Innovation projects typically begin with the ideation phase. Ideation is a process that comprises a couple of interrelated yet separate phases. In order for the project to be completed successfully, knowing the exact steps of this process is essential. You must be fully prepared for all of the obstacles that await you once you begin this procedure. This is why we’ve put together a checklist of main points for you to follow.

1. Engage people

There are many ways to involve individuals in the creative process, one of which is to provide them the opportunity to participate in focused ideation sessions. Given all of the capabilities available in modern innovation management software, this should be a breeze. Different techniques, such as top-down initiatives, bottom-up activities, or crowdsourcing events, might contribute to organic development for your company. You can introduce gamification techniques such as these 3 tactical ways to engage your community in innovation.

2. Generate ideas

Simply coming up with as many ideas as possible is the greatest method to generate a large number of good ideas. Including every employee in the ideation process is a solid strategy to create a large database of potential solutions to important challenges. These solutions might be connected to specific issues that your company is experiencing, or you can provide room for free initiatives when someone in your team believes they have a good idea for change. Either way, innovation management software is the perfect tool for these activities, since it is a way for everyone to participate in the creative problem-solving process.

3. Capture ideas

What appears to be a poor idea one moment may turn out to be a fantastic one the next. We live in an uncertain environment, which is why you should value every idea or, at the very least, allow it time to grow. The safest solution to collect ideas is to establish a database, ideally, ideas should stay in their original form, so you can mold them appropriately when the time comes. Using a keyword search, you may quickly locate ideas in a database. This is also supported by innovation management software, and it is a much more convenient approach to organize your ideas than creating databases from scratch.

4. Combine forces

Different perspectives lead to distinct points of view, and when you are shaping new concepts, every perspective is valuable. Collaboration is a term always closely associated with innovation because it is the path that an original idea takes to become its holistic version. Discussing ideas with your professional community can often lead to generating new ideas, and/or improving existing ones.

5. Evaluate ideas

As previously said, having a lot of ideas is excellent for innovation, but there must be a mechanism in place to guarantee that only the finest and most promising ideas are chosen for future development. Such a mechanism does exist, and it is entirely digital, in the form of innovation management software. It also connects all of the phases on this list, making the ideation process much easier to carry out when all of these phases run smoothly one after the other. With Innovation Cloud, you can quickly set criteria, upon which any type of idea can be decently evaluated.

6. Prioritize

This is the phase when you will determine which of the top three concepts with the highest ratings is a "go". It is also the stage at which all of our prior efforts begin to make sense. All employees who worked on the concept that was chosen as the strongest will now be recognized for their efforts. Your company is committing to innovation development at this point, and your company is creating new value for your clients.

These six stages in holding an ideation session are a method of systematizing the process and correctly determining the roles and responsibilities. You begin this process as a visionary with a desire for development, and by the conclusion of step 6, you will have a fully formed plan of where you want to go and what to spend your resources on. Skipping stages is not recommended since it destabilizes the entire process and reduces the value of future attempts to execute the innovation. Innovation management software is a worthy addition to your innovation process that guarantees that everything is done correctly and in the right sequence.