How Ideation leads to Innovation

Albert Einstein, once said, "If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it."

Ideation is the process where individuals come together in different settings like brainstorming and brainwriting sessions to generate and develop ideas and solutions to specific business challenges or goals. The core purpose of these sessions is to generate a large quantity of ideas that can be later filtered down and zeroed down to most innovative and relevant ones. During ideation sessions, no ideas are considered bad ideas. The aim is to encourage everyone to contribute with their novel ideas without the fear of criticism and rejection. Focus during these sessions is gather as many ideas as possible – technical feasible or not. They are later filtered for relevancy and how they can mesh to create value and impact.

 Let us see below how to conduct these sessions to provide enhanced value to organizations, build competitive edge, and foster innovation.

  • Setting up Ideation sessions. These sessions can be set up in virtual innovation platform or in-person setting, depending upon the topic, and participating members profile.
  • Inviting the participants from diverse skills who have insights and or skills pertaining to the business challenge worked upon. Bringing different skillset from various departments will break the silos and bring in different perspectives giving a broader and relevant approach to the issue discussed.
  • Stating the business challenge or topic to be ideated upon clearly in the invite communications along with clear instructions on expectations, outcomes and what is in it for the ideators.
  • Keeping the ideation platform judgment free zone so that employees feel more engaged and do not hesitate to express their ideas. Giving them a suitable platform to collaborate and exchange ideas without the fear of bring criticized will improve engagement.
  • Taking a gamification approach to encourage collaboration and participation. Creating team-wise leader boards or specific rewards for each milestone in the ideation process will definitely motivate employees to share knowledge, collaborate and come up with innovative ideas for the benefit of the organization.
  • Following up after the session is over. After analyzing the ideas that make sense and can be developed further, make sure to reach out to all the participants, thanking them for their insights and explaining why the selected ideas make sense to solve the business issue.

 Now let us see how Ideation fosters innovation:

Innovation is nothing but a process to develop an idea into a solution that creates added value for clients. When an idea is captured, developed, and then applied to achieve a specific output – it leads to innovation. This innovation when later combined with other innovations can lead to the development of a new ecosystem to leverage with clients for improved impact and revenue.

 In order to stay relevant in the highly competitive market landscape, companies need to constantly reinvent, i.e., they need to constantly innovate. When organizations encourage knowledge sharing and exchange of ideas as a way of work as well as by implementing knowledge management strategies to develop and run ideation campaigns, they inculcate the spirit of innovation. The flow of ideas that come out of these campaigns leads to solutions that are innovative and create impact.


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