When companies embark on the new product development process, a lot of emphasis is put into the 2-3 day work session that brings the marketing, sales and R&D teams together. The goal? To get inspired and go through a divergence and convergence process that results in the development, filtration and description of a set of new ideas.
Prior to this session, the company will have identified the key commercial opportunities for new products and will develop potential new “innovation territories” for the brand to explore. The idea is that these commercial opportunities and innovation territories will provide guidance into the types of new products that will be developed during the creation session.
Although this approach is widely accepted, our work with CPG & FMCG brands leads us to believe that this “big bang” approach, in which most of the creation is confined to a limited time and space, may not be optimal.
Here are four ways to develop a process for generating great ideas:
1. Consult few and often.
Don’t use the creative process to obtain buy-in. The objective of the effort should be to develop great ideas. Use a different forum to worry about organizational alignment around the final outcome. Instead of working with a broad set of internal stakeholders for “political” reasons in a limited time, you should select a group of core innovators within the company and work with them in an iterative process of creation and refinement. Move away from the costly and highly curated “big bang” session to a series of agile interactions with a core team of people.
2. Talk to smart people.
Carefully select who to include in the creation process. For internal employees, invite curious minds that think in a creative way. Always involve consumers and external stakeholders, but don’t use them to validate your ideas. Quantitative validation research can be conducted outside this process. Instead, ask them to help you co-create. You don’t want a statistical representation of your target in the room Secure a group of creative consumers who are comfortable with non-linear thinking.
3. Keep working on good ideas.
Shift the focus from quantity of ideas to quality of ideas early in the process. Filter the most promising ideas and focus on those in consecutive sessions. You’ll find that ideas will evolve and become stronger if you focus on a limited number of them instead of developing new ones with the hope of surfacing the “perfect one.”
4. Design is key.
A picture is worth 1000 words. Quickly move away from explaining ideas in text form and develop visualizations and prototypes. You will find out that every time you “paint it” your ideas will evolve in an accelerated way and will become stronger. You should make it a point to visualize ideas in between sessions.
Follow these simple four steps and your idea creation process will produce much better results. Consult few and often, talk to smart people, keep working on a limited number of ideas and build visuals and prototypes as much as possible.
photo credit: Insight Imaging: John A Ryan Photography via photopin cc