Generating ideas: explorers and artists wanted

For an entrepreneur or small or mid-sized business, practical problems can turn into sales and growth prospects. What the enterprise needs is a method of generating solutions to the problems, a step toward identifying viable business opportunities. The opportunity must be market-based and the business idea must be market-driven.

"The Entrepreneurial Spirit" by Michael Liepner, Herve de Jordy and Michael Schultz, contains a list of everyday "problems," such as telephone solicitation and poor retail service. Simply restating the problems may suggest business opportunities - perhaps a product or service to reduce telephone solicitation, or ways to improve retail service. Specifying the particular product or service has to wait until after you generate and evaluate several solutions. So how to successfully generate ideas or solutions to problems?

In his book, "A Whack on the Side of the Head and A Kick in the Seat of the Pants," Roger Von Oech suggests four specific roles for the entrepreneur in generating, evaluating and implementing ideas, as follows:

Explorer: Searching for new information

Artist: Developing new ideas from available resources

Judge: Evaluating an idea

Warrior: Carrying an idea into action.

The first two roles belong in the realm of idea generation. Exploring information about the opportunity helps ensure that the process focuses on the market. The next step is to formulate as many ideas as possible by approaching the opportunity as an artist would approach a blank canvas.

Developing ideas for products or services requires creative thought. And being creative calls for right-brain or "soft" thinking, as opposed to logical left-brain or "hard" thinking. While hard thinking is necessary for evaluating ideas, it actually impedes the creative process necessary to generate ideas.

Being creative also takes practice and is often more productive undertaken in a group of people with varying perceptions or a particular subject. Here are a few tips for creative idea generation:

* Get away from your regular routine. A different environment can often stimulate creative thought. Rent space in a hotel or other location away from the phones and other distractions. Try a room with soft lighting and comfortable chairs without desks or tables.

* Hire an experienced facilitator who is trained to direct and stimulate creative group thinking. His or her main skills include the abilities to listen, to interpret and synthesize as well as to put individuals at ease and encourage ideas.

* Have the facilitator record the group's ideas on sheets of foolscap and hang the sheets around the walls.

* Don't judge suggestions during the idea generation stage. Group members should be free to express whatever enters their minds. The goal is to generate as many ideas as possible before whittling down the list.

* Consider breaking into several small groups--perhaps by management level-to conduct simultaneous idea generation processes. Then combine the results during the evaluation stage.

* Run through the collected ideas to make sure the group understands them. Look for duplication of ideas, or concepts that might be combined or clarified.

* Don't extend the session artificially. Let the facilitator gauge the mood of the group and end the idea generation process when ideas tail off.

* You needn't convene a group to generate and record good ideas. Keep paper and pencil handy for jotting down those thoughts that occasionally bubble up from the subconscious.

* Look for resources that can help in generating ideas. For example, the Canadian Industrial Innovation Centre in Waterloo, Ont., holds a twice-yearly conference on idea generation, evaluation and new venture formation.

This process is far from foolproof. Management or workers may lack commitment, particularly if it's difficult to identify an immediate payoff from the exercise. Try to emphasize the long-term benefits of the session. Find a champion or promoter for the idea, preferably in the organization's upper echelons.

Rather than a one-off session, idea generation should be an ongoing process as routine as, say, budgeting. Many organizations only explore ideas when confronted by a problem, but this is being reactive, not proactive.

For the entrepreneur, there are benefits in restating problems as opportunities and generating ideas to satisfy those opportunities. For the management accountant, the exercise provides insight into how the entrepreneurial mind sees opportunities in problems and how new ventures are created. These insights might enable the management accountant to help entrepreneurs find the right facilitators or help with the succeeding process: idea evaluation.