Many companies sit around waiting for the lightning bolt to strike to give them the next “big idea”.  I recently read this article called Where Ideas Come From on Fast Company by the inventor of the Narrative Clip.  His story didn’t start with the lightning bolt.  All he knew going in, is that he wanted to create a consumer focused device that relied on a service model.

He locked himself in a room and brainstormed all the ideas he could come up with (he called it “relentless brainstorming”), narrowed down the ideas by thinking about how it would work given his goals, talked to a lot (over 100) of people to get their honest feedback, and conducted extensive secondary research to understand whether or not the idea was technically feasible.

The result of his process was a successful product that is now in its second generation and will be launched in January 2016.

The creator of the Narrative Clip said, “But if you’re sitting around waiting for a thunderclap of inspiration, you could do worse than to lock yourself in a room and start lobbing ideas at the wall.”

If you or your company feels paralyzed around finding the next big idea, maybe you too should lock yourself in a room and brainstorm ideas.  Better yet, involve potential customers in the ideation and you might be surprised with all the new ideas!

I wish the Narrative Clip 2 was coming out before the holidays – I know just who on my list would love it!

Karie Starrett
Karie@clearworks.net

 

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