Assessing ideas

In my last article I talked about where you source ideas from for your portfolio of innovation and change activity, so armed with a bucket full of potential ideas, how do you go about selecting which ones to back? 

A mistake commonly made is to force everyone with an idea to complete a lengthy complicated business case document. At this early idea stage that will just waste a huge amount of time for everyone involved, especially when a significant proportion are unlikely to be progressed. So instead ask for a scrappy version of a business case, a simple one pager which tells you what it is and the impact it will have. It’s always best to come up with a template that suits your business, but the Business Model Canvas is as good a starting point as any, it covers most of the main areas you need to gather information on to assess the initial idea, regardless of whether you are developing a product/service or improving efficiency of a system for your internal customers. 

Don’t over complicate this step, if you do you will demotivate those that are generating the ideas, potentially quashing highly innovative and different concepts before they even have a chance to be aired. 

This is step 1 of filtering, but assuming you have a defined strategy and clear guardrails for your investment of time, resource and money, you should gain sufficient information to be able to select which to progress into a discovery stage, where the idea can be developed further and tested out for feasibility, importantly within a short window before being re-evaluated, and progressing further with more investment, put on hold whilst dependent/priority activity is progressed or stopped. 

How does your organisation select ideas to pursue?