Modul 3 – Idea Refinement
April 7, 2019Form previous experience, working with idea refinement is both tough but can at the same time be very rewarding. In our firm we have a very open communication with our staff as well as our customers.
My way of looking on it is that if our clients are invited to contribute to idea generation, myself and our staff can refine the idea by making it suit the company’s financial possibilities.
In turn, we create a stronger and better relationship with our staff by letting them in on decision making, as well as allowing our relationship to our clients to flourish. Our clients feel that they have made a contribution that in turn makes service even better for their part, hence we have secured a more prosperous long-term relationship. In a way, it’s a type of teambuilding (between companies) without being aware that its even going on.
The “tough” part lies in the fact that the clients wishes can’t always be respected. Sometimes the ideas have to be peeled off so much that the idea doesn’t resemble the initial one. The way I have tried to work around this is with compromises and constant dialog with the client.
The idea may be great but if it can’t be implemented, its rather worthless.
This process of tweaking the idea is mostly done internally. We discuss the options, the resources needed and how we can make it happen. We get the input from staff and when we have a proposition, we discuss it with the client.
My approach to the exercise was to pick an idea I could refine by adding new elements and dimensions to improve it. The way I see it is that I first make the idea as optimal, interesting and as sellable as possible. Then I take a step back and reflect upon if that specific part/element is really needed. This way, I peel off the parts that are not needed or that are not implementable or not even possible due to financial aspects.
2 responses to “Modul 3 – Idea Refinement”
Comments are closed.
Good insights! I totally agree with you on the ‘tough’ part of idea refinement. There is an article that illustrates how this can actually serverly backfire when you involve customers into the idea generation process and then don’t choose (from the customer’s perspective) the right ideas for implementation: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296312002500
Thank you for sharing!
I enjoyed reading your reflections on working in cooperation with your customers. The difficulty of getting ideas outside that not fit the current scope of business is an intriguing issue to manage. Without knowing your operations would it be possible for your organization to take care of “radical” ideas from customers? And if so do you have any suggestions for how that could look like?