the particular candidate participant has positively contributed to previous meetings, and/or (3) whether the candidate participant has attended meetings that are particularly relevant to the topic. Recommending meeting participants in this manner can reduce the potential for inviting low-value participants to meetings, as well as identifying and recommending potentially valuable meeting participants who would not otherwise attend.”

Using the Universal Idea Model, the ideator would save time and gain clarity on the idea itself by summarizing it in the following way:

3. An Augmented Reality in-Shop Customer Experience

In another example, an idea may be describing a system offering dynamic pricing, intelligent loyalty schemes, and smart, personalized offers, as in-store experiences with a little help from Augmented Reality. One way to quickly articulate this idea would be by listing the sequence of events or the ‘happy path’ — as in the following description.

A consumer walks into a store and starts exploring products of interest. By simply overlaying a smartphone on top of a certain product, the app performs the following background operations:

1. It retrieves the profile of the user, product interests, and preferences — according to privacy agreements, GDPR, and related regulations.
2. It loads the loyalty program of the retailer and executes its logic to decide the discounts or the special offers the customer is eligible for (based on recent purchases, reward programs, customer value, etc.).
3. It identifies the product — via both computer vision and also by scanning labels and printed information (such as QR-codes or via OCR applied on product naming and descriptions). It loads the current state of the stock for the product and similar ones. It may load demand indicators and forecasts — or availability of the product in other shops of the same retailer.
4. It combines all the above to generate a personalized experience for the customer — for instance, an x% discount on the catalog price or a special offer for free home delivery — or a bundle product offering matching customer’s preference and predicted needs.
5. On approval by the user — via a tap on the smartphone screen — the app notifies the loyalty program of the retailer, the order is placed and the user just confirms and pays — physically in the store or online with an extra step.

All served as an instant, interactive, personalized AR experience — no cards, no coupons, no loyalty memberships. A seamless experience for both the customer and the retailer.

Using the Universal Idea Model, this rather complicated idea could be summarized in the following:

The Universal Idea Model can be used via a simple form or verbally, in workshops and brainstorming sessions. Ideally, it should evolve as a part of a common corporate language — allowing teams across the organization to exchange ideas in a compact, solid format. A centralized database of ideas captured using this model would make the discovery and utilization of ideas, easier and most efficient. Most importantly, it would increase the chances of discovering great, high-potential ideas and innovation opportunities.

Check also the Innovation Toolkit: eight editable templates for framing problems, shaping ideas and defining products.