The Explosion of Ideas
"Everything that can be invented has already been invented." This famous quote—although mistakenly attributed to the U.S. Patent Office commissioner in 1899 or, later, to Thomas Watson, former chairman of IBM—highlights a common misconception: the belief that human innovation has reached its peak. However, the opposite is true. While some of our planet’s resources may someday be depleted, the ingenuity and innovativeness of humankind show no signs of diminishing. In fact, innovation continues to accelerate, driven by several key factors:
Technological Enablement: Innovations create the conditions for more innovations.
Evolving Demand: Consumer needs and preferences become more differentiated and varied.
The Rise of AI: The widespread adoption of artificial intelligence in organisations has further accelerated the pace of innovation, enabling faster development and execution.
This rapid growth in ideas, however, has made previous challenges in innovation management even more pressing. The gap between the abundance of ideas and the capacity to effectively manage and launch them continues to widen. For companies and brands, the ability to identify and prioritise the most promising ideas has become a critical success factor.
Drawing on extensive experience, we offer the following guidelines to navigate this dynamic innovation landscape:
1. Start with Asking the Consumer
The most efficient and effective method for selecting the best ideas in innovation would, in theory, rely on the decisions of an all-knowing, wise "dictator" or visionary entrepreneur. However, reality is far more complex, often influenced by subjective viewpoints, personal agendas, or human error.
Given that any successful innovation ultimately requires acceptance by consumers or clients, it is essential to incorporate their perspectives into the process of shortlisting the most promising ideas.
While consumer input should not be the sole or final determinant, it can serve as a valuable counterbalance to internal considerations, such as cost, feasibility, or resource constraints. This balanced approach ensures a more holistic evaluation of ideas, increasing the likelihood of success.
2. Categorise Ideas for Testing Fairly
If you ask for a definition of what an idea is, you will likely receive different answers from different people. Without clarifying this upfront, implicit assumptions will vary, leading to misunderstandings and, potentially, chaos.
Ideas can possess vastly different characteristics. Some may be technical solutions that improve processes or increase efficiency, while others might take the form of physical representations, such as a design or a specific format. Some ideas focus on products or individual features, while others revolve around services, which can range from broad, transformative innovations to small, incremental improvements. The possibilities are nearly endless.
To ensure that the most promising ideas are identified and evaluated fairly, it is crucial to avoid “mixing apples with pears”—that is, comparing fundamentally different ideas in a way that skews outcomes due to differences in representation or presentation. An idea should not be selected over another simply because it is more favourably portrayed or tested.
To ensure that probands can evaluate a reasonably large number of ideas in a test, the cognitive demand needs to be considered. Hence, it is recommended to “reduce to the max”—keeping each idea clear, concise, and focused. An idea should be communicated in its simplest form while still conveying its core value.
When formatting ideas for testing, the following elements are essential:
A clear description: A concise articulation of the idea itself.
The benefit: A clear statement of the value or impact the idea offers.
Optionally and if really needed:
Explanation: Include one brief sentence to clarify or provide context to ensure the idea is fully understood.
Visual representation: Supporting visuals can enhance clarity, especially for design-driven, product- or service-/process-oriented ideas.
By distilling ideas to their essence and grouping them for testing purposes based on similar characteristics, organisations can ensure they are evaluated on equal footing, increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of the testing process while maintaining fairness and clarity.
3. Sample to Identify Opportunities
Similarly, to categorising ideas with the same characteristics it is important to map these - or sub-sets of those - with target groups in your research that share the same potential of buying or using the eventual outcome of the tested ideas. This is important since one should also not influence the outcome by defining the target group too narrowly towards hypothetical buyers or users of an idea and by this increasing the resonance artificially and “methodologically designed” – especially when comparing across target groups in combination with sets of ideas.
A good rule of thumb is to include everyone without a barrier to purchase or use—a concept often referred to as the “maximum target universe.” Barriers can take various forms:
Factual barriers: Physical limitations, such as not owning a prerequisite (e.g., a garden for gardening tools or a specific service plan for a device).
Categorical rejections: Personal factors, such as ethical, motivational, or value-based objections.
Combining a broadly defined target universe with a large sample size (e.g., n=1,000 or more) ensures that even small market segments with strong resonance for specific ideas can be identified. This is particularly valuable in today’s marketplace, where products and services are increasingly differentiated, and market shares tend to be fragmented.
A large sample allows for:
Identification of Niche Opportunities: Recognising ideas that resonate with small but meaningful segments of consumers or clients.
Strategic Overlap Analysis: Evaluating the degree of overlap (potential for cannibalisation) versus disjunction (potential for complementary market reach) among high-performing ideas.
By considering both niche and broad segments in a structured and data-driven way, companies can strategically guide their decision-making processes. This approach ensures a more comprehensive understanding of an idea’s potential reach, while also identifying opportunities to maximise complementary audiences and minimise internal competition.
4. Use Techniques that Maximise Data Quality
In practice, idea screening often requires balancing competing priorities. The key considerations typically include:
Testability of a large number of ideas: Screening often involves evaluating between 30 and 80 ideas.
Budget and timeline constraints: These typically rule out qualitative or monadic testing approaches.
High data quality: Ensuring the research process is engaging for participants and minimising fatigue or wear-out effects.
Based on our experience, participant-engaging techniques within a quantitative framework strike the ideal balance. These techniques include:
Pre-Sorting Exercises for Initial Filtering: Ideas are sequentially presented in random order to participants for pre-sorting them into different “buckets” ranging according to their personal relevance from “very relevant” to “not relevant.” Limits are placed on the number of ideas participants can assign to the “very relevant” category, effectively suppressing an "inflation of preferences''. The limit depends on the type of ideas being tested (for example less restrictive limits can be set for features of software or applications whereas more restrictive limits would need to be set for competing options such as extra services for a holiday package where budgets are a factor).The total number of ideas presented to each participant may also be capped, requiring a fragmented design where a subset of ideas (e.g., 20 out of 80) is shown to each participant. To ensure sufficient observations for each idea, the sample size is multiplied accordingly. The number of ideas shown depends on their complexity and representation. More cognitively demanding ideas may require smaller sets to ensure accurate evaluation (refer to Rule 3).
Subsequent Ranking of Selected Ideas: Participants rank the ideas they considered most relevant, providing a more refined preference hierarchy.
This approach can be further customised. For example, limits can be based on budgets instead of a number of items, or relational conditions of ideas can be included (e.g., one idea serves as a prerequisite for another, is mutually exclusive to another etc.).
5. Carefully Interpret Results
The primary outcome of this idea-screening process is a ranking of ideas based on overall preference shares. With sufficiently large sample sizes, the results are robust enough to:
Differentiate between ideas.
Identify whether ideas cannibalise and compete for the same customer or client segments.
Highlight growth opportunities with complementary ideas addressing different segments.
This makes the approach an invaluable tool for guiding decisions on which ideas to advance further. However, it is equally important to acknowledge both the strengths and limitations of the approach. Innovation or research consultants as well as Consumer and Market Insight (CMI) managers must communicate the following considerations clearly:
The consumer perspective is one factor: While consumer input is critical, it must be supplemented with insights from internal sources, market analysis, and competitive intelligence to inform decisions holistically.
Ideas are not final solutions: The ideas tested at this stage are only ideas or brief concepts at its best. Final solutions will likely evolve into more elaborate versions that may resonate differently with consumers or clients as they take shape. Moreover, the success of these solutions will depend on other marketing-mix factors, such as pricing, distribution, and promotion, too.
Hence, other research questions – especially becoming relevant at later stages – require alternative approaches: For questions about detailed concepts, market potential, or full marketing-mix optimisation, methodologies such as concept testing, simulated test markets, or full-mix volumetrics are better suited, and this should be stated clearly.
Idea screening plays an invaluable role in setting priorities for innovation initiatives early on. By following these guiding principles, organisations can effectively manage innovation initiatives at the idea-screening stage, ensuring a structured, efficient, and successful evaluation process.