Idea 2 Market
Research theme and project (for SMEs in the Flanders region):
Controlling the time to market, through an effective and efficient idea generation phase.
Research questions.
This phase is known by industry as a complex and hardly controlled process that is context-dependent and most organizations lack the talent to find fresh and marketable ideas in the fuzz.
- How can we reduce the time to market in the context of innovation, with a focus on the ideation phase?
- How can we structure and control the methodology?
- How can we support facilitators to organize ideation sessions and adress the importance of it in industry?
- What are supportive conditions for idea generation and obtaining the necessary buy-in?
Impact.
International conference on engineering and product design education (September 6-7 2012)
Workshop festival organized by COCD (Antwerp Management School) (May 29 2015)
The I2M Toolkit comprises the following items:
(i) The tools and techniques for each phase during ideation and their specific context of use.
(ii) The manual, preliminary scoping of both the tools and the creative problem or opportunity raises the efficiency and effectiveness of the process. It gives the opportunity to anticipate on contingencies during the creative process.
(iii) The process board, the process needs a plan or layout that gives the opportunity to align the different process steps and to elaborate on prior results. In each step an overview of different existing applicable tools is required and different success and failure factors should be known.
(iv) Six roles that add complexity but also the opportunity to look at each problem from different angles, affecting the outcome, and providing levels according to the experience of the team involved. On multiple occasions the Idea2Market toolkit is still in practice with students product development and in collaboration with industry:
- course in 2nd Bachelor: Product and Production
- course in 1st Master: Market research & Consumer behavior
- course in 2nd Master: Design for sustainability
- European Project Semester (Ba/Ma multiple disciplines)
- International Workshopweek (Ba/Ma Design Sciences)
- Innovation week (2nd Master)