In the Q&A following a recent conference keynote address, I encountered an interesting question: “In our firm, the problem is not that we don’t have enough ideas but that we need to decide on which ideas we should bring to market. How can we make the right decision?” Today, let’s take up this question and talk about seven aspects to consider when deciding which of your ideas is fit for implementation.

1. Agree on a set of relevant Idea Evaluation Criteria

Before you start to generate ideas in an innovation project, agree on suitable idea evaluation criteria that you will use later on in order to judge each idea. First differentiate between must criteria (that must be adhered to, such as financial, time, or legal constraints) and want criteria (that you want an idea to comply with). Next, find relevant want criteria by using two general idea filters: Your market filter explores the market potential of an idea (Should you do it? Does the idea add meaningful new value? Can you leverage it? Can you make it financially viable? And so on). The feasibility and implementation filter reflects how easily an idea can be implemented (Can you do it? Is the technology available? Is political support needed? How comfortable are you with the implementation risks?).

2. Split the evaluation stage into a Pre-Election and Final Election Phase

Evaluate and elect your ideas in two steps: First, have a Pre-Election Phase where you roughly screen a portfolio of interesting ideas (of, say, 30 ideas) to elect the most promising ideas (top 10). In order to survive the pre-screening, an idea must comply with all of your must criteria and look promising on your want criteria. Finally, after a subsequent detailed check on all survivors, decide on those few ideas that have the highest potential for evaluation by using one of the following five idea election approaches.

3. Idea Maps — Visualize the potential of your ideas

Idea Maps are my preferred way to decide on the most promising ideas for real-life activation. Here, a group of decision-makers anonymously rate all pre-elected ideas on all want criteria using Likert-scales (e.g., with a scale from 0–10). Then, use the resulting individual market filter and implementation filter scores as input data to compute the statistical means for these two dimensions for each idea. Visualize the mean results for each idea on an Idea Map that you construct with the market filter as vertical axis and the implementation filter as horizontal axis. Finally, elect those ideas for implementation that have the highest market potential and are easy to implement (upper right quadrant). Keep ideas with a high market potential but a complicated implementation scenario (upper left quadrant) in your idea portfolio for a future review.

4. Weighted Scoring Model — The option for “rational” decision-makers

The Weighted Scoring Model is often the preferred decision-making tool in business to evaluate “rationally” the potential of a set of alternative options. Here, you rationally compute the best option after scoring all pre-elected ideas on your set of weighted evaluation want criteria. Note that this tool always leads to a “safe,” but not necessarily a good decision, as the final outcome can be manipulated depending on the chosen criteria and the weights selected for each criterion. Hence, remove bias by seeking the input of a group of deciders to calculate fair average weights.

5. Integrate intuition into your decision-making process

After completion of a formal assessment method (Idea Maps or the Weighted Scoring Model), look at your final ideas and ask: ‘How do I feel about the final result?’ “I can make up my mind about people and ideas in sixty seconds. I rely more on my gut instinct than thick reports,” confides Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Group. Numerous other accounts suggest that many celebrated business leaders follow their intuition rather than just considering the facts when making decisions.

So, feel comfortable to follow their example. As you go through a systematic idea evaluation process as described above, monitor your gut response to the various ideas. Check if you feel comfortable with each idea elected for activation. If your gut feeling indicates a discomfort with one idea, or that you’d prefer another idea to a “rational” decision, then this “intuitive choice” is probably the right one to implement.

6. Follow Google’s approach when in doubt

Consider adopting an interesting practice of Google. When in doubt about which of two roads to take, go for the fastest path. As Google’s Engineering Director David Glazer believes: “It’s easier to keep moving and change course than when you’re sitting and thinking and thinking.”

7. Create an internal Idea Stock Exchange

Last but not least, a US company called Rite-Solutions came up with an interesting new approach for idea election. The company created an in-house Idea Stock Market called “Mutual Fun,” where interesting ideas get listed with their own ticker-symbol so that employees can buy and sell these idea stocks using an allocated virtual sum of ten thousand “opinion dollars.” If an idea is successfully introduced into the market, the employees can cash in their “opinion dollars” from the idea stock into real money. (For more information, see: www.nytimes.com/2006/03/26/business/yourmoney/26mgmt.html).

One final word: Remember that the holy grail of good decision-making is yet to be found, as indicated by Henri-Frédéric Amiel: “The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides. Accept life, and you must accept regret.”

© Dr. Detlef Reis 2008. This article was published in parallel in the Bangkok Post under the same title on 3 July 2008.