Putting It All Into Practice

Enough theory. Let’s put some of these ideas into practice.

1. Review your target opportunity. Make sure that everyone on your team knows what it means and is familiar with the necessary context. Make sure it’s distinct from the other opportunities that you’ve discussed and that it’s an appropriately sized leaf-node opportunity. If you need to revisit any of these concepts, review the prior chapter before continuing.

2. Generate ideas alone. Take some time to jot down as many ideas as you can. When you get stuck, take a break, and come back to it. If you are still stuck, try to find inspiration from your competitors and analogous products. For analogous products, think broadly. You aren’t limited to just the other players in your space.

3. Share ideas across your team. You can do this in a face-to-face, real-time meeting, or you can do it asynchronously in a digital chat channel (e.g., Slack or Microsoft Teams). The key is to take the time to describe each of your ideas, allow people to ask questions, and to riff on the ideas.

4. Repeat steps 2 and 3. Remember, the benefit of sharing your ideas is that hearing other people’s ideas will inspire even more ideas. So, don’t skip repeating step 2 to ensure that you reap the rewards. Repeat until you’ve generated between 15 and 20 ideas for your target opportunity. Remember, research shows that your first ideas are rarely your best ideas. The goal is to push your creative output to find the more diverse and more original ideas.