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TOOL INNOVATION MATRIX

Your wall of ideas is filled with hundreds of ideas, and the time has come to make a selection. What are the really promising ideas? Use the Innovation Matrix and the ranking system on this page to filter out the best ideas.

CATEGORIZE YOUR IDEAS

We humans are fantastic at categorizing things. We spend much of our professional lives categorizing and sub-categorizing the work we do. When it comes to pairing down your wall of ideas, a 2x2 matrix is a perfect tool to harness our innate ability to categorize.

The Innovation Matrix lays out rows delineating incremental and substantial changes and columns delineating reducing cost and increasing revenues. You can certainly use your own decision criteria for the rows and columns. Whatever criteria you choose, make sure they have clear distinctions that will help you organize your ideas and select the ones to move into prototyping and validation.

GO BIG OR GO HOME

This tool is designed to separate the ideas that result in incremental, easy-to-accomplish changes from the ones that will make a big difference. For instance, an idea to reduce costs by mandating that everyone print double-sided pages is incremental and small. Sure, for a large company, this could certainly reduce operational costs. However, it is probably a change that can and should be implemented anyway. A big change will cause bigger shifts. These ideas will show up in the top quadrants of the matrix.

USING THE MATRIX

To use the Innovation Matrix, pull your ideas off the wall or canvas and, as a team, discuss where each idea belongs on the matrix. Unless you’ve modified the canvas to represent your own axes, the discussions you have at this point are not about feasibility or even viability. They’re about the potential for change. Is it an incremental change, one that your company could take on with little work or resources? That idea should probably placed in the bottom half of the matrix. Is it an idea for generating more revenue? The right half is where that one belongs.

THINK BIGGER

As described in the Toyota Financial Services case, when you find people sticking to small, incremental ideas on the bottom half of the matrix, you’ll need to find ways, such as fire starter questions or an “into space” exercise, to push the boundaries and get people thinking bigger.

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LOW-HANGING FRUIT

There could be low-hanging fruit in any one of the quadrants that represent quick wins. When the matrix is completely filled in, you might even distribute these to people who can take them further. But the ideas on the top make the biggest changes.

DOWNLOAD Download the Innovation Matrix Canvas from www.designabetterbusiness.com

CHECKLIST

 Most of your ideas are in the top two quadrants.

 The outcome from the voting was significant.

 You were able to make a clear selection based on the design criteria.

NEXT STEP

 Can you validate your ideas?

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IDEATION HACKS

YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE

A great ideation exercise based on the Business Model Canvas is to imagine your company’s worst nightmare.

What if you had to start from scratch without a legacy to stand on? What competing business could take yours completely out of the game? These are your organization’s worst nightmares. And if you aren’t exploring them, chances are, someone else is . . .

GAMIFIED IDEATION

Direct the participants’ attention away from the quality of their ideas and onto the quantity.

Perhaps the person contributing the most ideas wins a prize.

The point is not the prize, but the fact that a bit of healthy competition can make people overcome uncertainty and fear.

THINK LIKE A STARTUP

What if you were to look at the opportunities and challenges your company addresses through the eyes of a startup founder? To use this method, start over with a new, clean business model canvas and reinvent your company.

What would you do differently? What do customers need and want, and how would you align your value propositions to match?

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PICTURE IT

Have people draw their own or other’s ideas instead of writing them down. It’s fun, and forces them to be concrete rather than abstract.

If people are nervous about their drawing skills, they can use Lego Serious Play instead.

OUTDOOR IDEATION

Take the team outdoors, to a busy, noisy area in town, with lots of different stimuli. Do the ideation session in that location.

Draw the participants’ attention to the myriad of signals and inputs around them as a source of inspiration. Tuning in to the noise can help your brain make even wilder leaps.

THE UNUSUAL SUSPECTS

Ideation is not the exclusive domain of the creative or R&D departments. Ask some unusual suspects to join; they will surprise you.

Break away from your usual perspectives. Don’t ideate only from your current point of view. If you keep coming back to what you already have and already know, try to start with a completely different base.