Innovation starts with having good ideas and ideally a lot of them. Especially for startups, not only to generate new ideas to build a new business but also following the latest trends, constantly feeding the existing product with new features, and improving the user experience is very critical and part of innovation.  As a founder, you need to actively, continuously, and systematically generate ideas to fill your innovation pipeline. 

Generating ideas is vital for businesses to survive and thrive. As change accelerates in markets and technology, entrepreneurs need to continually innovate to compete, grow and remain relevant to their customers. “Ideas are a powerhouse for your business,” Walkowiak says. “Winning business owners have figured out how to generate ideas and integrate adaptability throughout their organization. Creativity is a game-changer for them.”

However, we know that it is not easy to think innovatively in the daily workflow or to make it a part of daily life. We have compiled a few tips for you that you can apply.

Don’t overcomplicate the innovation generation process

What most people don’t realize is, that coming up with ideas is an easy process. If you already have an item or service in mind, the rest of the idea generation process only becomes difficult when you think about all the details in advance.

Overthinking all details  will only complicate your idea generation process. To make things easier, you can try;

• Ask your teammates or employees about it. They may have suggestions you never thought about.
• Talk about your idea with friends and family. Additional inputs always help, particularly if they’re also into business.
• Think like a customer. Refer to your idea and imagine yourself as the customer. What would make you buy the product or service?

Doing these things only means that there are additional considerations that entrepreneurs must make before embarking on a single project.

Brainstorming software enables teams to vote and comment on insights gathered. As it helps in bridging your thoughts, it makes it easy to identify how to proceed with every concept that’s been considered.

Identify challenges, take risks and collect ideas to innovate

Now you’re ready to start gathering ideas. It’s common to begin with a challenge—for example, a new technology, unanswered customer need, production bottleneck, product issue or pricing—then find ideas to solve it. It’s important to come up with various ways of generating ideas inside and outside your organization. When you are in the process of assessing your ideas, it is helpful to  identify the risks and challenges, so you can decide either to go or not. You can use Swot analysis to map all possible opportunities and threats. 

Once you’ve collected ideas, the next step is to choose a few of the most compelling or high-potential ones for more in-depth exploration. For this important step of prioritization, it’s helpful to use simple frameworks (for example, a business model canvas, which is a visual chart often used to develop or document a business model) and selection criteria (e.g. feasibility, competencies, profitability). Then, teams can vote for the most promising ideas during a town hall or ideation session.

Validation, a process of innovation

Now it’s time to explore your best ideas further to research if they’re worth pursuing and even implementing. For example, if the idea is a new digital service, you can discover who the target customers are, validate the value proposition with them on social media or directly, examine the market potential and talk to your team about design and production possibilities.

““Innovation must be based on evidence, not wishful thinking. You don’t want to spend too much time on it if it doesn’t have the potential to solve customers’ problems or answer an unsatisfied need. You need to be creative in how you test the idea without actually building it. The challenge is the difference between what customers say and what they will actually do.” Walkowiak says.

Write new ideas that pop up while you’re working