Structured Idea Management (SIM), sometime referred to as Managed Chaos, is a very powerful methodology for developing ideas as outlined in our article “The Science of Idea Generation”. Here we dive deeper into the seven steps an organisation must follow to derive maximum output from the process
When practicing SIM, the objective should be to
- Explicitly manage/control the environment to ensure maximum possible creativity
- Employ the best and most rigorous screening and ranking mechanisms to extract the highest quality ideas and output
- Recognise and capitalize on the opportunity for creative bundling or clustering of idea fragments to create breakthrough concepts
SIM should be practiced in a sequential 7-stage process.
To get the best out of SIM, there must be attention to detail at each step. Each step is crucial in getting the desired result and as such you must avoid taking shortcuts.
Additionally, to ensure commitment to the concepts at the end of the process, the team should consist of key personnel that will be involved in taking the concepts through development and commercialisation.
For effective SIM you must focus on the following in the various steps
Step 1 – Develop Screening & Ranking Criteria - Clarify the objectives of the concept generation process by developing criteria against which success or failure can be judged. Members of the team that sets the criteria should include those responsible for making the go/no-go decision after completing the entire 7 steps, those responsible for the outcome and those with past experience of the company’s new product or service developments.
The criteria developed must be two sets.
The screening criteria, which will be used in Step 4 and the raking criteria that will be used in steps 5 & 7.
Step 2 – Preparing for Brainstorming - Prepare for the brainstorming session by choosing the brainstorming team, writing and sending out the brainstorming brief and arrange the specific logistics.
The brainstorming brief must be concise and have only minimal constraint (if any at all) on the scope of thinking. The brief should be issued at least three days before the session. Any later and the participant will not have a chance for “bath time brainwave”.
It is important to put people who can work together as a team. Participants should not be chosen because of their position in the organisation or the fact that it is politically correct to invite them. The best brainstormers are those who can express ideas confidently and concisely, who have a knack of transferring knowledge gained in solving one problem to another and who have experience relevant to the objective.
Additionally, you should consider people who could fulfill the following roles
“Unothordox (off-the-wall) thinker” – People whose ideas typically inspire others.
“Contrarian Thinker” – People who are not influenced by social proof and will give different point of view even when there may be peer pressure.
“Distillers” – People who can capture the essence of a previously expressed idea whilst in the process of developing a new one.
“Archivist” – People who have experience of previous innovations (good or bad) and can use that experience to guide the team.
Step 3 – Brainstorming Session - To ensure participants enter into a relaxed and unfettered mood that will allow for imaginative thinking, the brainstorming session should be started with a warm up session involving creative game-playing. Proceed to carry out brainstorming, in which criticism and comment are strictly banned. This ground rule should be known to all participant via the brief. This will allow ad hoc approach to generation of hundreds of ideas. You should end up with a fairly even scattering of ideas, some of which may be capable of being clustered into concepts. You can adopt different approaches during brainstorming. One of the best approach is to give participants post-it notes and let them write their idea down and stick them to the wall. This is the Nominal Group Technique, where flaws of the classic brainstorming model - Production Blocking and Evaluation Apprehension - are avoided.
Step 4 – Screening Meeting - Adopt the screening criteria developed in Step 1. The objective here is to test each idea or idea cluster to see if it meets the set criteria. Look for any reason why the incorporation of an idea into a concept would cause the concept to be rejected based on the screening criteria developed. At the end of this session, you should have identified your top 15 ideas or idea clusters. Document them and take them forward for initial ranking.
Note that you might have many more ideas that have not failed your screening criteria but the intention is to spend resources on the top 15 ideas at this stage. This is effectively an exercise in Cost Benefit Analysis.
Step 5 – Concept Evolution Workshop & Initial Ranking - This step is to work with the top 15 ideas or idea clusters and try to evolve them. This is done by further scrutinizing the ideas or clusters. Typically the scrutiny that was not allowed during brainstorming will be valuable here. Some of the activities should include, listing further benefits of the ideas, exploring any drawbacks or show stoppers and if they can be overcome. Another key query should be what the developmental requirements are.
At the end of this exercise, the ranking criteria developed in step 1 is used to conclude this step. Approximately 3 to 7 of the 15 that were scrutinized in the workshop will be taken to step 6.
Step 6 – Brief Investigation - Each of the idea evolved in stage 5 is assigned to one or a maximum of two people. Their brief will be to investigate the concept’s feasibility and suggest any necessary modification to improve the feasibility. Any improvements suggested must be to enhance the benefits already identified in the evolution workshop. This investigation exercise must be done within a specified time of not more than one week.
Step 7 – Final Ranking – The results of the investigation are collated and presented to the ranking team. Ideally, the ranking team should include the same people who calibrated the ranking criteria. The team must assess the concepts against the initial criteria and produce a final ranking. The highest ranked concept(s) are taken forward for development and commercialisation.
You can either use SIM from the idea generation stage onwards or use it for ideas that have already been generated (using other methodology such as SCAMPER, Value Denials etc.) and require screening, ranking and final selection.