Finding and Selecting Ideas

"Of all the things we could do, what are we going to do, and why?"

The journey starts with a trigger signal -- a bright idea, a customer need, catching up with a competitor. Whatever the stimulus, the challenge in managing your innovation process at this stage is to make sure you have in place ways of searching for and picking up the signals.

But you can't do everything -- you need to be able to answer the question: "Of all the things we could do, what are we going to do, and why?" You need to select -- to make choices based on where you are trying to get to as an organization and how the proposed innovation might help you get there.

ACTION POINT: Build a road map for the journey. Mapping out how you will take the idea ahead helps identify potential problems and who or what else you will need to help deal with them.