|
Three-Step
Approach to
Choose the Most Promising Ideas
Step 1
Quickly reject ideas which you do
not want to follow up. Ideas should be rejected because they do not solve the
problem, are irrelevant, do not
fit your firm's
→
guiding principles,
are duplicated, or are clearly impossible. Do not reject ideas which are simply
difficult or weird. Such ideas could later prove to be your best ideas.
Step 2
Select the best
out of the remaining ideas.
The
→
80/20 Principle
can help you to do so: look through your
list of ideas and circle the 20% that will yield 80% of the results you are
looking for.
Do try to include some wild ideas even if you
believe they are near to impossible to implement. Divide ideas into two groups:
(1) the ideas you are likely to implement in the short term and need to evaluate
immediately; (2) the ideas that should be saved for future evaluation and
implementation.
Step 3
Evaluate the most promising ideas.
Have the evaluators rate each idea against each criterion. The following methods
can be used for idea evaluation:
The 5x5 evaluation matrix is the simplest one. You
determine five criteria and compare each idea to each criterion, giving it a
score of 0 to 5 points depending on how well the idea meets the criterion. Add
up the scores and multiply by four and you have a percentile score for each
idea. This facilitates easy comparison of ideas.
Evaluators should also be able to add remarks to
the evaluation. This will allow them to clarify scores and explain how the idea
could be modified to improve its score.
|
