Looking for the Elusive Big Idea

Published on March 10, 2008 by Mike Brown in Brainzooming - All Posts, Creativity, Events, Innovation, Strategic Thinking

At last week’s Market Research & Consumer Insights session, someone raised an interesting innovation issue – ideation efforts at her company are perceived as unsuccessful because everyone’s looking for the “next big idea,” and it hasn’t emerged yet from one of the innovation sessions.

Given the circumstances, it’s not surprising that a big idea is elusive. What’s happening at her company is a very subtle form of pre-judging new ideas that’s blocking creativity and a vibrant flow of ideas. Putting the phrase “next big” in front of “idea” sends a clear message: Don’t suggest an idea unless it’s going to be BIG.

The strategic challenge is nobody knows if a new idea will be BIG. And if that’s the standard before an idea can be voiced, chances are most ideas will never be mentioned. A big idea is a lot more likely to emerge from among a thousand possibilities than from a tiny trickle of ideas already pre-filtered (potentially multiple times) to only those that feel BIG before they’re even suggested.

Tomorrow’s post will instead highlight an alternative path intended to generate a lot of possibilities from which many potentially high impact ideas may emerge.

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Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.