Ideation can be applied to any challenge whose solution will have high impact – this might be an overlooked challenge that stakeholders have yet to identify or a high priority challenge that has been well documented. Ideation begins when you clearly articulate the problem statement. This ensures that your solution address a real and pressing problem. Once the problem is defined, you are ready to begin brainstorming new ideas.
Use the activities in this phase to:
- Identify the processes and problems you want to ideate around.
- Push your team to consider the problem from all angles and brainstorm a variety of solutions that address the pain.
- Refine and document ideas so they can be fairly assessed by your innovation team.
- Decide which ideas are ready for prototyping and which should be stored in the Idea Reservoir.
You can use the exercises in this phase to ideate around any problem or process, whether internal, user-facing, or customer-facing.