Ideation: catching or generating ideas?

All innovations start with an idea, and the process of generating, developing and communicating that idea is called ideation. Indeed this is one of the accepted definitions of the term, but here I would try to look at the first part of it from a slightly different perspective. My contention is with the term “generating” ideas. Do we really generate ideas? If so then why do we come across phrases like “seek an idea” or “catch an idea” or even “come up with an idea”. In all these phrases either we are looking for an idea (seek), grabbing an idea (catch) or trying to bring an idea to our mind (come up with). The term “generating” essentially conjures up in our mind the image of processing or transforming a given set of inputs to a desired output, like the way we generate electricity from coal or generate public opinion through calculated political discourse. But while talking about a new idea it is always a spark and something unique that suddenly comes to our mind, the idea itself is a serendipitous outcome that we have never planned for. So I would term it as “catching” instead of “generating”, which is done through reflection of our mind on varied things. It could be proper to state here that, though an idea is something we catch by chance, but we can probably set a context or create an atmosphere to catch them. Let us now see the other two parts of ideation i.e. developing and communicating ideas. They form the stages of natural progression after we catch an idea. Development could involve screening an idea, with the help of already existing knowledge, to check its feasibility i.e. to know if it is in tune with the current context. If so, then more accessories and add-ons are combined to further mold it to a satisfactory level. Once fully built, the idea is then communicated to the next stage.

In the present day organizations the need to catch and develop new ideas are growing. This trend is concomitant of the rapid progress in technology, shift in consumer needs and ever increasing competitiveness. Any organization, irrespective of its size and reach, is challenged by this idea shortage (which ultimately hinders innovation and growth). Without a process of ideation in place a firm could well ruin its future prospects and even that to the extent of its obsolescence. Now let us draw an analogy of this process of idea capturing with that of fishing. In solitary fishing expeditions a fisherman, with his fishing rod dipped in the water, waits for an indefinite period of time, before he experiences to his delight, a sudden pull on the reel. Also the fisherman have no preconceived notion about what fish (size, type, quality etc) he is going to catch. On the other hand things he could be cognizant about are his preparations i.e. if he has a strong rod, strong thread, attractive bait and an efficient hook. Knowledge about the fishing environment like the pond, lake could provide some general idea of the catch but never the exact one. In a similar way a small organization or a start-up catches ideas through its individual employees (ex. entrepreneurs), by constantly looking around. The entrepreneur needs to be patient and vigilant before he, to his joy, comes across an idea. He could not anticipate before, like the fisherman, the quality of the idea. The more receptive is his brain, the better is the catch. But this is an one man show and not a concerted effort. Coming back to the fisherman story let us now look into the organized fishing expeditions in the deep seas. While venturing deep sea the group of fishermen face the same problems as the solitary fisherman i.e. they don’t know exactly what type of fish they are going to catch, the yield rate or the time it may take to catch them. Additionally they face another problem i.e. the problem of coordination among themselves. Hence along with preparation and possession of proper fishing equipments there arises an additional need for some kind of management process to synchronize the group. But this collective effort produces much greater yield and more profit than a solitary fishing venture. Similarly a large organization also needs to be prepared for the idea catch in a systematic way. As only human mind can catch ideas, hence making a connection between them and facilitating the free flow of thoughts would be essential. A well collaborated effort with proper management support would create an efficient network (idea net) where the ideas would get trapped eventually, whereas several uncoordinated and scattered "one man shows" would leave enough holes for the better ideas to slip through. The bigger is the human network, the heterogeneous is the mix the wider and stronger is the idea net.

A clue here, for the starters, would be to focus more on building the idea net rather than counting the ideas, that will follow suit anyway.