The document discusses how ideas become projects through a process called lean ideation. It describes the 6 steps of lean ideation as: 1) observe to gather information, 2) question assumptions, 3) conceive new possibilities, 4) present the idea concisely, 5) collaborate by getting feedback, and 6) iterate the idea based on learning. The key is to rapidly test ideas through these steps to determine which have promise before investing significant resources in development. An idea only becomes a project if it survives evaluation and gains champions to move it forward.
Thoughts on open innovation sandro morghen yutongoSandro Morghen
English version of my observations and conclusions on Open Innovation.
Presented at Hochschule Lucerne, Switzerland on Ocotober 3rd, 2012.
Interesting questions from students were:
Question: Why do you pay innovators for their time/effort rather than to follow the winner takes it all approach? What if people performe weak in a process?
Answer: Because in our process it is not possible to allocate one single author to an idea. The creative content is based on our process setup, a collective result. This is why we pay everybody equally. We don't see Innovation as a game/contest, we see it rather as a form of crowd labour. Being is hard work and it doesn't take a genius. Based on the fact that all innovators answer a whole set of subquestions throughout the process, we can diffuse the risk of receiving bad content from one person. After all, it's just not fair. In our tests we weren't facing quality issues, but of course, had to deal with people who were trying to misuse the system. However, this issue remains manageable with our platform and approach. In our tests we measured about 5% of participants who tried to add random/sabotage content. We are very convinced that we can bring this number with the right quality management tools.
>>>
Question: Are you already online?
Answer: We have a functional prototype which is online but we are going to take it down as we are finalizing our commercial version of yutongo.
>>>
Question: Are you giving support to customers with setting up a project?
Answer: Not in a consulting sense. But the app is based on a step-by-step process and we put all our strength and own creativity in reducing complexitiy and the self explanatory character of the website. You shouldn't be an expert to setup a project with yutongo.
>>>
And a bunch of more questions I unfortunately can't remember. Thanks Hochschule Lucerne for having me and for asking questions. Asking question is very good advisor if you are planning to be creative. Creativity starts with asking the right questions!
Best!
Sandro Morghen, CEO & Co-Founder of yutongo
We are proud to announce our eighteenth Innovation Excellence Weekly for Slideshare. Inside you'll find ten of the best innovation-related articles from the past week on Innovation Excellence - the world's most popular innovation web site and home to 5,000+ innovation-related articles.
How do you build an innovation culture in your team? – An 8-Step GuidePinkesh Shah
Institute of Product Leadership in association with Adaptive Marketing organises monthly series of Product Professionals networking event .Our theme for this event was about How do you build an innovation culture in your team? – An 8-Step Guide that every Product Professionals should know.
Speaker for this event was Prof. Rishikesha T Krishnan IIMB .
We are proud to announce our eighth Innovation Excellence Weekly for Slideshare. Inside you'll find ten of the best innovation-related articles from the past week on Innovation Excellence - the world's most popular innovation web site and home to nearly 5,000 innovation-related articles.
A preconference workshop proposed for the 2013 Academy of Management: Applying the lean startup model to social and sustainable ventures. Hands-on workshop and intensive discussion, Terrific crew of organizers and more.
Thoughts on open innovation sandro morghen yutongoSandro Morghen
English version of my observations and conclusions on Open Innovation.
Presented at Hochschule Lucerne, Switzerland on Ocotober 3rd, 2012.
Interesting questions from students were:
Question: Why do you pay innovators for their time/effort rather than to follow the winner takes it all approach? What if people performe weak in a process?
Answer: Because in our process it is not possible to allocate one single author to an idea. The creative content is based on our process setup, a collective result. This is why we pay everybody equally. We don't see Innovation as a game/contest, we see it rather as a form of crowd labour. Being is hard work and it doesn't take a genius. Based on the fact that all innovators answer a whole set of subquestions throughout the process, we can diffuse the risk of receiving bad content from one person. After all, it's just not fair. In our tests we weren't facing quality issues, but of course, had to deal with people who were trying to misuse the system. However, this issue remains manageable with our platform and approach. In our tests we measured about 5% of participants who tried to add random/sabotage content. We are very convinced that we can bring this number with the right quality management tools.
>>>
Question: Are you already online?
Answer: We have a functional prototype which is online but we are going to take it down as we are finalizing our commercial version of yutongo.
>>>
Question: Are you giving support to customers with setting up a project?
Answer: Not in a consulting sense. But the app is based on a step-by-step process and we put all our strength and own creativity in reducing complexitiy and the self explanatory character of the website. You shouldn't be an expert to setup a project with yutongo.
>>>
And a bunch of more questions I unfortunately can't remember. Thanks Hochschule Lucerne for having me and for asking questions. Asking question is very good advisor if you are planning to be creative. Creativity starts with asking the right questions!
Best!
Sandro Morghen, CEO & Co-Founder of yutongo
We are proud to announce our eighteenth Innovation Excellence Weekly for Slideshare. Inside you'll find ten of the best innovation-related articles from the past week on Innovation Excellence - the world's most popular innovation web site and home to 5,000+ innovation-related articles.
How do you build an innovation culture in your team? – An 8-Step GuidePinkesh Shah
Institute of Product Leadership in association with Adaptive Marketing organises monthly series of Product Professionals networking event .Our theme for this event was about How do you build an innovation culture in your team? – An 8-Step Guide that every Product Professionals should know.
Speaker for this event was Prof. Rishikesha T Krishnan IIMB .
We are proud to announce our eighth Innovation Excellence Weekly for Slideshare. Inside you'll find ten of the best innovation-related articles from the past week on Innovation Excellence - the world's most popular innovation web site and home to nearly 5,000 innovation-related articles.
A preconference workshop proposed for the 2013 Academy of Management: Applying the lean startup model to social and sustainable ventures. Hands-on workshop and intensive discussion, Terrific crew of organizers and more.
We are proud to announce our 31st Innovation Excellence Weekly for Slideshare. Inside you'll find ten of the best innovation-related articles from the past week on Innovation Excellence - the world's most popular innovation web site and home to 5,000+ innovation-related articles.
Innovation isn’t the job of R&D or Marketing anymore. Innovation is everyone’s job – but most aren’t trained/experienced in innovation.
Whether you start at "small i" innovation or "BIG I" Innovation - can you really afford NOT to improve your innovation capabilities?
We pitched this presentation on 24 June 2016 in K22 in Ghent. It describes what W4P has become, our process in making it, what you can do with this Open Source template and a brief overview of the first pilots, including their wins and fails.
We are proud to announce our thirtieth Innovation Excellence Weekly for Slideshare. Inside you'll find ten of the best innovation-related articles from the past week on Innovation Excellence - the world's most popular innovation web site and home to 5,000+ innovation-related articles.
Collaborative Innovation: The State of EngagementDan Keldsen
The ultimate benefits of Collaborative Innovation are when Collaborative Innovation is applied at a strategic level - but are you using the tactics to make the most of Collaborative Innovation?
Last quarter the Collaborative Innovation Team surveyed over 200 thought leaders in multiple functional roles from large and small organizations distributed worldwide. The results offer some fascinating insights into the ways that collaborative innovation is and isn’t being implemented in businesses today.
With only 15% of respondents stating their organization is "very effective" at Collaborative Innovation, and a mere 35% who believe Collaborative Innovation ranks up with the core capabilities of business such as R&D, Operations, Marketing and more - we’re certainly not all masters of this space just yet.
Call it Collaborative Innovation, Enterprise 2.0, Open Innovation, Innovation Management, Hyper-Social Innovation or Social Business... are you doing it? Doing it well? Find out what we've uncovered in this sneak preview of the upcoming ebook on our research results from late 2011 to early 2012.
Design Thinking for Disruptive Innovation - Burton Lee - Kyiv - Oct 13 2015 -...Burton Lee
Talk given in Kyiv on October 13 on the subject of 'Design Thinking for Disruptive Innovation', at the Fedoriv Hub. Host: Bionic University. Speaker: Burton Lee, Stanford Dept of Mechanical Engineering, Center for Design Research.
Website: www.StanfordEuropreneurs.org
Twitter: @Europreneurs
Enhancing innovation through virtual worldsRobin Teigland
My presentation in February 2011 to students in the Mastering Innovation Class at the McCombs School of Business at UT at Austin. www.knowledgenetworking.org.
I developed this workshop for a group of Crashers through the Cooperative Trust at the ACUC (America's Credit Union Conference) in San Diego in June of 2012. Our goal was to better understand and develop concepts to serve the unbanked and underbanked in our society. http://trust.coop/what-we-do/
We are proud to announce our fifteenth Innovation Excellence Weekly for Slideshare. Inside you'll find ten of the best innovation-related articles from the past week on Innovation Excellence - the world's most popular innovation web site and home to 5,000+ innovation-related articles.
We are proud to announce our 31st Innovation Excellence Weekly for Slideshare. Inside you'll find ten of the best innovation-related articles from the past week on Innovation Excellence - the world's most popular innovation web site and home to 5,000+ innovation-related articles.
Innovation isn’t the job of R&D or Marketing anymore. Innovation is everyone’s job – but most aren’t trained/experienced in innovation.
Whether you start at "small i" innovation or "BIG I" Innovation - can you really afford NOT to improve your innovation capabilities?
We pitched this presentation on 24 June 2016 in K22 in Ghent. It describes what W4P has become, our process in making it, what you can do with this Open Source template and a brief overview of the first pilots, including their wins and fails.
We are proud to announce our thirtieth Innovation Excellence Weekly for Slideshare. Inside you'll find ten of the best innovation-related articles from the past week on Innovation Excellence - the world's most popular innovation web site and home to 5,000+ innovation-related articles.
Collaborative Innovation: The State of EngagementDan Keldsen
The ultimate benefits of Collaborative Innovation are when Collaborative Innovation is applied at a strategic level - but are you using the tactics to make the most of Collaborative Innovation?
Last quarter the Collaborative Innovation Team surveyed over 200 thought leaders in multiple functional roles from large and small organizations distributed worldwide. The results offer some fascinating insights into the ways that collaborative innovation is and isn’t being implemented in businesses today.
With only 15% of respondents stating their organization is "very effective" at Collaborative Innovation, and a mere 35% who believe Collaborative Innovation ranks up with the core capabilities of business such as R&D, Operations, Marketing and more - we’re certainly not all masters of this space just yet.
Call it Collaborative Innovation, Enterprise 2.0, Open Innovation, Innovation Management, Hyper-Social Innovation or Social Business... are you doing it? Doing it well? Find out what we've uncovered in this sneak preview of the upcoming ebook on our research results from late 2011 to early 2012.
Design Thinking for Disruptive Innovation - Burton Lee - Kyiv - Oct 13 2015 -...Burton Lee
Talk given in Kyiv on October 13 on the subject of 'Design Thinking for Disruptive Innovation', at the Fedoriv Hub. Host: Bionic University. Speaker: Burton Lee, Stanford Dept of Mechanical Engineering, Center for Design Research.
Website: www.StanfordEuropreneurs.org
Twitter: @Europreneurs
Enhancing innovation through virtual worldsRobin Teigland
My presentation in February 2011 to students in the Mastering Innovation Class at the McCombs School of Business at UT at Austin. www.knowledgenetworking.org.
I developed this workshop for a group of Crashers through the Cooperative Trust at the ACUC (America's Credit Union Conference) in San Diego in June of 2012. Our goal was to better understand and develop concepts to serve the unbanked and underbanked in our society. http://trust.coop/what-we-do/
We are proud to announce our fifteenth Innovation Excellence Weekly for Slideshare. Inside you'll find ten of the best innovation-related articles from the past week on Innovation Excellence - the world's most popular innovation web site and home to 5,000+ innovation-related articles.
LAST Conference 2017 All projects are red until they deliver something work...Phillip Gadzinski
Im holding a workshop at LAST Conference 2017. The outcome is to Design Think our way towards a 'status' framework for agile projects with no RAG - everything is red until you deliver something working.
A Playbook for Corporate Innovation - Explorium HKYangie Chung
Are you an innovator about to start a new innovation hub or join one?
We were in the same shoes not too long ago. We started Explorium in Hong Kong in 2018 and over the past two years we've tried, failed, hit brick walls, and succeed (on occasion) in helping the businesses of the Fung Group innovate following an ecosystem approach.
We learned a lot along the way and now are sharing back our reflections and suggestions in a Playbook for Ecosystem Innovation - this is the guide we wish we had at the beginning of our journey. Read it, and maybe you can avoid some of our mistakes.
A white paper from The Inovo Group - Opportunities are central to innovation. Read Inovo's latest white paper to learn more or visit theinovogroup.com.
The Spirit of Co-creation Whitepaper - Risk Managed Creativity For BusinessSense Worldwide
Our perspectives on the principles of how you bring your colleagues, your customers and yourself together, to make things better and make better things. It's all about asking the right questions of the right people in the right way.
Read a selection of your colleagues’ postings.Respond by Day.docxniraj57
Read
a selection of your colleagues’ postings.
Respond
by
Day 5
, to two or more of your colleagues in one or more of the following ways:
Select a question offered by your colleague that he/she did not use and suggest potential ways that your colleague or the organization might drive innovation and overcome the barriers and status quo.
Compare your colleague's findings to those of others and your own. If you see similarities, explain why the status quo might appear similar across different workplaces and industries. Do not limit your responses solely to budgetary or resourcing constraints.
Identify any challenges at a colleague's workplace that seem unique or that you have not encountered before. Offer your ideas about why you think those are important and which discovery skill from Dyer, et al., would best enable your colleague and/or the organization to drive innovation and overcome the barriers and status quo. Be sure to provide your rationale for your choice.
Offer your insights to your colleague about the value of this process and importance of using it to identify opportunities for innovation or opportunities to challenge the status quo.
POST1
Ten Questions that challenge the status quo at my current workplace:
1. What if we allowed customers 24/7 access to our model homes, would this increase our sales?
2. What if started a program that allowed customers to stay for one night in our model homes so that they could get a feel for the home (see if it’s a good match)?
3. What if home loans were easier to get and builders covered more costs for the customers?
4. What if my organization stopped focusing intensively on the sale and more on the actual customers’ needs as a homeowner?
5. What if all employees tried to help one another versus helping themselves? What affect would this type of partnership have on the company and its customers?
6. What if we built more than the traditional clubhouse, pool house, and common areas in our communities? What if we offered something that isn’t common such as a community go-kart track or skating rink?
7. What if we decorated the exterior of our central office, including our showroom, in themes each week to excite and attract customer’s attention? Imagine the word-of-mouth advertising we would generate.
8. What if we built a home for the local homeless people to stay in and take up donations for them to get back on their feet?
9. What if we gave one house a year away to someone in need? This type of generosity may attract customers who can appreciate us giving back to the community.
10. What if washed people cars, cut their grass, take out their trash, etc. in exchange for a donation to a local charity?
The one question I chose is #5: “What if all employees tried to help one another versus helping themselves? What affect would this type of partnership have on the company and its customers?”
This question is important because there is more strength in numbers meaning the mo ...
An overview of how change works, and what can be done to accelerate transformational change in an industry. Created for the Openlab Workshop, December 1-2, 2015 in Washington, DC.
Building Great Innovation Challenges - 1st Edition v3GreenData.IO
What is a great innovation challenge?
Building Great Innovation Challenges answers this question along with:
- What makes innovation programs fail?
- Who is mission critical to innovation challenge program success?
- What are the steps to delivering a challenge and engaging the crowd?
- How can innovation challenges create value for my organization?
- Where can I go to participate in an innovation challenge and try this out?
Updated workshop presentation as presented in Ottawa, ON on April 19th. This presentation is a guide to crowdsourcing and citizen engagement for organizations from a variety of types. Also presented was the Ideavibes Crowd Engagement Platform.
Crawl, walk, run, and only then compete - v5.0Marvin Soud
Crawl, Walk, Run, and Only Then Compete - A framework for manufacturing innovative entrepreneurial ecosystems in emerging economies.
A healthy government, society, business, or entrepreneurial ecosystem all have what we see as related foundations at their core. In this report, we address the foundational pillars that are needed to build healthy, vibrant, progressive, globally competitive and most importantly, economically productive entrepreneurial ecosystems.
This guide takes lessons from around the world, but is intended specifically for emerging economies and addresses their unique challenges.
Jan kennedy - I have an idea - what now? @WBIS2014winebis
Jan Kennedy, director of the Munich chapter of the Founder institute lead us through the choices and decisions that a would-be entrepreneur faces after having that idea.
Iterating an Innovation Model: Challenges and Opportunities in Adapting Accel...juliahaines
Startup accelerators have expanded worldwide in recent years, fostering the development of technology startups and spreading Lean practices and Silicon Valley values to all corners of the globe. These accelerators clearly create value—for the teams whose development they foster, the products they create, and the larger ecosystems they build. But there are also a number of challenges arising from the model and how it is implemented in different contexts globally. Through fieldwork at accelerators in Singapore and Buenos Aires, I investigate the global expansion of this innovation model. In this paper, I discuss the most salient challenges and discuss potential opportunities emerging from these challenges, and how other methods and practices such as design thinking, intensive user research and flexible, bottom up-approaches can add value to the accelerator process. I also highlight mutually beneficial ways the EPIC community can become more involved in startups ecosystems.
This is a paper published in the proceedings of the 2014 Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference (EPIC).
2. Turning Ideas Into Projects
How & When Ideas Become Projects…
John-Michael Scott — NextInit, LLC
3. Idea Formation 4......................................................
When Does Idea Formation Happen? 4...............................................
When Is An Idea More Than An Idea? 4...............................................
Proto-Project Development 5.................................
How Do We Get From Idea to Proto-Project? 5...................................
Where Do We Go From Here? 9...........................................................
When Do Ideas Become Projects? 11.................................................
4. Idea Formation
When Does Idea Formation Happen?
Companies, organizations and governments around the world are working feverishly to
identify the best ideas to stave off the oncoming wave of “dinosaurism" chasing
immediately behind them. Companies that dominated
their industry in one decade like Yahoo - are literally
struggling for their lives in the next decade. The internet
introduces a near constant stream of disruption
threatening to overtake “the way things are done” today.
But, what can hold back these forces? A resounding
voice across media and scholarly work point to
innovation as the critical offensive and defensive act.
When Is An Idea More Than An Idea?
“Mater artium necessitas”
~ William Horma, 1519
“Necessity is the mother
of invention”
~Richard Franck, 1658
5. Just because a good ideas appears, is that enough? Does the idea spur an entire series of
events that leads to amazing moments of creation and disruption? Is a chain reaction lit
leading to an inevitable result? To that, there is only one answer - No. An idea is just that -
nothing more, nothing less until it is given motive force. So when does an idea become
more than an idea? An idea finds root in the hands of those committed individuals who
believe with conviction that the idea should be brought to life…
The landscape is literally littered with ideas lacking the patronage of a Tesla, Musk, Jobs,
Da Vinci or Alhazen to shepherd them from seedlings without root to into the fully formed
giant redwoods standing for hundreds and even thousands of years. So, this leads us to
an ingredient list for success that becomes critical to the future of all of our ideas:
💡 + " # $ % + 🔭 🔬 🌡 🛠 ⏱ + ⚖ 📑 📈 📉
-or-
Ideas + People + Work + Measurement
This is just the beginning though. We still aren’t at the point of deciding that any of these
ideas is actually worth anything. What we have hinted at here is that we should apply the
scientific method to every single idea we consider - even after there is some motive force
and we have taken the idea out of pure abstract concept and molded it into something
that might have some promise. So what comes next?
Proto-Project Development
How Do We Get From Idea to Proto-Project?
The assumption many people make is that once you have an idea and some people
interested in making it happen - you’re set. It’s a project and you get to work. After many
thousands of hours and many millions of dollars - the world of startups has something to
say about that. Eric Ries coined a new method for building businesses and products in
2008 - the Lean Startup.
Tesla went on to pursue his ideas of wireless lighting and electricity
distribution in his high-voltage, high-frequency power experiments in New
York and Colorado Springs, and made early (1893) pronouncements on the
possibility of wireless communication with his devices.
~ Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla
6. The focus in this method of development is “to eliminate wasteful practices and increase
value-producing practices during the product development phase so that startups can
have a better chance of success without requiring large
amounts of outside funding, elaborate business plans, or
the perfect product.” Translated to the process of1
evolving any idea to the point of being a porto-project - it
becomes critical that idea experience rapid and low-cost
iteration and that the development of time-consuming
and detailed idea specifications, charters and business
plans be avoided at all cost. The goal first and foremost is
to plant the seeds, invite collaboration and identify the
most promising prospects before heavier investment of
manpower, dollars and time take place - let’s call this
“Lean Ideation.” So what could that look like?
Observe
A water utility once challenge the community served by the utility to identify methods to
improve water quality within one of it’s reservoirs. By asking all of the customers served by
the utility to participate in the process, the utility sought to improve the quantity and
quality of ideas that might be applied to the problem. In turn, the customers brought to
bear their observations about factors impacting water quality, techniques available to
offset impacting factors, technologies that might prove effective and people who might
be able to apply brainpower or manpower to contribute to solving the problem. By
expanding the circle of participants in the problem, the utility was able to tap into a much
greater collection of experiences, knowledge and problem solving capabilities than it had
access to on its own within the walls of the company. The first step in every lean ideation
effort should be to challenge the largest possible audience of participants to contribute to
the observation step.
Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_startup1
The lean startup philosophy is based on lean manufacturing, the
streamlined production philosophy pioneered by Taiichi Ohno by
combining flow principles used by Henry Ford starting in 1906 and the TWI
(training within industry) programs introduced to Japan in 1951.
~ Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_startup
7. Question
Famously, NASA, DARPA and the X Prize Foundation conducted an open competition to
stimulate the first commercial launches of rockets to reach space. Since that competition,
the number of active commercial participants in the space industry has be steadily on the
rise. One famous CEO in particular has looked at the problem of how to get to space from
a significantly different point of view than prior generations of rocketeers - what if we
could recover and recycle used parts of our rockets - what would that mean for the cost of
getting to space? The second step in lean ideation is to question the status quo - just
because a problem has been solved in one way previously does not mean that the
problem can’t be solved in another way more effectively. Additionally, what is effective
may be greatly impacted by timing, availability of capital, availability of technology and
many other factors which change frequently.
Conceive
Recently, the XQ Super School project asked anyone who wished to participate to identify
and submit their ideas for what a re-envisioned high school might look like. Thousands of
participants have identified hundreds of new ideas to try in creating a new approach to
learning for high school students. This third step in the lean ideation lifecycle is about
trying to find the beginner’s mind.
By being open to all of the possibilities, by seeking the contribution of all voices, lean
ideation offers the greatest opportunity to seek the best result.
Present
Angel List (angel.co) may be the single largest collection of startups enumerated in the
world at this time with over 713,098 companies represented. Not every company on angel
list will become something and many businesses are in fact nothing more than nascent
ideas. But - these 713,098 companies have presented themselves for all of us to consider.
By doing so, they have put together profiles that include who their team is, what they are
trying to do, a quick explanation of their purpose, one or more definitions of their major
products as well as where to find more information about them. Every seedling idea
deserves the same consideration in the lean ideation model. The point isn’t to create a
business plan for the project that the idea might become, but instead to present just
In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind
there are few.
~ Shunryu Suzuki
8. enough information that others can clearly understand what the idea itself might become.
At a minimum, this includes the following things:
• an image to provide an immediate visual representation of the idea
• a single sentence definition of what idea is and what need it seeks to address
• a brief description that explains the reason the need exists, the value of meeting the
need and who has the need
• a sentence on what makes this idea unique and how it may be different from other
similar ideas
• a list of existing alternatives that have also been used to meet the same or a similar
need
The fourth step in the lean ideation process, then, is to present as many ideas as possible
that may meet the need that the idea submitted has been challenged with.
Collaborate
On Quora, a question was posed, “Why don't venture capitalists like investing in sole
founder companies?” One answer to the question offered the following observation:
The key point here for idea development is that it takes a team. Lean ideation in particular
requires a team approach. No idea can be pushed quickly thru the lifecycle to its ultimate
9. culmination or discard on the back of one individual. Collaboration and peer review/
contribution is critical to this process as the fifth step in the lean ideation approach.
Iterate
The sixth step takes us back to where we started in lean ideation. Few ideas reach the
status of “Proto-Project” without experiencing some evolution. Not “getting it right” the
first time should not be perceived as a reflection of the value or merit behind the idea.
Sometimes an idea just needs more support, more tending, more evolution and more
exploration before it should be transitioned into active prototyping and structured
development with the concurrent commitment of manpower, time and budget. Iteration
takes us back to the beginning and asks us to look closely for opportunities to improve
what has been delivered up to this point. There is no right answer as to how many
iterations will be necessary for an idea to be ready to be “made real.” There is also no
guarantee that the budget, manpower and time are going to be available at the moment
when the idea is “right.”
Where Do We Go From Here?
So, how do we take this process “lean ideation” and make it happen systemically? We’ve
seen that there are a lot of things about ideation that look like a project and also a lot of
Don’t get being a sole founder mixed up with being a one man team.
One person teams are a red flag because it signals a lack of ability to
recruit. As a founder, one of your primary tasks is to recruit a team.
~ Quora, https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-venture-
capitalists-like-investing-in-sole-founder-companies
Microsoft Project Online Project & Resource Management
10. things that done. As an iterative collaborative process, ideation doesn’t fit well within a
deliverable based time driven process (a project). The tools we use for project
management (task lists, resource assignments, gantt charts, network diagrams,
predecessor and successor relationships, budget, time, manpower) are all future needs
for our seedling ideas. We need a different tool that focuses on dialog, debate, opinion,
peer review, alignment of support, evaluation of alternatives and collaborative selection.
We need an idea management system that addresses this shared collaborative creative
mind-space rather than a system that addresses a get things done mind-space. The
analogy that applies best here is that of a toolbox. In everyone’s toolbox there is usually a
screwdriver and a saw.
Nextinit Innovation & Idea Management
11. A screwdriver is great for getting screws into a wall in a secure way. A saw is great for
resizing an object to fit the space that is available. You would never use a screwdriver to
cut a piece of wood. You would never use a saw for turning a screw. The same idea applies
to a project management system vs. an idea management system. The needs of one
conflict with the needs of the other - one manages highly unstructured thinking, images,
conversations, investment games and more while the other manages highly structured
task driven activities with interdependencies between budget, time and manpower.
When Do Ideas Become Projects?
Once an idea has evolved and requires prototyping and testing to determine it’s
capability in meeting the originating need, the idea is ready to be structured. In keeping
with the lean ideation process, the same lean approach should be taken to transforming
the idea into a real business, system, process, product or service. It is at this point that the
idea must go through due diligence in the form of development of a project charter,
creation of a budget, identification of tasks required for prototype and tasks required for
testing, measuring and evaluation. Manpower must be identified, level of effort must be
calculated and costs must be estimated. These are topics more for the professional
practice of project management, however, and will be left to that field for further
discussion.