The PDMA Handbook of New Product Development

17.2. Chartering for Ideation: The Secret of Focus

We were able to pull the team together behind a common exciting direction. The new ideas that emerged were critical to our future success.

—LINDA STEGEMAN, LUCENT TECHNOLOGIES

Ideas are infinite but our tolerance for ideation is not. Ideation is like climbing a tree; you always start at the bottom. Most of us never get past the lower branches, and that low-hanging fruit we find starts to become very familiar. There is a blurry line between low-hanging fruit and the fruit that is lying overripe on the ground. The odds are good that if you bring together the same team against the same task year after year, you will see the same idea set. Spending time on ideation "focus" is where the team will have the greatest opportunity to overcome repetition. Reconfirm your NPD team's charter and, if possible, narrow your scope to a search for ideas to a specific area that you have determined to be promising or strategically interesting (see Chapter 2). To quote Barbara Goss of Armstrong World Industries, "We had reviewed our data to the point of burnout. Then came the breakthrough. It is so obvious— the answer came from creatively framing the questions."

In the ideation charter the team should specify the market segment, unmet needs, and specific technologies that will drive ideation. Armed with these data nuggets, you can target specific high-probability branches of your idea tree. You should aim to do the following:

• Have focused project goals. ...