Mastering Ideation: How to Generate Better Solutions for Your Product Team
Discover the secrets to effective ideation with structured brainstorming techniques that drive innovation and set your product apart.
Last week, we discussed prioritizing customer problems. Once you've identified the most relevant issues, it's time to develop solutions that truly differentiate your product. Unfortunately, many teams under-invest in this critical phase.
We often fall in love with the first ideas that come to mind, leading to a lack of innovation. At ProductCon in May, I met folks from several product analytics and observability platforms claiming the same differentiators. I decided not to ask about the difference between differentiators and table stakes. The key to innovation is investing in ideation and treating it as a competitive advantage.
And a meeting with your engineering and UX partners where you share your goal and ask them for ideas is not going to cut it. You have to establish a repeatable process for creativity and make it a priority for your team. The best process I have seen so far is Structured Brainstorming.
Preparation:
Select Your SMEs: Include your product, UX, and engineering trio, key stakeholders, and specific SMEs.
Define the Goal: Restate it in the "How Might We" format and share the background on why it was prioritized.
Distribute Information: Ensure everyone is on board with the goal.
Get your SMEs involved in research: Ask your team to look for examples of how other companies and industries solve similar challenges.
Conducting the Brainstorm:
Lightning Demos: Participants share examples of similar solutions from other companies and industries. Use a simple format for presentations and the "together alone" principle, where participants come up with ideas individually before sharing. Here is a template that I like to use:
Heat-Mapping: Ensure understanding by marking liked aspects of others' ideas and asking questions through sticky notes.
Ideation Steps:
Note Taking: Participants individually re-align on decisions and shared ideas without sharing their notes.
Crazy Eights: Each participant sketches 8 ideas in 8 minutes to encourage quick, non-perfectionist thinking.
Develop Concepts: Create three detailed concepts and share them with the team. If needed, use brainwriting to iterate on each other’s ideas to come up with more options.
Prioritizing Ideas:
Evaluate Impact: Assess solutions based on their impact on the goal.
Assess Effort and Capabilities: Consider the effort required and access to necessary capabilities.
Business Model Check: Ensure the new feature's business model makes sense, considering maintenance costs and potential revenue or retention benefits.
Fostering a Culture of Innovation:
To foster first principles innovation, cultivate a culture that values creativity. I know that we, PMs, may feel inundated with ideas. That comes from the lack of structure. If you have a good visible representation of what customer problem you are working on, you are shielded from the expectation of pursuing everyone’s first idea. And having many impactful ideas to solve a specific customer problem is crucial. This prevents limited perspectives, lack of options, potential biases, and mediocrity. Considering, comparing, and contrasting as many ideas as possible is vital for addressing prioritized customer opportunities. The breadth of your ideation directly impacts your product's competitiveness.
Added Benefits:
As you establish a culture that values creativity you create an environment top innovators want to be a part of. We came to our product, design, and engineering jobs for a reason. Yet we often forget how fun it is to be creative. Being creative with our colleagues brings us together like nothing else and having an employer that creates space and time for this fun is priceless.
So go ahead, get out of the table stakes-only rut, create a differentiated product, and be reminded why you are here in the first place.